HISTORY 1301
United States History: Discovery to 1876
Handout #
The Folkways of the Distinct English Groups that Colonize America

David Hacket Fisher author of Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989) wrote his book to answer the great questions: “Where do we come from” Who are we? [and] Where are we going?” (Fisher. p. 3)

“The answers to these questions grow more puzzling the more one thinks about them. We Americans are a bundle of paradoxes. We are mixed in our origins, and yet we are one people. Nearly all of us support our republican system, but we argue passionately among ourselves about its meaning. We live in an open society which is organized on the principles of voluntary action, but the determinants of that system are exceptionally constraining. Our society is dynamic, changing profoundly in every period of American history; but it is also remarkably stable. The search for the origins of this system is the central problem in American history. It is the subject of this book.”( Fisher. p. 4)

The answer is to be found in the “folkways” which four specific groups of Englishmen brought with them to the New World. These folkways provide an empirical measure of the differences in their societies which have blended to form the “American way.”

“The interplay of” the folkways of the four English speaking immigrant groups, especially their “ ‘freedom ways’ has created an expansive pluralism which is” peculiarly American. “That is the central thesis of this book: the legacy of four British folkways in early America remain the most powerful determinant of a voluntary society in the united States today.”(Fisher. p. 7)

Fisher presents 24 distinct folkways or social beliefs and patterns of behavior for each of the four groups of English speaking immigrants to North America. We shall briefly examine six of those folkways: Religious Ways, Child-rearing ways, Rank ways, Order ways, Power ways and Freedom ways.

The Puritans of East Anglia

The English Puritans, who wished to “purify” the Anglican Church of its Papist trappings and the smaller group of “Separatists” who believed the Church of English so corrupt that the only solution was to separate from that church to form a more truly Christian society, immigrated to Massachusetts Bay (and the Separatists to Plymouth, which later became absorbed by the Bay Colony). These Puritans came, not exclusively, but predominantly from a section of England known as East Anglia, which was made up of Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex.

Their Religious ways set them apart from Englishmen who supported the Anglican Church of England. “These (Puritan ideas might be summarized in five words: depravity, covenant, election, grace, and love.”(Fisher. p. 23)
First was the idea of depravity, which to Calvinists meant the total corruption of ’natural man’, as a consequence of Adam’s original sin. The Puritans believed that evil was a palapable presence in the world, and that the universe was a scene of cosmic struggle between darkness and light.”

“The second idea was that of the covenant. The Puritans founded this belief on the book of Genesis, where God made an agreement with Abraham, offering salvation with no preconditions but many obligations.”

“A third idea was the Calvinist doctrine of election --which held that only a chosen few were admitted to the covenant. They believed in “Limited Atonement, which taught that Christ died only for the elect --not for all humanity.”

“A fourth idea was grace, a ‘motion of the heart’ which was God’s gift to the elect, and the instrument of their salvation.” Grace was not merely an idea but an emotion, which has been defined as a feeling of ’ecstatic intimacy with the divine’. It gave the Puritans a soaring sense of spiritual freedom which they called ‘soul liberty.’”

The fifth idea was divine love. It was only because of God’s divine love that some of mankind were saved. Further, the Puritans believed that they were bound to love one another in a Godly way.

These ideas created many tensions in Puritans minds. Puritan theology became a set of insoluble logic problems about how to reconcile human responsibility with God’s omnipotence, how to find enlightenment in a universe of darkness, how to live virtuously in a world of evil, and how to reconcile the liberty of a believing Christian with the absolute authority of the Word.”

Their Child-rearing ways came from their religious beliefs. “The Puritans believed that in consequence of Adam’s sin, all infants were born ignorant and empty of all good things, and that small children were naturally disposed to do evil in the world.”

Therefore “the first and most urgent purpose of child rearing was what they called ‘breaking of the will.’ This was a determined effort to destroy a spirit of autonomy in a small child --a purpose which lay near the center of child rearing in Massachusetts.” For example: “Restless children were rolled into squirming human balls with their knees tied firmly beneath their chins, and booted back and forth across the floor by their elders.” Other more severe forms of corporal punishment was commonplace.

