From the songs, stories, and speeches that form the oral cultures of Native North America to the European exploration narratives, colonization tracts, Puritan sermons, and African slave narratives, literature in the colonial period encompassed a diverse range of texts. Whether it functioned as a means of strengthening tribal identities or as a way to communicate wonder and apprehension at encountering new lands and new peoples, colonial American literature reveals the responses different cultures expressed toward their natural and social worlds.
The earliest narratives produced in North America predate the colonial period. American Indians, who peopled the continent long before Europeans arrived, created a body of oral literature that evolved over a long period of time and in numerous languages. The oral traditions of American Indians offer a complex picture of life in the colonial era and express a worldview that differs markedly from the worldview the colonizers brought with them. European settlers often commented on the Indians’ highly developed oratory skills, which were demonstrated in ceremonial songs, chants, prayers, and incantations as well as speeches and treaties. Powhatan’s famous 1609 speech to Captain John Smith, for instance, testifies to the ways Indians often produced eloquent and pointed responses to the invasion of their homelands. Difficulties arise, however, in studying Native American oral traditions today. This literature has notably diminished from the moment of contact, and the narratives that do remain are often distorted by European translations. Intended to be transmitted orally and communally, this literature may be further misconstrued when removed from its original context. Nevertheless, the oral cultures of American Indians function as a central aspect of colonial North America and serve as a reminder that literary traditions thrived on the continent long before the appearance of European colonizers.
European literature in the colonial period begins with the exploration narratives written by Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and Russian travelers. Accounts such as Thomas Harriot’s 1590 Brief and True Report. . . of Virginia, Samuel de Champlain’s 1613 Voyages, and the reports from ViTUS JoNASSEN Bering’s 1728 journey to present-day Alaska often used European literary conventions to describe their experiences in a new terrain. Drawing on the belief systems of their own lands, these explorers typically portrayed the worlds they encountered in terms that served the social and political needs of their own cultures. Their accounts were often influenced by fables that had long circulated in Europe that told of previously unheard of plants and animals, unusual geographical formations, and strange people who inhabited the land. This literature frequently borrowed classical imagery from the Greeks and Romans to tell of Golden Age encounters in an Arcadian land. Because the literature typically expressed what explorers hoped to see rather than what they actually encountered, the reliability of these accounts is often questionable. European narratives of exploration are nevertheless valuable documents for what they tell us about the expectations, drives, and desires of the cultures that created them.
Like the accounts penned by explorers, the writings produced by European settler communities were also influenced by imagery that predated settlement. Pilgrims and Puritans, for instance, used biblical allegory to make sense of their condition and justify their presence in North America. As indicated by the writings of William Bradeord, John Winthrop, Michael Wigglesworth, Anne Dudley Bradstreet, and others, these settlers understood their mission as an “errand into the wilderness,” a journey much like the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. The settlers understood the land as a blank slate on which they could create a new civilization, “a city on a hill” illustrating God’s will to the world. Puritan CAPTIVITY narratives, such as Mary White Rowlandson’s 1682 account of her capture during an Indian attack and sermons such as Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” (1741), further developed the idea of settlement as a divine test. With its clear division between hero and enemy, Rowlandson’s captivity narrative developed into a literary form that told of the spiritual trial and eventual restoration of the Christian believer. Meanwhile, sermons such as those written by Edwards and others built on the imagery of captivity as a way of addressing personal and communal salvation, countering unruliness and division among settlers, and alleviating Puritan fears of the Indians.
Finally, many of the Africans who were captured and brought to North America as slaves also produced a body of writing. The earliest known literary work created by an African American is Lucy Terry’s “Bars Fight,” a poem written in the 1740s and preserved orally until its publication in 1855. The piece tells of an Indian ambush of two white settler families in 1746 in Massachusetts. The first known published work of African-American prose, A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprising Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man, appeared in 1760. Like the hundreds of slave narratives following it, Hammon’s account asserted the humanity of the Africans who were enslaved and justified the black struggle for freedom. Hammon’s 1761 poem, “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries,” reflected his deep spirituality. His second poem, published 17 years later, honored the African-American poet, Phyillis Wheatley.
Further reading: Colin Calloway, ed., The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1994); Margaret Goff Clark, Their Eyes on the Stars: Four Black Writers (Champaign, Ill.: Garrard Publishing Company, 1973); Richard Slot-kin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973).
