1. Roots of American Democracy
Chapter 2 Notes

2. Big Ideas
The English colonists brought with them ideas about government that had been developing in England for centuries.
The English established several colonies along the East Coast of North America.
The English colonists created a prosperous economy and learned to govern themselves.
The Declaration of Independence explained why the colonies were founding a new nation.

3. Colonial Government
For centuries, England had been ruled by a monarch, a King or Queen
When colonists came to America they brought with them new ideas about law, society, and the rights people possessed.
This movement was called the Enlightenment.

4. Magna Carta
The Magna Carta was an agreement between the King of England and the nobles. It protected the rights of the nobles.
It also gave certain rights to all people that owned land, and eventually all Englishmen.
The Rights Included: Equal treatment under law, trial by jury, and limited the powers of the Monarch.

5. Parliament and the English Bill of Rights
By the late 1300s, England had developed a legislature, or lawmaking body that worked with the Monarch.
This lawmaking body is called Parliament.
The English Bill of Rights limited the power of the Monarch, guaranteed free elections, fair trials, and the elimination of cruel and unusual punishment.

6. Common Law Long standing traditions became the law.
Judges would look for a precedent or a ruling from an earlier similar case and make a similar ruling.
Common law rests on court decisions rather than regulations written by lawmakers. Our own laws about property, contracts, and injury are based on this still today.

7. Philosophical Influences
John Locke believed that all people were born free, equal, and independent.
He said that we are born with natural rights of life, liberty, and property that no government can take away.
Locke also believed in a social contract. This is an agreement between the people and the government.
The people give up some freedoms and in exchange the government will protect their natural rights.

8. More Philosophical Influences
French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote that “man is born free, yet everywhere he is found in chains” in reference to the people in Europe living under harsh monarchs.
He believed that people should have the right to determine how they should be governed.

9. More Philosophical Influences
French write, Baron de Montesquieu believed that governments should be divided up into different branches so none of them would be powerful enough to abuse the rights of the people.
The beliefs these men held became cornerstones of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

10. The Colonies
A colony is a group of people or land area controlled by a distant country.
The Americans were colonized by England, Spain, France, Holland, Portugal, and Russia.
The colonies were quite different depending on their location along the Atlantic Ocean.

11. Types of Colonies
Joint Stock Companies were colonies that were started by investors that would share the profits from the colony.
A charter was a written document from the monarch granting land and authority to set up a local colonial government.
A compact was an agreement or contract , among a group of people or colonists.

12. Jamestown and Plymouth
Some colonies like the settlers in Jamestown came to make a profit from trade and agriculture.
Many people such as the Plymouth Pilgrims came to the new colonies for religious freedom.
By 1733 there were 13 colonies from Georgia in the South to New Hampshire in the North. Each had it’s own government.

13. The New England Colonies
The Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth in 1620.
The Massachusetts Bay colony started with 900 people in 1630.
During the 1630s, more than 15,000 people came to Massachusetts.
By the mid-1600’s, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire had also been founded in the North.

14. The Middle Colonies
These include New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.
New York was originally New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony taken by the British in 1664.
The King of England gave it to his brother, the Duke of York.
In 1680, William Penn was given the colony that would become Pennsylvania.
These are examples of proprietary colonies, where the owner controlled the land and the laws.

15. The Southern Colonies
Virginia was followed by the Carolinas in 1729 and Maryland in 1734.
Georgia was the last of the colonies. It was set up as a place where debtors and poor people could go to start a new life. It was also set up to be a barrier between Spanish controlled Florida and the rest of the colonies.

16. Economic Prosperity
Each of the colonies depended on various goods to help their economies thrive.
New England: Fishing, Lumber, Shipbuilding, Trapping, Farming, and Rum.
Middle: Ironworks, Shipbuilding, Cattle, and Farming.
South: Naval Stores, Cattle, Tobacco, Rice, Indigo, and Fishing.

17. Religious Freedom and Intolerance
Many of the new immigrants to America came for religious freedom, they didn’t agree with the official religion in England.
There were many feuds however and several colonies were only tolerant of people belonging to their specific church.
Rhode Island became the first colony to welcome people of all faiths.

18. Indentured Servants vs. Slaves
Indentured Servants were people that couldn’t afford to come. Someone else would pay for their passage, food, clothing, shelter, etc. and then they would work for that person for several years in exchange.
The plantations or large farms that sprung up in the South growing tobacco, rice, and indigo required many more workers so the owners began using enslaved workers from Africa.

19. Indentured Servants vs. Slaves
The major differences between the Indentured Servants and Slaves was that the servants still held the rights of free Englishmen. The slaves were not protected by these laws.
The slave trade was a major part of the Triangular Trade. This was the trade of goods and people between Europe, Africa, and America.

20. Problems Brewing
By the time the colonies declared independence in 1776, each colony had it’s own representative government making many of it’s laws.
Many colonists still felt as though they were not being treated like full English citizens.

21. Growing Tensions
Following the French and Indian War in which the English fought France, England tried to raise money by taxing the colonists and forbid them to settle west of the Appalachian Mountains to avoid costly wars with the Indians.
Taxes led to protests and boycotts of British goods.
Tensions grew and more taxes were levied.

22. Growing Tensions
One of the major complaints of the colonists was that they were being taxed by Parliament but they couldn’t elect members. They called this “Taxation Without Representation.”
The colonists created the Continental Congress to discuss how to deal with their problems with England.
The Congress eventually wrote the Declaration of Independence to break away from England.

23. Declaration of Independence
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

24. Declaration of Independence
“…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

25. Revolutionary War
Over the next 7 years, the colonists would fight a long, costly, bloody war with England to secure that freedom they declared.
With eventual help from France, Spain ($), and Holland ($), the colonists won their independence in 1783.
They had a new nation and now had to figure out what to do with it.