An important part of child-rearing in Massachusetts was the custom called “sending out.’ Parents routinely sent away their youngsters to be raised in other homes, to learn better manners and behavior in another home.”

Massachusetts Rank Ways accepted a system of truncated orders. According to John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts “in all times some must be rich some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.”(Fisher. p. 174) At the bottom of the Bay colony social order were large numbers of desperately poor people, landless laborers. “The vagrant poor were treated with great brutality. Pregnant women were expelled so that their newborn babies would not become a charge upon the town.”(Fisher. p. 176) However, it was the “middling strata that was promoted in the Bay colony. The colonists eliminated the top and bottom of the English social strata and concentrated on the middling strata.

The Puritan Order Way embraced the idea of Order as Unity. To the Puritan Order “meant a condition of organic unity -- the order that preserves the whole, a oneness of the spirit that did not readily admit internal differences. John Winthrop spoke of order as ’the preservation and good of the whole.”(Fisher. p. 189) Order was maintained in the colony by burning at the stake, hanging and other non-lethal but quite painful punishments. The crimes of witchcraft, idolatry, blasphemy, homicide, rape , adultery, bestiality, sodomy, false witness with intent to take life, and a child of sixteen or older who was a stubborn son or who smote or cursed a parent “ were all capital crimes.

Massachusetts Power Ways: Political power was exercised at the Town Meeting. However, the point of the town meeting was not majority rule. Important issues were discussed at Town meetings until a consensus of the community was gained. Consensus was important for a community that was not of one accord could be destroyed from within when hardships occurred.

Finally, Massachusetts Freedom Ways revolved around the Puritan concept of Ordered Liberty. Liberty was not seen as belonging to the individual as much as to the community. The liberty of the Town was crucial, because in a hostile environment as New England was in the 1600s, if the town’s liberty were in jeopardy, then each member of the community was threatened. Europeans could not live in New England in isolation, the elements and the Indians were too unforgiving.

Puritans also had a second definition of liberty when applied to individuals. This was the concept of freedom from a prior constraint: the freedom to fish in a river, for example. “A persons status was defined by the number and nature of liberties to which he was admitted.” (Fisher. p. 201)

New England Puritans had a third definition of liberty: it was “soul liberty or Christian liberty. Soul liberty was freedom to serve God in the world.” It was freedom to order one’s own acts in a godly way --but not in any other way. This made Christian freedom into a form of obligation.”(Fisher. p. 202)

English Cavaliers and their Folkways in Virginia

Virginia changed from the struggling colony founded by the Virginia Company to turn a profit for its stock holders to a Royal Colony. Its first royal governor was William Berkeley in 1639. Upon his arrival the colony was in chaos. Berkeley served for over 30 years. During that time he framed Virginia’s political system. He recruited the royalist elite following the fall of Charles II to the “Roundheads” of Cromwell’s army. Back in England, most of these Royalists had lived within a day’s journey of London or Bristol. The ruling elite in Virginia became, over time, connected by a intricate series of marriages.

“This small elite was destined to play a large role in the history of Virginia --not merely in its politics and economics, but also in its society and culture. The formation of southern folkways owed much to their example.”(Fisher. p. 224) Like England, Virginia developed a strong hierarchical society. This fixation on hierarchy had important implications for Virginia and the south.

Virginia’s Religious Ways were oriented toward the Church of England. Gov. Berkeley added laws to insure that the Church of England would be the only church. Landowners were required to pay tithes. Parishioners were fined a shilling for each absence from office church services. Quakers and Puritans were fined for failing to attend Anglican services and for refusing to pay tithes they could be flogged. No Puritan congregations formed in Virginia for this reason.