—Susan Kollin and Billy G. Smith
Livingston, Philip (1716-1778) merchant, politician, signer of the Declaration of Independence Grandson of Robert Livingston (the founder of Livingston Manor on the Hudson River), Philip was, like his grandfather, a New York merchant and politician. He attended Yale College with his brothers Peter and John and then used his entrepreneurial skills and social connections to profit from trade during the SEVEN Years’ War. Unlike his grandfather, who was known for his parsimony, Philip donated some of his wealth for the public good. He contributed funds to civic projects, such as King’s College (Columbia University), New York Hospital, the St. Andrew’s Benevolent Society, and the New York Society Library, and established a professorship of divinity at Yale in 1746.
In 1754 Livingston began his political career as a New York City alderman, then entered the assembly in 1758, where he represented Livingston Manor with his brother William Livingston and cousin Robert R. Livingston. He was a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765. Philip was chosen speaker of the assembly in 1768, but, under pressure from the DeLancey faction, he and other family members were voted out of office the following year. Known as “Philip the Signer,” he represented New York at the First and Second Continental Congresses, where he signed the Declaration of Independence. At first reluctant to oppose Britain and hoping for reconciliation, Philip and other Livingston family conservatives ultimately yielded to pressure and committed themselves to independence. In preparation for war, the Livingstons built two mills that year—one to grind grain and the other for gunpowder. Philip died in 1778 while active in the Continental Congress and the New York Senate, having helped frame the New York State Constitution.
Further reading: Clare Brandt, An American Aris-tocracy: The Livingstons (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1986).
—Deborah C. Taylor
Livingston, Robert (1654-1728) merchant, politician Robert Livingston, the “Proprietor of Livingston Manor” and speaker of the provincial assembly, was one of New York’s richest men when he died in 1728. The son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Robert arrived in Albany in 1674 from Rotterdam, Holland, fluent in Dutch and experienced in commercial shipping. He entered the Dutch-controlled fur trade as an agent of a Massachusetts fur company, where his knowledge of the Dutch and friendly relations with the Iroquois contributed to his economic success. Within a year he entered local politics as the secretary to the board of Indian commissioners. Livingston built important social and political connections when he married Alida Schuyler Van Rensselaer in 1679. The daughter of future mayor Peter Schuyler and recent widow of wealthy patroon Nicholas Van Rensselaer, Alida was a socially prominent upper Hudson heir. She was also a hard-working, intelligent Dutch woman who bore and raised 10 children (six grew to adulthood) while active in the family business. Robert relied on her good sense in politics and business throughout their long marriage.
Livingston began building his landholdings in 1684 by purchasing a 2,000-acre tract from his trading partners, the Iroquois, for “three hundred guilders” and a variety of trade goods. Two years later he expanded his holdings to 160,000 acres when he was awarded a royal patent in the form of an English baronial grant. “Livingston Manor,” encompassing parts of today’s Dutchess and Columbia Counties, grew under the next generation to nearly a million acres.
Livingston was well positioned both geographically along the Hudson, a bustling commercial and military waterway, and socially through close alliances with prominent politicians. He profited from political favors and government contracts from his lucrative fur trade as well as from his vast landholdings. Robert was a member of the provincial assembly from 1709 to 1725 and served as speaker from 1718. Called “the Founder,” he was patriarch to a social and political dynasty of Livingstons who influenced the growth of New York and the nation through the 18th century. Many of his sons and grandsons expanded the social, political, and financial territory that Robert Livingston pioneered.
Further reading: Clare Brandt, An American Aristocracy: The Livingstons (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1986).
—Deborah C. Taylor
Livingston, Robert R. (1718-1775) judge, politician Grandson of Robert Livingston, “the Founder,” and son of Robert Livingston of Clermont, Robert R. Livingston was a New York judge and politician. With his wife, the former Margaret Beekman, he was proprietor of one of New York’s largest estates and succeeded his father at Clermont. Margaret and Robert had 10 children, in whom they encouraged a love of learning; even their daughters were offered secondary education in the humanities. Called “the Judge,” Robert was known as an erudite, distinguished, and temperate man and a devoted husband.
Representing Dutchess County, Robert was elected to the New York provincial assembly in 1758 with his cousins Philip Livingston, representing New York City, and William Livingston, who spoke for Livingston Manor. Together, these members of New York’s landed elite challenged the DeLancey merchant faction. Continuing in the assembly, he was appointed judge of the Admiralty Court the next year. He became associate justice of the New York Supreme Court in 1763. As chair of New York’s Committee of Correspondence, he supported resistance to the Stamp Act. In 1765 Robert R. Livingston is said to have written an address to King George III (1760-1820) that landed him at the top of the king’s list of colonial traitors. Although some in his family were reluctant revolutionaries, in 1775 he built a gunpowder mill on Clermont grounds to aid in the defense of the colonies. An aggressive protector of colonial rights, he, along with other members of the state’s landed gentry, lost his seat in the assembly in 1768 to the merchant faction, or “popular party,” and never regained the position.
