Badly outnumbered, however, leading Dutch citizens petitioned the governor to surrender:

“We, your sorrowful community and subjects, [believe] that we cannot conscientiously foresee that anything else is to be expected...  than misery, sorrow, conflagration, the dishonor of women...  and, in a word, the absolute ruin and destruction of about fifteen hundred innocent souls, only two hundred and fifty of whom are capable of bearing arms....”

Two days later, Stuyvesant watched two English warships approach.  Beside him stood a gunner, ready to fire.  The minister at New Amsterdam talked urgently to the governor, then led him away.  On September 8, the Dutch surrendered, and New Amsterdam became New York.
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The fall of New Amsterdam and the founding of New York in 1664 marked the beginning of a new wave of English colonization.  For more than 20 years, no new English colonies had been founded in America because the struggle between the Puritans and the English king had finally led to war.

The English Civil War began in 1642, when King Charles I sent troops into the English Parliament to arrest several Puritan leaders.  Parliament, which was dominated by Puritans, responded by organizing its own army, and a civil war began.  In 1646 Parliament’s army defeated the king’s troops and captured King Charles.  Two and a half years later, a Parliamentary court tried King Charles and condemned him to death.  Oliver Cromwell, the commander of Parliament’s army, then dissolved Parliament and seized power, giving himself the title “Lord Protector of England.”

The Colonies Choose Sides

Once the English Civil War began, England’s colonies had to decide whether to support the king or Parliament.  In Virginia, the governor and the House of Burgesses supported the king until 1652, when a fleet sent by Parliament forced them to change sides.

Across Chesapeake Bay from Virginia, Maryland experienced its own civil war.  Lord Baltimore, Maryland’s proprietor, had supported the king against Parliament, as had Maryland’s governor.  In 1644 Protestants in Maryland rebelled.  To calm things down, Lord Baltimore appointed a Protestant as governor and introduced the Maryland Toleration Act in 1649.  The act granted religious toleration to all Christians in Maryland and was intended to protect the Catholic minority from the Protestants.  In New England, the English Civil War was a time for rejoicing.  The Puritan colonies backed Parliament, and their populations fell as settlers headed home to fight in the war.

Colonization Resumes

After nearly 20 years of turmoil, England’s leaders longed for stability.  When Cromwell died in 1658, no strong leader stepped forward to replace him.  England’s leaders decided to restore the monarchy that had been abruptly ended with the execution of King Charles I.  In the spring of 1660, Parliament invited Charles’s son, Charles II, to take the throne.  This became known as the Restoration.

With the king back on the throne, a new round of colonization began in America.  From this point forward, the English government took the lead in promoting colonization.  Colonies were no longer seen as risky business ventures.  English leaders now viewed them as vital sources of raw materials and as markets for manufactured goods.

Examining
What started the English Civil War?
 

New Netherland
Becomes New York

As King Charles II and his advisers studied the situation in North America, two regions attracted their interest.  The first region was south of Virginia, and the second was located between Maryland and Connecticut.  Taking control of the latter area would link Virginia and Maryland to New England.  Unfortunately, the Dutch had already claimed much of that land.  If the English wanted the region, they would have to take it from the Dutch.

The History of New Netherland

In 1609 the Dutch East India Company hired an English navigator named Henry Hudson to find a route through North America to the Pacific.  Hudson found a wide river, today known as the Hudson River.  His report convinced many Dutch merchants that the Hudson River valley was rich in fur-bearing animals.  They claimed the region, calling it New Netherland, and they established fur-trading posts there in 1614.

The Dutch located their major settlement, New Amsterdam, on Manhattan Island.  According to tradition, the Dutch bought Manhattan Island from the local people for 60 florins (about 24 dollars) worth of goods.  As in New France, the emphasis on the fur trade kept the Dutch colony from growing quickly.  As late as 1646, New Netherland had only 1,500 people, compared to 25,000 in New England.