Virginia Child-rearing Ways involved “Bending the Will” of the child. “The culture of the Chesapeake colonies placed two different and even contradictory demands upon its young. On the one hand youngsters were compelled to develop strong and autonomous wills. On the other hand, they were expected to yield willing to the requirements of an hierarchical culture. In place of the Puritan will-breaking, young Virginians at a very early age were actively encouraged to exercise their wills.”(Fisher. p. 311) So they were often encouraged to become young bullies. But then as they grew older they were taught other rules. In Virginia, youngsters of every rank were required to master the following rules: 1. Fear God 2. Honour the King 3. Reverence thy Parents 4. Submit to thy Superiors 5. Despise not thy Inferiors
In all the list contained 110 “rules of civility and decent behavior in Company and conversation.” Thus bending one’s own will to the requirements of society was as important as developing a strong forceful character. Self control was the mark of a gentleman in colonial Virginia. Gen. Robert E. Lee was a great example of that maxim.

Virginia Rank Ways was a system of Extended Orders. Virginia’s wealth ways developed within a system of stratification. To the Virginia gentleman “Society...was like the landscape...The common people were the grass that grew in the fields. The nobles and gentry were the trees that shaded the grass. And the clergy were the cherries that hung from the trees.”(Fisher. p. 382) The Virginians extended the full array of English social orders and reinforced them, thus helping to insure the continued dominance of the elite.

Social rank in Virginia was an extended hierarchy of deferential relationships. Just as the gentlemen of Virginia deferred to the King, so the yeomanry were expected to defer to gentlemen, servants were required to defer to their yeoman masters, and African slaves were compelled to submit themselves to Europeans of every social rank. The judicial system reinforced this hierarchical system with stiff penalties for infractions. Race Slavery was introduced in Virginia first of all the North American English colonies.

Virginia Order ways were contained in the Anglican idea of Order as Hierarchy. All citizens were required to maintain the structure and rules of the hierarchical social system in Virginia, and those rules and laws were enforced by the County Sheriffs who were appointed by the Governor in the name of the Crown. Because the system was designed to enforce the hierarchical system “Convicted felons in Virginia received very different punishments according to their rank. Gentlemen-felons were sometimes sentenced to be branded with a ’cold iron’ which left no mark that might destroy their honor. But the poor and illiterate went to the gallows. As in the mother country hundreds of felonies were capital crimes. Punishment did not end with death. The body was given to physicians for dissection, or for the most heinous crimes was hung in chains on the public highway as a warning to others. Violence was thought to be the legitimate instrument of masters against servants, husbands against wives, parents against children, and gentlemen against ordinary folk.”(Fisher. p. 399-401)

Virginia’s Power Ways as it should be expected, were hierarchical and emanated from the King, through the Governor to his appointed officials, to the elected members of the Burgess and finally to the commoners and slaves who were ruled from above.

Virginia Freedom Ways: The Anglican Idea of Hegemonic Liberty. The Virginia idea of hegemonic liberty was based on their hierarchical concept of order, it was the freedom to control others. It was conceived of as the power to rule, and not to be overruled by others. It never occurred to most Virginia gentlemen that liberty belonged to everyone. It was thought to be the special birthright of free-born Englishmen. John Randolph of Roanoke once decreed: “I am an aristocrat, I love liberty, I hate equality.”(Fisher. p. 412) The Virginian aristocratic notion of liberty as being the freedom to control others was syncretistic with the attitude that the Virginians developed toward their African slaves. This attitude toward slavery spread throughout the south.

The Friends’ Migration A third distinct group of Englishmen migrated to America beginning the 1650’s, and was the most impactful during the height of the migration between 1675 and 1715. This group of radical Christians had been persecuted since their origin in England by the Anglican Church and the English monarchy. While “persecution played a major part in driving Quakers to America, it was never the leading cause. The primary relgious goals of the Friend’s migration was position rather than negative. [It was] to show Quakerism at work, freed from hampering condition.”(Fisher. p. 425)