Further reading: Clare Brandt, An American Aristocracy: The Livingstons (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1986).
—Deborah C. Taylor
Lloyd, David (1656-1731) judge, politician David Lloyd served an important role in the political and legal development of Pennsylvania. A native of Wales, he was practicing law in England when his skills
Attracted the attention of William Penn. Lloyd was granted a commission by Penn in 1686 to be the attorney general of Pennsylvania. Lloyd moved with his family to Philadelphia, where he soon held the appointed posts of clerk of the county court, clerk of the provincial court, and deputy master of the rolls. He was first elected to the assembly in 1693, often serving as speaker after 1694, and he served on the provincial council between 1695 and 1696 and again from 1698 to 1700.
A political quarrel arose between Lloyd and Robert Quarry, the judge of the new vice admiralty court in 1698. Lloyd was accused of interfering with the enforcement of the Navigation Acts and with having the magistrates take goods from the king’s warehouse at Newcastle. Quarry complained to Penn, who subsequently rebuked Lloyd, removed him as attorney general, and dismissed him from the council. Lloyd thereafter became a staunch adversary of the proprietary family and its interests in Pennsylvania.
Lloyd’s antiproprietary politics soon made him leader of the Popular Party, consisting mostly of Quakers from the countryside. He was elected to several more terms in the assembly. In 1717 he was chosen chief justice of Pennsylvania, an office he held until his death in 1731. As leader of the Popular Party, Lloyd worked to strengthen the power of the assembly, including its right to meet and adjourn at its own discretion. He fought to secure the right of affirmation and opposed the creation of a military force, all of which gained favor with Pennsylvania’s Quakers. Lloyd authored the list of grievances addressed to William Penn in 1704 and led the attempt to impeach James Logan, the secretary of the province, in 1707. His long efforts against proprietary interests made him one of the most influential early exponents of expanded representative government in the colonies.
Further reading: Roy Norman Lokken, David Lloyd, a Colonial Lawmaker (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1959).
—Stephen C. O’Neill
Locke, John (1 632-1 704) political philosopher, activist
Although British philosopher John Locke never set foot in North America, he deeply influenced its political institutions. As one of the foremost theorists of human freedom and sovereignty, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689) set out the principles of liberal democracy that underlay the U. S. Constitution. Locke based the legitimacy and authority of government on “social contract” theory—that is, the idea that all those who would be governed must freely consent to the rules of civil society. He hypothesized that humans originally lived in a “state of nature,” a kind of perfect freedom and equality under which all individuals enjoyed such “natural rights” as “life, liberty, and estate” (i. e., property), yet nothing protected these rights; in order to safeguard them, individuals came together and agreed upon mutually advantageous rules by which all would abide. These rules, which aimed to preserve humanity’s natural rights, formed the basis for a communal or “civil government” by providing the principles for liberal democracy (as opposed to those for absolute monarchy, which Locke opposed). Among these principles were that all people should be considered equally free, that the liberty to do as one wished within reason should be preserved, that the property and persons of other people should be respected, and that those who violated these principles could be punished. By remaining in a society governed by such principles, Locke maintained, one agreed to live by them; the only freedoms one relinquished in exchange were those of legislative and executive decision making (that is, making laws and executing them), which were accorded to civil government.
Related to these principles of liberal democracy were Locke’s recommendations about education. Having been trained under the harsh discipline and memory-based curriculum typical of English schools at that time, he proposed instead that education be guided by freedom, tolerance, and truth. Rather than absolute standards, a child’s individual talents and capacities should guide its learning. Parents and educators should teach by example; while children need to learn self-discipline, their natural desire for freedom and play should also be respected. More broadly, Locke maintained that playfulness and humor should be incorporated into learning whenever possible. Even if these ideas appear obvious or unremarkable today, Locke was among the first to offer such recommendations, and they tremendously influenced modern education.
One element of Locke’s political theory was that only men had natural rights. Locke was perfectly comfortable with only men enjoying the rights of citizenship. Also necessary was that the politically enfranchised be property owners. One of the state’s primary responsibilities, according to Locke, was to protect personal property. To have an original right to property, a person needed to take material not owned by others and to mix one’s own labor with it. This property could then be sold or bequeathed to others through contracts. However, Locke argued, Native Americans and Africans did not adequately work their lands in order truly to own them. Instead, they merely occupied the land and could legitimately be pushed aside by those, like “industrious” Europeans, who would mix their labor with it. This belief permitted various forms of colonization and conquest, such as of those “inland vacant places in America” that were allegedly uncultivated by
Native Americans and therefore open to ownership by more hard-working colonists. Indeed, Locke claimed that “in the beginning, all the world was America,” by which he meant that all the earth was open for ownership until men began mixing their labor and acquiring it as personal property.
Locke was deeply ambivalent about slavery. On the one hand, he condemned it as a “vile and miserable” estate contrary to a “gentleman’s” generosity; on the other, he invested heavily in the slave trade and profited handsomely from the buying and selling of human beings. He was a charter member of the Royal African Company, whose main business was the purchase, transport, and sale of African slaves for the British colonies in the Americas, and he bought into other companies whose purpose was to develop the profitability of New World plantations using slave labor. From 1668 to 1683 and from 1696 to 1700, Locke also helped to administer the North American colonies for the British government. He contributed to the Fundamental Cons-ti-tution for the Govern'ment of Carolina (copies exist in his handwriting), which states that “every freeman. . . shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slave.”
However, 17th-century slavery was not entirely coded by skin color, that is, racist. The British, for example, quite willingly sold into servitude the Irish, their own countrymen who were poor or in debt, as well as such believers in “nonconformist” forms of Christianity as Roman Catholics and Puritans. Thus, it would be a mistake to think that Locke was necessarily a racist, although many of his beliefs and actions contributed to what would later become racist thinking. At the same time, he profited eagerly from the unpaid labor of those who lacked what was, for him, the supreme ingredient of human life—liberty. The legacy of Locke’s contradictory impulses continue to plague American thinking today.
Further reading: John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
—Dan Flory
Logan, James (1 674-1 751) colonial leader, naturalist James Logan was born in Ulster into the family of a Scottish schoolteacher. He was educated by his father and replaced him as the teacher of a Quakers’ school in Bristol. There he met William Penn, who took him to North America in 1699 as his personal secretary. After Penn left Pennsylvania for good in 1701, Logan emerged as his real surrogate there, advising proprietary deputy governors for half a century. He accepted many provincial and proprietary offices, in which he tried to defend
Penn’s prerogatives and interests against the claims of an assertive Quaker elite who controlled the powerful legislative assembly. Logan was largely unsuccessful in checking these provincial infringements. His most creative political years were his first two decades in the colony. He adapted and elaborated Penn’s methods of protecting Pennsylvania against a territorially aggressive Maryland and the expansive designs of imperial agents in New York. Between 1710 and 1718 he worked closely with his fellow Scot Robert Hunter, the royal governor of New York and New Jersey, and their cooperation helped to stabilize political life in the Middle Colonies.
After 1725 Logan’s political career became more rou-tinized. His energy was increasingly devoted to his own commercial interests, especially in the fur trade. This enterprise facilitated Logan’s involvement in proprietary and imperial Indian diplomacy, which spanned the transition between William Penn’s efforts to deal fairly with tribes in the Delaware Valley and the cynical designs of Penn’s sons to expel Indians and profit from their father’s landed empire. Logan, with his friend Cadwallader Colden, saw the Iroquois confederation as the key to stable Anglo-Indian relations, and he worked to make Pennsylvania’s ALGonquiN-speaking tribes accept Iroquois dominance.
In 1726 Logan moved from Philadelphia to the stone mansion near Germantown that he called “Stenton.” He subscribed to the enlightenment ideal of gentlemanly “retirement” from the bustle of commerce. He increasingly tended to his library, his astronomical instruments, and his scientific experiments. Some of his botanical and astronomical observations appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, and he corresponded with European scientists while mentoring Americans like John Bartram and Benjamin Franklin. Logan’s successors in proprietary office did not have his synoptic vision of Pennsylvania’s place in the natural, economic, and imperial worlds, but many of them had somewhat more pragmatic understandings of the possibilities of Anglo-American politics. Logan died before his adopted country began its long slide into Revolutionary crisis. In many ways, his career in Pennsylvania typified the “Anglicizing” era in colonial life, after the rough edges of frontier society were rubbed off in the Atlantic coastal settlements but before a distinctively “American” cultural identity emerged in tension with a new British imperialism.
Further reading: Frederick B. Tolles, James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America (Boston: Little Brown, 1957); Edwin Wolf II, The Library of James Logan of Philadelphia, 1674-1771 (Philadelphia: Library Company of Philadelphia, 1974).
—Wayne Bodle
World History
