Page 122 - American Stories, A History of the United States

tried various expedients to remain solvent—issuing Susquehanna
NEW
paper money, for example—and while these efforts R. JERSEY 4.1
delayed a crisis, the balance-of-payments problem PENNSYLVANIA
Lancaster
was clearly very serious. York Philadelphia
Intercoastal trade also increased in the eighteenth 4.2
century. Southern planters sent tobacco and rice to
New England and the Middle Colonies, where these Ohio R. Winchester Potomac R. DELAWARE
staples were exchanged for meat, wheat, and goods MARYLAND 4.3
imported from Britain. By 1760, approximately 30
percent of the colonists’ total tonnage capacity was Staunton
involved in this “coastwise” commerce. Backcoun- James R. 4.4

try farmers in western Pennsylvania and the Shenan- SHENANDOAH VALLEY VIRGINIA
doah Valley also carried their grain to market along APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS
an old Iroquois trail that became known as the Great BLUE RIDGE
Wagon Road, a rough, hilly highway that by the time Salem Roanoke R. 4.5
of the Revolution stretched 735 miles along the Blue
NORTH
Ridge Mountains to Camden, South Carolina (see Salisbury CAROLINA
Map 4.3). Long, graceful Conestoga wagons carried Great Wagon Road
most of their produce. German immigrants in the
Conestoga River Valley in Lancaster County, Penn- Camden ATLANTIC
sylvania, had invented these “wagons of empire.” SOUTH OCEAN
The shifting patterns of trade had immense CAROLINA
effects on the development of an American culture.
First, the flood of British imports eroded local and Savannah R. 0 100 200 miles
regional identities. Commerce helped to “Anglicize” 0 100 200 kilometers
American culture by exposing colonial consumers
to a common range of British manufactured goods.
map 4.3 THE GrEaT WaGoN road by the mid-eighteenth century, the Great
Deep sectional differences remained, but Americans Wagon Road had become a major highway for the settlers in virginia and the carolina
from New Hampshire to Georgia were increasingly backcountry.
drawn into a sophisticated economic network cen-
tered in London. Second, the expanding coastal and overland trade brought colonists
of different backgrounds into more frequent contact. Ships that sailed between New
England and South Carolina, and between Virginia and Pennsylvania, provided dis-
persed Americans with a means to exchange ideas and experiences on a more regular
basis. Mid-eighteenth-century printers, for example, established dozens of new jour- Quick Check
nals. These weekly newspapers carried information not only about the mother country How did Americans manage to pay
and world commerce but also about the colonies. for so many new consumer goods?

Religious Revivals in Provincial societies

4.3 How did the Great Awakening transform the religious culture of colonial America?
A sudden, spontaneous series of Protestant revivals in the mid-eighteenth Great awakening Widespread

century, known as the Great Awakening, profoundly affected the lives of
evangelical religious revival
ordinary people. This new, highly personal appeal to a “new birth” in Christ
caused men and women of all backgrounds to rethink basic assumptions movement of the mid-1700s.
about church and state, institutions and society. it divided congregations and
weakened the authority of
established churches in the
the Great Awakening colonies.
Whatever their origins, the seeds of the Great Awakening were generally sown on
fertile ground. In the early eighteenth century, many Americans—especially New
Englanders—complained that organized religion had lost vitality. They looked back at
Winthrop’s generation with nostalgia, assuming that common people at that time must
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