Religious Ways: The Golden Rule and Divine Spark
The group was radically Christian in that they swore no allegiances, other than to God. They, like “All Protestants were children of the Book. The Bible was the foundation of their faith. But Quakers, Calvinists and Anglicans drew very differently upon that common source.”{Fisher. p. 426) The beliefs of the Quakers came primarily from the New Testament, while Calvinism drew predominantly from the Old Testament and the God of Justice and wrath. “They were hostile to formal doctrine. But they developed a system of religion’ which repudiated the Five Points of Calvinism, and many Anglican dogmas as well. At the center of this Quaker “system” was a God of Love and Light whose benevolent spirit harmonized the universe. Their central tenant was the doctrine of the inner light, which held that an emanation of divine goodness and virtue passed from Jesus into every human soul.“(Fisher. p. 426) Their religion influenced every aspect of their life.
They believed that this “light within” brought the means of salvation within reach of everyone who awakened to its existence. Most Quakers rejected the Calvinist principle of limited atonement. They believed that Christ died not merely for a chosen few, but for all humanity. Quakers also rejected the Calvinist ideas of inexorable predestination, unconditional election, and irresistible grace. They agreed the people could spurn the spiritual gift that was given to them. ‘Man’s destruction is of himself,; but his salvation is from the Lord.; “(Fisher. p. 427) Quakers generally originated in the northern counties of England, below Scotland.

“The Society of Friends was organized as a complex structure of meetings, men’s meetings and women’s meetings, meetings for worship and meetings for business, monthly meetings, quarterly meetings and annual meetings. They created a system of collective discipline which regulated marriage, sex, business ethics, dress, speech, eating and drinking, politics, and law. Special attention was given to rearing of the young --an important factor in the survival of Quakerism, and in the culture that it created in the Delaware Valley” and Pennsylvania.

William Penn was not the founder of Quakerism nor was he the first Quaker to come to America, but he founded the colony of Pennsylvania which had a marked impact on American social and political ideals and history. He was a bundle of paradoxes, an admiral’s son who became a pacifist, an undergraduate at Oxford’s Christ Church who became a pious Quaker, a man of property who devoted himself to the welfare of the poor, a polished courtier who preferred the plain style, a friend of kings who became a radical Whig, and an English gentleman who became one of Christianity’s great spiritual leaders. Because of his and his fathers loyalty he was granted by Charles II a charter to a royal colony. He then made it his life’s mission to create a “colony of heaven” for the children of Light. The cornerstone of this holy experiment” was liberty of conscience. He did exclude atheists from his colony, but his colony came closer to his goal of a non-coercive society than any state in Christendom. He intended the Quaker colonies to be a political experiment for his radical Whig principles. In social terms, Penn envisioned a society where people of different beliefs could dwell together in peace. His dream was not unity (as with the Puritans) but harmony -- and not equality but love and brotherly kindness.”

Quaker Child-rearing Ways: Bracing the Will
Quakers believed that children were not born evil, as did the Calvinists, and they did not believe in Original Sin. Quakers in both England and America came to believe that small children were ‘harmless, righteous and innocent creatures. incapable of sin until old enough to understand their acts. Quaker parents made heavy use of rewards rather than punishments, and promises rather than threats. This does not mean that Quaker children were given a great amount of personal freedom. They were taught the strict ideals of ’silence and subjection --- not so much to parents or elders, but to the meeting. The individuality of the child was subordinated to the entire community. Child rearing was a communal process. They were trained to think of serving the community and be subordinated to the community and its values.

Quaker Order Ways: Order as Peace

Quaker ideas of comity called into being a special conception of social order, which was defined not in terms of unity (as among the Puritans” or of hierarchy (as among the Virginians) but in another way. Order, in their thinking, was a condition of social peace.

George Fox was the originator of the Quaker concept of Order as Peace:

“Ye are called to peace, therefore follow it...seek the peace of all men, and no man’s hurt...”

William Penn defined order as a system which “enjoins men to be just, honest, virtuous; to do no wrong, to kill, rob, deceive, prejudice none; but to do as one would be done unto.” Thus at the heart of the Quakers idea of Order being Peace is the concept of the Golden rule.