To increase the colony’s size, the Dutch allowed anyone to buy land in the colony.  Soon settlers from many countries began to move to New Netherland.  By 1664 the colony had over 10,000 people.  Settlers came from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, and other parts of Europe.  A group of Portuguese Jews moved to New Amsterdam and founded one of the first synagogues in North America.

The need for labor brought unwilling immigrants to the colony as well, when Dutch merchants entered the slave trade.  The first enslaved Africans arrived in New Netherland in the 1620s.  By 1664 Africans made up 10 percent of the population.

New York and New Jersey

By the time King Charles II took the throne in 1660, the Dutch controlled a large portion of the fur trade.  They also had begun helping English colonists smuggle tobacco to Europe and illegally import European products.  In 1664 King Charles decided that the time had come to seize New Netherland.  In March, Charles granted all the land from Delaware Bay to the Connecticut River to his brother James, the Duke of York.  James was lord high admiral for the king, and he quickly dispatched four warships to seize New Netherland from the Dutch.

After seizing New Netherland, now named New York, James granted a large portion of his land to two of the king’s closest advisers, Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley.  James named the new colony New Jersey, in honor of Sir George Carteret, who was from the island of Jersey.  To attract settlers, the proprietors offered generous land grants, religious freedom, and the right to elect a legislative assembly.  These terms convinced a large number of settlers, many of them Puritans, to head to New Jersey.

Summarizing
Why did King Charles II want to seize New Netherland from the Dutch?
 

Pennsylvania and Delaware

Admiral William Penn was another close friend of King Charles.  Penn had loaned ships and money to King Charles but died before the king could pay back the money he owed him.  Admiral Penn’s son, who was also named William Penn, inherited his father’s estate, including the money the king owed his father.  In 1680 William Penn petitioned the king for a grant of land between New York and Maryland to settle the debt.  The request put the king in a dilemma.  Although granting a colony was a cheap way to pay off the debt, the young man belonged to a religious group Charles had banned and persecuted.  William Penn was a Quaker.

The Quakers

Quakers believed that everyone had their own “inner light” from God.  There was no need for a church or ministers.  Even the Bible had less authority than a person’s inner light.  Quakers objected to all political and religious authority, including forcing people to pay taxes or serve in the military.  They advocated pacifism —opposition to war or violence as a means to settle disputes.

Quaker beliefs put them into conflict with the government as well as other religions.  To escape opposition, many Quakers fled to America, but they were persecuted in almost every colony.  This convinced the Quakers that they needed their own colony, but they probably would never have been granted one had it not been for William Penn.

The “Holy Experiment”

William Penn was one of the few wealthy Quakers and a good friend of King Charles.  Penn became involved in Quaker attempts to create a colony in the 1670s, when he and other Quakers bought New Jersey from Berkeley and Carteret.  Many Quakers moved to New Jersey, but Penn did not think it was the best solution since the Puritan settlers there were hostile to Quakers.  In 1680 Penn asked King Charles for his own colony across the Delaware River from New Jersey.  Charles agreed but insisted that the new colony be called Pennsylvania (or Penn’s Woods) in honor of William Penn’s father.

Penn regarded Pennsylvania as a “holy experiment” where complete political and religious freedom would be practiced.  He also believed that Native Americans had been treated unjustly in other colonies, and he resolved to win the friendship of those who lived in Pennsylvania.

In late 1682, Penn made good on his word when he signed the Treaty of Shackamaxon, in which the Lenni Lenape, a Native American group, ceded land to the colonists.  The treaty marked the beginning of over 70 years of peace in Pennsylvania between the European settlers and the Native Americans.  On the land ceded by the Lenni Lenape, Penn built the capital of his new colony and named it Philadelphia, or “the city of brotherly love.”

