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"Being thus arrived in a good harbour
and brought safe to land,
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"they fell upon their knees and blessed God
who had brought them over the furious ocean
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"and delivered them from all the perils thereof,
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"again to set their feet on the firm
and stable earth, their proper element."
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London at the start of the 17th century may have
looked imposing, but it was a sombre capital.
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Civil war was not far away. Religious dissenters
went in fear of their faith and their heads.
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"I shall make them conform," said King James,
"or I shall harry them out of the land."
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So both adventurers and nonconformists began
to look to America as a safer home from home.
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The first English settlers didn't start
for America from anywhere so grand as this,
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but they most likely wouldn't have made it
if it hadn't been for an institution like this.
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We are in the hall
of the Middle Temple in London.
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This was put up as a new building
at the end of the 16th century
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as a sort of combination finishing school,
law school, establishment club and think tank.
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It was the gathering place of the men
who had the power and the influence at court
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and the money to back the American venture.
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Sir Walter Raleigh was a member here.
It didn't do him much good.
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He was in disfavour at the time and was allowed
out of prison on a promise to the crown
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that he'd go to America and find a gold mine.
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He didn't, so he obediently came home
and had his head chopped off.
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It was here that Francis Drake was honoured
after his three-year voyage around the world.
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Now, he'd sacked the cities of Chile and Peru,
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and he came back with so much altar plate
and golden crucifixes
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that his ship, the Golden Hind,
could barely list into port.
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And for this feat of "seamanship" and piracy,
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he was made a knight
and a member of the Middle Temple.
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This bit of buccaneering
started a legend going through England,
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not only among adventurers,
but among slum dwellers and pinching farmers.
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Quite ordinary folk
got the impression of America
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00:03:11,247 --> 00:03:15,638
as a land veined with gold
and blazing with precious stones.
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A geographer who'd never been west of Bristol
described it as "a land of unknown greatness".
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Ben Jonson wrote a play in which a sea captain,
who'd also never been there,
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said it was a land where Indian maidens
laid treasure at your feet.
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"Man," he said - and he DID say "man" -
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"their very dripping pans and chamber pots
are made of purest gold."
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The substantial men who financed the colonies
were not bemused by such fantasies,
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but they did foresee the prospect
of a breathtaking investment
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in a country which, unlike their own,
had unbounded virgin land.
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Now, all newly-discovered lands belonged
automatically to the king, James the First.
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The sponsors of this enterprise had to procure
from him a charter as a trading company
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which would plant a colony in Virginia.
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It would be run from London
by a council approved by the crown
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and its disputes would be settled
by the English courts.
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So in 1606, three ships set sail on a journey
that would take, at best, two months.
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# You gentlemen of England
that live at home at ease
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00:04:36,167 --> 00:04:42,037
# How little do you think upon
the danger of the seas
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# Now mounted on the topmast
how dreadful 'tis below
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# Then we ride as the tide
when the stormy winds do blow #
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They were to settle north of the Spanish
in Florida and south of the French in Canada.
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00:05:03,527 --> 00:05:07,679
Of the 145 who sailed, 16 died on the way,
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and the rest landed here, moored to the trees
in six fathoms off a wooded island
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which they named after the King, Jamestown.
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This is what they found. A flat, malarial swamp
on the edge of endless, dense forest.
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They'd been taken in by promotional literature
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which advertised, as always,
a paradise somewhere else.
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They were hard-bitten types, mostly.
Seamen, adventurers, slum people, convicts.
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00:05:49,407 --> 00:05:55,403
That's misleading. If you were crazy to get
to America, you could steal a rabbit or a cloak,
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do a six-month stretch and get shipped away.
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Despite their dank and dull surroundings,
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they were still fired by the promise
of the gold from those fabulous mines.
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But they hadn't the ghost of an idea
of the first rule of settlement,
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to be self-sustaining.
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00:06:17,727 --> 00:06:23,518
They lived off the supplies they brought over,
and they exhausted them in seven months.
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00:06:23,807 --> 00:06:29,803
They bartered with Indians for food and land.
To them, it was part of their legal contract.
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From the Indian point of view, it was theft.
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So now it became dangerous to forage
in the interior woods, even for lumber.
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Shiftless as ever, they actually
chopped down their houses for firewood.
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Well, they found a leader in Captain John Smith,
or, rather, he made himself one.
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He didn't have a central plan either,
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but he had the horse sense to see that the new
country was nothing like the Spaniards' vision
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00:07:01,847 --> 00:07:04,236
and nothing like England, either.
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00:07:04,247 --> 00:07:09,844
He forced everyone to work
on pain of being thrown out beyond the stockade
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00:07:10,087 --> 00:07:15,081
and taking a chance with starvation
or with the now hostile Indians.
