BEGINNINGS TO 1800S

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BEGINNINGS TO 1800S
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Spanish and French

• The first detailed accounts of life in America
  were recorded by Spanish and French explorers of
  the 15th and 16th centuries.

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Cabeza de Vaca

• In 1528, they left their ships and traveled
  inland.
• Lost for 8 years, they made their way from
  Florida to the Gulf of Texas.

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PURITANS

• A broad term referring to a number of Protestant
  groups that sought to purify the Church of
  England

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• Protestant reformers wished to return to a
  simpler form of worship and church organization,
  separate from the government.

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• They did not believe that the clergy or the
  government should or could act as an intermediary
  between the individual and God.

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William Bradford

• Led a small group in 1620 to the New World,
  hoping to build a new society patterned after
  Gods word.

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American Puritans

• Valued self-reliance, industriousness, temperance
  and simplicity.

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• Believed a covenant, or contract, existed between
  God and humanity.
• Believed the Bible was the literal word of God.

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• Placed great emphasis on education, founding
  Harvard College in 1636 for the intention of
  training Puritan ministers.

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• Three years later, the first printing press was
  set up in America.
• Diaries and histories were important forms of
  Puritan literature.

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Rationalism

• The belief that human beings can arrive at truth
  by using reason, rather than by relying on the
  authority of the past, on religious faith, or on
  intuition.

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Puritans vs. Rationalists

• Gods special gift to humanity was reason the
  ability to think in an ordered, logical manner.

• Saw God as actively and mysteriously involved in
  the workings of the universe

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Rationalists

• Everyone had the capacity to regulate and improve
  his/her own life.

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Sir Isaac Newton

• Saw God as a clockmaker, having created the
  perfect mechanism, then leaving it to run on its
  own.

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Smallpox Plague

• Brought by a cargo ship to America in 1721,
  smallpox spread rapidly disfiguring victims and
  was often fatal.

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Cotton Mather

• Puritan minister who said, Let us look upon sin
  as the cause of sickness.

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• Had borrowed the idea of inoculation from a
  Turkish physician.
• Was violently opposed by the community
• Succeeded in inoculating 300 people with only 6
  dying in the epidemic.

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Inoculation

• The deliberate infection of a person with serum
  containing a mild form of a virus.

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• Of the 6,000 people in Boston who contracted the
  disease but did not get inoculated, about 850
  died.

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Deism

• Belief that God made himself available at all
  times to all people through their God given power
  of reason.

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Deists believed

• the universe was orderly and good.
• in the perfectibility of every person through the
  use of reason.
• the best form of worship was to do good for
  others.

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Deists

• Avoided supporting specific religious groups.
• Sought the principles that united all religions.

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The Declaration of Independence

• Bases its arguments on rationalist assumptions
  about the relations between people, God, and
  natural law.

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Literature of the Age of Reason

• Rooted in reality
• Age of pamphlets
• Unquestioned masterpiece was the autobiographical
  narrative, Autobiography, written by Ben Franklin.

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Definition of an autobiography

• A firsthand account of a writers own life.

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Ben Franklin wrote, Autobiography

• Written account of the development of himself as
  the self-made American.

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Pg 18

• Know the Rationalist Worldview in the box.

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Plain Style

• A way of writing that stresses simplicity and
  clarity of expression.

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• Plain style emphasizes uncomplicated sentences
  and the use of everyday words from common speech.

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Pilgrim

• Someone who makes a pilgrimage, or journey to a
  holy place.

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Pilgrims in America

• Made not only the outward journey to America,
  they made an inner, spiritual journey.

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from of Plymouth Plantation

• Chapter 9 Discusses the 1620 voyage of the
  Mayflower

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• Chapter 11 discusses the first winter in
  Plymouth

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Concrete poem

• Poem in which the words are arranged on a page to
  suggest a visual representation of the subject.