Penn also prepared a constitution, or “frame of government,” for his colony.  His initial constitution allowed anyone who owned land or paid taxes to vote, but it was confusing in structure.  After several confrontations with settlers over the government’s structure, Penn issued a new charter establishing a legislative assembly elected directly by the voters.  The proprietor appointed the governor.  The charter gave the right to vote to all colonists who owned 50 acres of land and professed a faith in Jesus Christ.  Despite this example of discrimination against non-Christians, the charter guaranteed all Pennsylvanians the right to practice their religion without interference.

Penn also made land readily available to settlers, a practice that attracted thousands of colonists.  Many were English Quakers, but large numbers of Germans and Scots-Irish migrated to the colony as well.  By 1684 Pennsylvania had over 7,000 colonists, and by 1700 Philadelphia rivaled Boston and New York City as a center for trade and commerce.  In 1682, as Penn began to build his colony, he bought three counties south of Pennsylvania from the Duke of York.  These “lower counties” later became the colony of Delaware.

Evaluating
Why did William Penn regard Pennsylvania as a “holy experiment”?
 

New Southern Colonies

King Charles and his advisers were very interested in the land south of Virginia.  The year before he granted New York to his brother James, Charles II awarded a vast territory south of Virginia to eight other friends and political allies.  The land was named Carolina, from the Latin version of “Charles.”

North Carolina

From the beginning, Carolina developed as two separate regions.  North Carolina was home to a small and scattered population.  Most of the settlers were farmers who began drifting into the region from Virginia in the 1650s.

North Carolina did not have a good harbor, and the coastline, protected by the Outer Banks, was very hard for ships to reach.  As a result, the colony grew very slowly, and by 1700 only 3,000 people lived in the region.  Eventually North Carolina farmers began growing tobacco.  They also began to export naval supplies such as tar, pitch, and turpentine.

South Carolina

The proprietors who had been granted Carolina were never interested in the northern part of the colony.  South Carolina, on the other hand, was believed to be suitable for growing sugarcane.  The first settlers arrived in South Carolina in 1670.  They named their settlement Charles Town (today called Charleston), after King Charles.

Sugarcane, it turned out, did not grow well in this region.  The first product South Carolina exported in large quantity was deerskin, which had become popular for leather in England.  The colony also began to capture Native Americans and ship them to the Caribbean, where the demand for enslaved workers was high.

The Georgia Experiment

In the 1720s, General James Oglethorpe, a wealthy member of Parliament, was appalled to find that many people in England were in prison simply because they could not pay their debts.  He asked King George II for a colony south of Carolina where the poor could start over.

The English government saw advantages to a new southern colony.  It might help England’s poor, and it would provide a strategic buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida.  King George granted Oglethorpe and 19 other trustees permission in 1732 to settle a region between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers.  The new colony was named Georgia, in honor of the king.  Oglethorpe led the first settlers to the mouth of the Savannah River in 1733.

The Georgia trustees banned slavery, rum, and brandy in the new colony and limited land grants to 500 acres.  The colony attracted settlers from all over Europe, including Scots, Welsh, Germans, Swiss, Italians, and a few Portuguese Jews.

Increasingly the settlers objected to the colony’s rules.  In the 1740s, the trustees lifted restrictions on brandy, rum, and slavery; in 1750 they granted the settlers an elected assembly.  In 1751 Georgia became a royal colony.

England’s American Colonies

By 1775 England’s colonies in North America were home to a growing population of roughly 2.5 million people.  Despite the stumbling start in Jamestown, the English had succeeded in building a large and prosperous society on the east coast of North America.  England’s success, however, proved to be its own undoing.  The English government had permitted new patterns of land ownership, new types of worship, and new kinds of government in its colonies.  Once established, however, these practices became fixed principles.  The colonists became used to self-government and gradually came to think of it as their right.  Inadvertently, the English government had planted the seeds of rebellion and laid the foundation for what would eventually become the United States of America.

Explaining
Why were South Carolina and Georgia settled?