Quakers generally controlled the government of Pennsylvania for a period of sixty-seven years (1682-1755). During that era, they created a political system which differed very much from New England and Virginia. They believed in intense public activity. They believed that politics was ‘a part of religion itself, a thing sacred in its institution and its end” But they could rarely agree among themselves exactly what the best political system was in nature or operation. However, they did believe in minimal government and minimal taxes. Pennsylvania had no militia until after the 1750’s The legislature of Penn. passed fewer laws before 1750 than any other assembly in British America, and its courts were less active in the work of enforcement than in most colonies. This Quaker political culture with its heart in Philadelphia was to have a marked impact on the system of laws that the new country would seek to establish.

Quaker Freedom Ways: The Quaker Idea of Reciprocal Liberty

Quakers believed in an idea of reciprocal liberty that embraced all humanity, and was written in the golden rule. This Christian idea was reinforced in Quaker thinking by an exceptionally strong sense of English liberties. As early as 1687, Will Penn ordered the full text of the Magna Carta to be reprinted in Philadelphia, together with a broad selection of other constitutional documents. His purpose was to remind the freeholders of Pennsylvania to remember their British birthright. Quakers took these ideals further than their British counterparts. They believed in liberty of conscience, unlike the Puritans or Anglican Virginians. The Quakers believed that liberty of conscience extended even to ideas that they believed to be wrong. Their idea of “soul freedom” protected every Christian conscience.” According to Penn:

Conscience is God’s throne in man, and the power of it his prerogative.

Liberty of conscience is every man’s natural right, and he who is deprived of it is a slave in the midst of the greatest liberty.

There is no reason to persecute any man in this world about anything that belongs to the next.

No man is so accountable to his fellow creatures as to be imposed upon, restrained or persecuted for any matter of conscience whatever.

For the matters of liberty and privilege, I propose...to leave myself and successors no power of doing mischief, that the will of one man may not hinder the good of the whole country.

Liberty of conscience was one of a large family of personal freedoms which Quakers extended equally to others. William Penn recognized three secular “rights of an Englishman”: first, a “right and title to your own lives, liberties and estates; second, representative government; third, trial by jury.” In Pennsylvania, these liberties went far beyond those of Massachusetts, Virginia and old England itself.

Borderlands of England to the Backcountry in America: The Scots-Irish

The Scots-Irish are the last great immigrant group that came to America before the Revolution. They became known as Scots-Irish, because in many cases they were Scots who had migrated first to Ireland, at the urging of the English to push out the difficult and more un-rulely Irish from their own land. After becoming prosperous in Ireland, these Scots began to feel the same discrimination by the English and their Parliament that the rebellious Irish had long been subjected too. Therefore, when the Parliament passed laws inhibiting the ability of the Scots to prosper in their newly adopted homeland, they began to migrate to the American colonies.

The approximately one quarter of a million people who became known as: Scots-Irish, came to America in the eighteenth century had more humble social origins than those of New England Puritans, Virginia cavaliers or the Delaware Quakers. Many were poor, but not desperately so. Their pride was a source of irritation to their English neighbors, who could not understand what they had to feel proud about. This combination of poverty and pride set the North Britons squarely apart from other English-speaking people in the American colonies. Border emigrants demanded to be treated with respect even when dressed in rags. This fierce and stubborn pride would be a cultural fact of high importance in the American region which they came to dominate: the Appalachian west.

Scots-Irish Religious Origins: Militant Christianity

The borderers of North Britain were mixed in their religious beliefs. Those who came from Scotland and the north of Ireland tended to be Presbyterian, with a scattering of Roman Catholics among them. Many Scottish and Irish Presbyterians called themselves People of the New Light before coming to America. They believed in “free grace,” and before emigrating they had formed the habit of gathering in “field meetings” and “prayer societies, “ a custom which they carried to America and established in the backcountry.

While living on the borders in England and Ireland, incessant violence shaped their culture, and also created a social system which was very different from that in the south of England. The violence was a result of the tenuous nature of the land claims by the residents, which had to constantly defended by force of arms. This border violence shaped the culture of this region and its people in many ways. Families grew into clans, and kinsmen placed fidelity to family above loyalty to the crown itself.