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John Smith had announced
a very simple and startling rule of life
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which didn't spread to all classes in Europe
until, really, the end of the Second World War.
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It was a sentence that rooted itself
early and deep in the American consciousness
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00:07:34,447 --> 00:07:38,440
and made Americans
distrustful of inherited wealth,
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and the lucky ones even uncomfortable
about living off trust funds.
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Uncomfortable for the first year or two, anyway.
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The sentence was,
"He that will not work, neither shall he eat."
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But they still didn't think
of a subsistence crop.
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00:07:57,127 --> 00:08:03,316
They made pitch and tar, and Smith rehoused
the population by making them split timber.
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00:08:03,367 --> 00:08:05,961
They planted on 40-acre lots,
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00:08:06,247 --> 00:08:12,083
but the marshlands and the searing summers
produced more mosquitoes than English crops.
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Their salvation came to them from an Indian
crop that grew here like dandelions. Tobacco.
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00:08:20,727 --> 00:08:23,719
# Tobacco! Tobacco!
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# Sing sweetly for tobacco
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# Tobacco is like love
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# All love it
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# For, you see, I will prove it
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# Love makes men sail from shore to shore
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# So doth tobacco
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# 'Tis fond love often makes men poor
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# So doth tobacco... #
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It was of poor quality, but cheap to grow.
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They found that the flavour was improved
if, instead of throwing it on the ground to dry,
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they cured it by racking it up in smoke houses.
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Graded by hand, it soon approached
the purity of the Spanish tobacco
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00:09:30,487 --> 00:09:34,685
the English had insisted on
when the smoking fashion came in.
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Even in the Second World War,
when transatlantic shipping was imperilled,
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the English refused
to give up their Virginia tobacco.
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00:09:47,727 --> 00:09:52,118
Within ten years, the London Company
was beginning to appreciate
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that a very different little England
was in the making 3,000 miles away.
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They began to send over fewer of the types
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about which several colonial governors
had complained,
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namely "gentlemen unused to work,
gallants and lascivious sons".
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00:10:10,567 --> 00:10:16,563
Now, small landowners were arriving,
bringing with them good labourers and servants.
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00:10:17,007 --> 00:10:23,401
They moved out of their stockade to better land,
built houses of brick, a hospital and a church.
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00:10:26,207 --> 00:10:30,997
The original of the church on this site
is not very celebrated in the history books,
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but it's the place where popular representative
government began in the New World.
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The London Company decided
that the colony was failing to rule itself.
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The London Company was going bankrupt.
They were in debt to the tune of £75,000.
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So they got permission from the King's Council
to send a governor as a single absolute ruler.
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They had a succession of them,
most of them severe but able.
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And then, in 1619,
the colony had the great good luck
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to get a lazy, inefficient, bewildered governor,
Sir George Yeardley.
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However, he was a kindly man,
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and he broke down and admitted
he couldn't rule all the boroughs and plantations,
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00:11:17,647 --> 00:11:20,036
even by his own local laws.
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00:11:20,527 --> 00:11:25,317
What does an Englishman do
when he has a problem? He forms a committee.
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00:11:25,327 --> 00:11:30,924
Yeardley was ordered from London to see
that two men were selected from each borough
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00:11:31,087 --> 00:11:34,204
and would come to Jamestown and help him.
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00:11:34,447 --> 00:11:38,042
Well, they came, 22 of them, in July 1619.
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00:11:38,287 --> 00:11:42,200
And in midsummer, Virginia can be an inferno.
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Most of them were sick. One of them died.
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They all suffered from the chronic colonial
complaint, dysentery. And they quit in six days.
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00:11:53,007 --> 00:11:56,204
But in that time they applied the first taxation
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00:11:56,207 --> 00:12:01,565
by levying ten pounds of tobacco
on every able-bodied male over the age of 16.
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00:12:01,607 --> 00:12:06,203
They enacted a code of local laws
to go into force at once.
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00:12:06,407 --> 00:12:09,843
They called themselves the House of Burgesses.
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00:12:14,447 --> 00:12:20,841
This is the House of Burgesses, rebuilt
to the original design, in Williamsburg, Virginia.
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It's usual to look on this place
as the first fort of American liberty,
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built by blue-eyed patriots screaming
to be set free from the tyranny of British rule.
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Nothing could be less true.
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00:12:34,127 --> 00:12:39,440
Here was created the embryo of the American
system of a two-house popular assembly,
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00:12:39,527 --> 00:12:42,644
based on the English Lords and Commons.
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00:12:42,967 --> 00:12:45,959
It was the first self-governing body in America.
