sooo this is my first essay of the yearrrr for history of the americas and im not done, but i was wondering if you guys could tell me how im doing for the first3 paragraphs? like edit it slash give me suggestions? because i want to fix those paragraphs before i write the rest. i really want to get an A on this paper cus its the first one of the year, and if it sucks he's gonna remember that lol
Colonial America was a time of confusion. The colonists were distant from England but so loyal to the traditions of the mother country that they could not even fathom a life where the government was not completely in control. Society was vastly different from its current, modern counterpart. The American Revolution created a whole new world: “It was the Revolution, more than any other single event, that made America into the most liberal, democratic, and modern nation in the world†(p. 7). Colonial America was pre-modern in regards to the forms of monarchy, hierarchy, and patriarchy.
Unlike the current government of democracy, the monarchy that was in place in England and, as a result, in colonial America was not just a system of government, but also an oppressive way of controlling the people. As subjects to the king, the colonists were not only ruled by a distant leader, but suffered psychological implications: “…monarchy, as Americans later came to describe it, implied a society of dependent beings, weak and inferior, without autonomy or independence…†(p. 12). The colonists never lived as completely free human beings: “To be sure, most colonial farmers owned their own land and were thus different from the mass of tenant farmers who characterized English agricultural life. Yet too much can be made of this contrast, for dependent as English tenant farmers may have been, they were not seen to be dependent either by themselves or by foreigners…Independence and dependence were relative and not absolute statuses, and most colonies, like most Englishmen at home, were never as free as they made themselves out to be†(p. 14). However, despite the obvious flaws, the colonists honored the monarchy in their pre-modern society.
Along the same lines, contrary to the dream America holds today – anyone from any background can move up in an economical, and therefore social, sense – a social hierarchy helped to rule the colonists’ lives, but not just within the government. The colonists thought that such a general system actually held the society together: “…a graduation of degrees of freedom and servility that linked everyone from the king at the top down to the bonded laborers and black slaves at the bottom. The inequalities of such a hierarchy were acceptable to people because they were offset by the great emotional satisfactions of living in a society in which everyone, even the lowliest servant, counted for something†(p. 29). It was not only acceptable, but seemed to be thought of as necessary way to keep order: “Both the New England towns with their ancient ‘warning out’ regulations and the southern colonies with their vagabond legislation expected everyone to belong somewhere…towns could legally eject ‘strangers’ and have constables convey them from town to town until they were returned to the town where they legally belonged†(p. 20). The social hierarchy was even reinforced in colleges: “Students, for example, had to remove their hats at varying distances from the person they approached, depending on the status of that person†(p. 21). Hierarchy was important to the colonists – they felt that they could not survive in such an independent world.
Tags: