Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

4
1
Part
1800
Collection 1: Encounters and Foundations to
 Literary Skills
Evaluate the
philosophical,
political,
Gary Q. Arpin religious,
ethical, and
social
Highlights of the period are presented in the following historical essay. influences of a
historical
For a more detailed version of this essay, see Elements of Literature, pp. 6-19. period.

About five hundred years ago

European explorers first set foot
on land in our hemisphere. In some
ways their voyages must have
seemed as daring and ultimately
triumphant as Neil Armstrong’s
Review the historical intro-
duction, noting the main
headings. Underline the
headings that relate to the
Puritans. Circle the heading
that indicates the next topic
will be the Age of Reason.

first steps on the moon in 1969.

However, European feet were not
Mark Riedy. the first to tread on American soil. Pause at line 12. Who lived
in America before the
10 American Indians Europeans arrived?
had lived here for thousands of
years
before the first Europeans stumbled across what they
called the New World.

Forming New Relationships

The first interactions between Europeans and American Indians
largely involved trading near harbors and rivers of North
America. As the English began to establish colonies on these new
shores, they relied on American Indians to teach them
survival skills, such as how to make canoes and shelters,
how to fashion clothing from buckskin, and how to plant
crops. At the same
20 time, American Indians were eager to acquire European

firearms, textiles, and steel tools. that in 1600, the

In the early years of European settlement, American total American
Indians vastly outnumbered the colonists. Historians estimate Indian population
 of New England Re-read lines 14-21. What
did the English rely on the
American Indians for?
Underline the details that
give you this information.

Encounters and Foundations to 1800 3

Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

What tragic effect did the
European settlement have on
American Indians (lines
28-38)?
The word demoralization in line
38 is a noun referring to a
state of corruption. Based on
his use of the word
demoralization, what can you
infer about Jennings’s
attitude toward the American
resettlement?
Re-read lines 44-48. Why did
the explorers write home
about the Americas’ abun-
dant resources? Underline the
answer.
4 Part Collection 1: Encounters and Foundations to
1 1800
alone was from 70,000 to 100,000 people—more than the
English population of New England would be two centuries later.
Battling New Diseases
The arrival of the European settlers had a deadly impact on
Native Americans. When settlers made contact with American
30 Indians, they unknowingly exposed them to deadly diseases
that sometimes killed the population of an entire village.
Against enormous odds, some Native Americans managed
to survive
the epidemics. Many of them, however, were eventually forced
to vacate their home and land by settlers who no longer needed
the American Indians’ friendship and guidance. As the
historian Francis Jennings wrote, “The so-called settlement of
America was a resettlement, a reoccupation of a land made
waste by the diseases and demoralization introduced by the
newcomers.”
Explorers’ Writings
40 The first detailed European observations of life on this
continent were recorded in Spanish and French by explorers of
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Christopher Columbus
(c. 1451–1506)
and many other explorers described the Americas in a flurry
of letters, journals, and books. Hoping to receive funding for
further expeditions, the explorers emphasized the Americas’
abundant resources, the peacefulness and hospitality of the
inhabitants, and the promise of unlimited wealth from fantastic
treasuries of gold.
The Puritan Legacy
50 The writings of the Puritans of New England have been
central to the development of the American literary tradition.
Puritan is a broad term, referring to a number of
Protestant groups that, beginning about 1560, sought to
“purify” the Church of England, which had been virtually
inseparable from the country’s government since the
time of Henry VIII (who

Encounters and Foundations to 1800 5

 reigned from 1509 to 1547). English Puritans wished to
return to a simpler form of worship. For them, religion was
first of all a personal, inner experience. They did not believe
Pause at line
60. Who were
that the clergy or government should act as an intermediary
the Puritans?
between the indi-
60 vidual and God.
Many Puritans suffered persecution in England. Some
were put in jail and whipped, their noses slit and their
ears chopped off. Some fled England for Holland and later
for what was advertised as the New World.

Why did the

Puritans flee
their country
(lines 61-64)?
Circle the
details that
The Puritan Deacon give you this
Samuel Chapin (1899) information.
by Augustus Saint-
Re-read lines
Gaudens.
66-71. What
Bronze model.
James Graham & Sons, Inc., were the
New York. Puritans certain
of? Circle the
answer.
What were the
Puritans’
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

beliefs about
human nature
(lines 66-74)?

Puritan Beliefs: Sinners All?

At the center of Puritan theology was an uneasy mixture of
cer- tainty and doubt. The certainty was that because of
Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience, most of humanity would be
damned for all eternity. However, the Puritans were also
certain that God in his
70 mercy had sent his son Jesus Christ to earth to save
particular people. The doubt centered on knowing if you
were saved or damned. People hoping to be among the
saved examined their inner lives closely for signs of grace
and tried to live lives that were free of sin. They came to
value self-reliance, industriousness,

The word covenant in
line 79 is defined in context.
Underline the context clue.
What was the Mayflower
Compact (lines 83-87)?
80
Re-read lines 88-90. Why
were Puritans’ political views
undemocratic?
90
temperance, and simplicity. These were, coincidentally,
the ideal qualities needed to carve out a new society in
a strange land.
The examination of Sarah Good at the Salem witchcraft trials.
Culver Pictures, Inc.
Puritan Politics: Government by Contract
In the Puritan view, a covenant, or contract, existed between
God and humanity. This spiritual covenant was a useful
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
model for social organization as well: Puritans believed
that people should enter freely into arguments concerning
their govern- ment. On the Mayflower, for example, in
1620, the Puritans composed and signed the Mayflower
Compact, which outlined how they would be governed
once they landed. In this use of a contractual agreement,
they prepared the ground for American constitutional
democracy.
On the other hand, the Puritans’ political views
tended to be undemocratic because they believed that a
few “saved”
persons should control the government. In 1692, the
witchcraft hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts, resulted in part
from fear that the community’s moral foundation was
threatened, and there- fore its political unity was also in
danger.
 The Bible in America
The Puritans believed that the Bible was the literal word of
God. Reading the Bible was a necessity for all Puritans, as
Re-read lines
was the ability to understand theological, or religious,
103-105. Why
debates. For these reasons the Puritans placed great
did the
Puritans think
emphasis on education. that diaries
100 and histories
Harvard College, originally intended to train Puritan
were
ministers, was founded in 1636, only sixteen yearsimportant?
after the
Underline
The word the
first Pilgrims had landed.
reason.
rationalism in
Their beliefs required the Puritans to keep a close watch
line 111 is
based
on both their spiritual and their public lives. Diaries andon the
word rational,
histories were important forms of Puritan literature
which means
“based on
because they were viewed as records of the workings of
reason.”
God.
Re-read lines
113-123. How
is rationalism
The Age of Reason: different from
Tinkerers and Experimenters Puritanism?

By the end of the seventeenth century, new ideas from

110 Europe began to challenge the unshakable faith of the
Puritans. The Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment, began
in Europe with the philosophers and scientists of the
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who called themselves

rationalists. Rationalism is the belief that human beings can
arrive at truth by using reason.
The Puritans saw God as actively and mysteriously
involved in the workings of the universe; the rationalists saw
God differ- ently. The great English rationalist Sir Isaac
Newton (1642–1727) compared God to a clockmaker.
120 Having created
the perfect mechanism of this universe, God then left his cre-
ation to run on its own, like a clock. The rationalists
believed that God’s special gift to humanity is reason—the
ability to think in an ordered, logical manner. This gift of
reason enables people to discover both scientific and spiritual
truth. According to the rationalists, everyone has the
c r her own life.
a While the background for the Age of Reason took
p place in Europe, a homegrown practicality and interest
a in scientific
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Pause at line 129. Why did
Americans become interested
in tinkering? Circle the details
that give you this information.
130
Inoculation (line 141) involves
the injection of a disease
agent into a person.
Inoculation usually causes a
mild form of the disease,
which then helps the person
develop immunity to the
disease.
Read the boxed passage aloud
twice. During your first
reading, watch for marks of
punctuation that indicate
140
where you should pause or
come to a full stop. During
your second reading, focus on
improving your reading speed.
150
Re-read lines 151-161. What
two interesting points about
early American life are made?
Underline them.
tinkering or experimenting already was taking place in
America. From the earliest Colonial days, Americans had no
choice but to be tinkerers; they had to make do with what
was on hand, and they had to achieve results.
The Smallpox Plague
In 1721, a ship from the West Indies docked in Boston
Harbor. In addition to its usual cargo of sugar and molasses,
the West Indian ship carried smallpox—a disease as deadly
to early American life as AIDS and the Ebola virus are
today. The outbreak in Boston in 1721 was a major
health problem.
What was to be done?
■An Unlikely Cure
At the time of the smallpox epidemic, Cotton Mather was
working on what would be the first scholarly essay on medicine
written in America. He had heard of a method for dealing
with smallpox. It was called inoculation. In June 1721, as the
smallpox epidemic spread throughout Boston, Mather began
a public campaign for inoculation. Boston’s medical
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
community was vio- lently opposed to such an experiment, and
controversy erupted into violence. In November, Mather’s
house was bombed.
Despite such fierce opposition, Mather succeeded in
inocu- lating nearly 300 people. By the time the epidemic
was over, in March of the following year, only six of these
people had died. The evidence, according to Mather’s figures,
was
■ Aclear: Whether
Practical Approach to Change
The smallpox controversy illustrates two interesting points
about American life in the early eighteenth century. First, it
shows that Puritan thinking was not limited to a rigid and
narrow interpretation of the Bible; a devout Puritan like
Mather could also be a practical scientist.
 Mather’s experiment also reveals that a practical
approach to social change and scientific research was
necessary in America. American thought had to be
160 How were
thought in action: Improving the public welfare required a the
deists’ views
willingness to experi- ment, no matter what the of humanity
different from
authorities might say. the Puritans’
views (lines
169-177)?
Deism: Are People Basically Good?
Like the Puritans, the rationalists discovered God through the
natural world, but in a different way. Rationalists thought it
un- likely that God would choose to reveal himself only at
particular times to particular people. It seemed much more
reasonable to believe that God had made it possible for all
people at all times to discover natural laws through their
170 God-given power of reason.
This outlook, called deism (d≤√iz≈¥m), was shared
Why is by
Benjamin
many eighteenth-century thinkers. In contrast to the
Franklin’s
Puritans, deists stressed humanity’s goodness. God’s
Autobiography
considered a
objective, in the deist view, was the happiness of masterpiece
his of
the American
creatures. Therefore, the best form of worship was to do
Age of Reason
good for others. There already existed in America(lines
an 179-
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

188)?
impulse to improve people’s lives. Deism raised this impulse
to one of the nation’s highest goals. To this day, social
welfare is still a political priority and still the subject of
fierce debate.

180
Self-made Americans
The unquestioned masterpiece of the American Age of
Reason is The Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin (page
47). Franklin (1706–1790) used the autobiographical
narrative, a form common in Puritan writing. Written in
clear, witty prose, this
account of the development of the self-made American
provided the model for a story that would be told again and
again. In the twentieth century, it appeared in F. Scott
F 25). It is still found in the countless biographies and
i autobiographies of self-made men and women on the
t bestseller lists today.
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