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00:12:45,847 --> 00:12:52,559
It is the kernel of the state governments
and, in time, the Congress of the United States.
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00:12:54,847 --> 00:12:57,236
This burgess system,
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00:12:57,247 --> 00:13:02,241
it was not greeted with wild applause
either in London or here in Virginia.
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00:13:02,527 --> 00:13:08,523
In fact, here there were many people
who thought of it as a democratical experiment,
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00:13:08,767 --> 00:13:11,156
and so, highly dangerous.
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00:13:11,167 --> 00:13:18,164
In fact, it was an expedient, it was a desperate
remedy against the all-powerful rule of one man,
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00:13:18,367 --> 00:13:23,077
namely the governor system,
which, we have seen, had broken down.
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00:13:23,167 --> 00:13:28,764
In the beginning, there were very strict limits
on what the burgesses could do.
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00:13:28,927 --> 00:13:31,646
They were to meet only once a year.
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00:13:31,807 --> 00:13:37,404
They were to follow and imitate in all things
the laws and customs of England.
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00:13:37,567 --> 00:13:41,958
But in one thing,
the London Company gave them a freedom
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00:13:42,367 --> 00:13:47,157
which was certainly in those days
not included in the liberties of Englishmen.
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00:13:47,167 --> 00:13:51,763
Those 22 delegates, the first burgess men,
and the ones who came after,
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00:13:51,967 --> 00:13:55,562
were to be elected by the inhabitants.
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00:13:55,807 --> 00:14:02,804
That phrase was never defined. It came to mean
every able-bodied male over the age of 16.
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Servants, both free and indentured.
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00:14:06,367 --> 00:14:11,282
Now, in England, you had to be a landowner
or a property owner to vote.
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00:14:11,487 --> 00:14:16,277
But here, a man could arrive as a servant
under contract to pay back his passage
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00:14:16,447 --> 00:14:21,123
and in 15 years own a plantation like this
with 5,500 acres.
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00:14:21,287 --> 00:14:24,120
The social ladder was not steep.
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00:14:24,287 --> 00:14:29,884
If you were industrious, you too could become
one of the first families of Virginia.
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00:14:30,207 --> 00:14:35,804
By the late 17th century, the system had spread
down the long coast of the Carolinas.
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00:14:35,967 --> 00:14:42,884
And by the 1750s, the plantations there were
shipping out small fortunes in rice and indigo.
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00:14:46,527 --> 00:14:52,921
What was unique about this coast was its wealth
of tidal rivers between fingers of fertile land.
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00:14:55,567 --> 00:15:01,324
An Englishman reported home that "no country
in the world can be so curiously watered".
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00:15:01,647 --> 00:15:07,040
No need for overland transport to harbours.
Each landing stage was its own port.
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00:15:06,927 --> 00:15:09,395
Every lawn was an assembly line.
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00:15:09,807 --> 00:15:16,042
This topography produced the river plantation,
a miniature society, a kingdom in itself.
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00:15:28,527 --> 00:15:34,124
This is Shirley, which has been in the hands
of the same two families for nine generations.
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00:15:34,287 --> 00:15:39,281
It was acquired by the son of this patriarch,
himself a first-generation American,
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00:15:39,447 --> 00:15:45,044
Robert, known as "King" Carter for his wealth,
his cunningly-acquired 30,000 acres
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00:15:45,087 --> 00:15:48,841
and his distrust of "democratical elements".
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00:15:49,487 --> 00:15:55,278
But "King" Carter was also
the Speaker of the House of Burgesses
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00:15:55,727 --> 00:15:58,321
and the Treasurer of the colony.
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00:15:58,607 --> 00:16:03,601
The striking difference between these planters
and their counterparts in England
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00:16:03,407 --> 00:16:08,401
was that they did not, on the whole,
acquire land and wealth and build houses
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00:16:08,687 --> 00:16:12,680
and then leave a luxurious living
to idle generations.
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00:16:13,007 --> 00:16:19,401
Virginia became the first state to abolish
what Jefferson called the "pernicious law"
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00:16:19,247 --> 00:16:23,240
whereby the eldest son
was the automatic inheritor.
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00:16:23,567 --> 00:16:26,559
When the elections for burgesses were held,
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00:16:26,927 --> 00:16:31,398
the planters were the overwhelming choice
of the voters of Virginia
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00:16:31,247 --> 00:16:34,239
because the plantations were miniature colonies
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00:16:34,607 --> 00:16:40,603
and the men who ran them well felt an equal
responsibility for the government of the colony.