When these clans moved to America they to gravitated to the colonial borders with the Amer-Indians, in large part because the best lands of the coast and piedmont had already been settled. The Scots-Irish were used to contested lands and violence to solve those issues.

Andrew Jackson, the son of Scots-Irish immigrants can be seen as the archetypical backcountry borderer as leader. His grandfather, Hugh Jackson was a rich man who called himself a “weaver and merchant of Carrickfergus, Ireland. James K. Polk of Tennessee, was another borderer who traced his people back to Ireland, as did James C. Calhoun of the Carolina backcountry.

Backcountry Child-rearing Ways: Building the Will

The Scots-Irish backcountry immigrants’ system of child rearing was vastly different from the other three groups studied thus far. Children were allowed great freedom on the farm. “At an early age, male children were given their own miniature weapons --an axe, a knife, a bow, even a childish gun. While corporal punishment was condemned in the abstract, it was practiced widely. Many biographies of backcountry folk ring with their feelings of anger against what seemed to be parental tyranny. The result was a highly volatile process of child rearing: extremely permissive most of the time, but punctuated by acts of angry and illegitimate violence. This problem of promiscuous violence in child rearing was compounded by alcohol, when ever ‘papa was groggy.’ ”(Fisher p. 689)

Backcountry Rank Ways: A System of Stratification Without Orders
Extremes of wealth and poverty evolved in the backcountry. Extreme inequities of material condition were joined to an intense concern for equality of esteem. No backcountry woodsman, however poor, would suffer insult, real or imagined. Many backcountry proverbs captured the equality of manners that coexisted with inequities of material condition in this culture:

The rain don’t know broadcloth from jeans.

No man can help his birth.

Poor folks have poor ways, and rich folk damned mean ones.

Any fool can make money.

These attitudes were not invented on the frontier. They had long been characteristic of the borderers. But despite this equality of manners, a clear-cut system of social status existed in both the borderlands and the backcountry in America.

Backcountry Order Ways: Order as Lex Talionis: The Rule of Retaliation

In the backcountry personal relations were often brutally direct. The mother of President Jackson prepared her son for this world with some very strong advice. “Andrew, she said, never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself”

Their concept of order equaled Lex Talionis: the rule of retaliation. It held that a good man must seek to do right in the world, but when wrong was done to him he must punish the wrongdoer himself by an act of retribution that restored order and justice in the world.

Backcountry Power Ways: The politics of personal government

The backcountry system of politics resembled “macocracy,” which was something a Virginian or Puritan would not immediately understand. This means “rule by the race of Macs.” It was a structure of highly personal politics without deference to social rank. The “men of influence” in the backcountry would be the arbiter of feuds, bickerings and dissensions, until blood was let, then the rule of Lex Talionis took hold. Politics in the backcountry consisted mainly of charismatic leaders and personal followings, not unlike the loyalty to clans found back in the lowlands of Scotland, and the borderlands.

Backountry Freedom Ways: The Idea of Natural Liberty

The backcountry Scots-Irish man in Britain or America “shun everything which appears to demand of them law and order, and anything that preaches constraint.” They had a concept of natural freedom, as that which pleases them. They believed that every living creature desires liberty and freedom. Man was no different. They had a libertarian idea of natural freedom as “elbow room” which was far different of the ordered freedom of New England, the hegemonic freedom of Virginia’s country oligarchs, and the reciprocal freedom of Pennsylvania Quakers. And these backcountry folk were passionate about their freedom. A leading advocate of natural liberty in the 18th century was Patrick Henry. It was Henry who said: “Give me Liberty or give me death.”

Thus on the eve of the American Revolution a large group of Scots-Irish immigrants with no love loss for the British came to America, disliking authority, rules and rulers; quick to see insult in the actions or words of others; and ready to defend their freedom from real or imagined attack. This might be considered the match that lit the power keg, except the shot heard round the world was not fired in the backcountry. It was fired in the little hamlet of Concord, Massachusetts.

From: David Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. 1989.