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00:16:40,767 --> 00:16:45,966
So what is ultimately impressive
about a family like this, the Carters,
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00:16:46,047 --> 00:16:48,607
is not its acreage or its wealth,
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00:16:48,847 --> 00:16:54,444
but the fact that down the generations
they produced eight governors of Virginia,
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00:16:54,607 --> 00:16:58,395
three signers
of the Declaration of Independence,
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00:16:58,447 --> 00:17:02,235
two presidents of the United States,
a chief justice
185
00:17:02,287 --> 00:17:04,323
and General Robert E Lee.
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00:17:07,527 --> 00:17:11,520
The flowering of the tobacco industry
set the Southern pattern
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00:17:11,847 --> 00:17:15,840
of a single, luxuriant cash crop
grown on a large plantation
188
00:17:16,167 --> 00:17:21,525
housing a complete society
which made everything for its sustenance.
189
00:17:23,527 --> 00:17:27,520
Today you can see how it worked
down in South Carolina
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00:17:27,367 --> 00:17:31,565
at Middleton Plantation,
its stable yards and workshops.
191
00:17:34,647 --> 00:17:37,036
An ocean away from repairs,
192
00:17:37,047 --> 00:17:43,646
the first Americans developed their flair
for gadgetry and invented the verb "to fix".
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00:18:04,367 --> 00:18:09,680
You'll notice something which a white audience
passes over as an embarrassing detail,
194
00:18:09,927 --> 00:18:12,521
but it was the root of the Southern system.
195
00:18:12,807 --> 00:18:15,275
The heavy labour was black.
196
00:18:18,047 --> 00:18:20,959
Following the Portuguese and Spanish tradition,
197
00:18:20,927 --> 00:18:25,921
the English shipped the first blacks
into Virginia 12 years after the settlement.
198
00:18:26,207 --> 00:18:32,203
For years, there were no more than 300. Lowly
labour was done by white indentured servants.
199
00:18:32,447 --> 00:18:37,237
But tobacco called for labour battalions
and for more drudgery than skill.
200
00:18:37,407 --> 00:18:41,605
When the Virginians needed slavery,
they made it legal.
201
00:18:41,607 --> 00:18:46,203
The Royal African Company gave a monopoly
of the slave trade to England.
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00:18:46,287 --> 00:18:52,681
The blacks were shipped in. By the 1680s they
were coming in at the rate of 60,000 a decade.
203
00:18:52,847 --> 00:18:56,840
The first moral objections to slavery
came from the North,
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00:18:57,167 --> 00:19:01,160
but they were strangled by the profits
of the ship-owners.
205
00:19:01,487 --> 00:19:07,403
Realistic objections came from Southerners
terrified of being outnumbered. This passed.
206
00:19:07,247 --> 00:19:10,045
The purchase of human lives was cheap,
207
00:19:10,447 --> 00:19:15,919
whether of black men in the fields of the South
or white children in the coal mines of England.
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00:19:15,727 --> 00:19:20,323
When you can buy a tame population
with no say in the terms of its labour,
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00:19:20,527 --> 00:19:26,523
you've solved all our plaguing problems -
unemployment, wages, prices, racial minorities.
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00:19:36,847 --> 00:19:41,841
On such a base there evolved,
in South Carolina more than anywhere,
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00:19:41,967 --> 00:19:46,757
a spacious society
on the model of the English landed gentry.
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00:20:38,527 --> 00:20:44,159
By the 18th century, up-country planters
and merchants could afford cool townhouses
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00:20:44,407 --> 00:20:50,596
along the waterfront of Charleston, the main
port and social centre of the Carolinas.
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00:21:13,767 --> 00:21:18,079
If the other settlements
had been run on the Southern model,
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00:21:18,087 --> 00:21:20,396
if - it's a very big "if" -
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00:21:20,487 --> 00:21:26,483
the Northern lands and climate had been
amenable to huge, profitable single crops,
217
00:21:26,727 --> 00:21:32,723
there could very well not have been an American
Revolution, certainly not an American Civil War.
218
00:21:32,967 --> 00:21:37,165
But the Southern system,
with all its virtues and its vices,
219
00:21:37,287 --> 00:21:41,803
did not produce a society
so radically independent of Britain
220
00:21:42,087 --> 00:21:46,478
that it would guarantee
a steady drift to republicanism.
221
00:21:46,407 --> 00:21:52,846
That was done in another and a ruder place,
by sterner men to the north.
222
00:22:08,647 --> 00:22:14,040
These sterner types were the immortal Pilgrims,
financed by the Plymouth Company.
223
00:22:13,927 --> 00:22:19,718
They landed in the North not because
they chose to, but because of their navigator.
224
00:22:19,847 --> 00:22:22,839
He was meant to land them, too, in Virginia,
225
00:22:23,327 --> 00:22:28,845
where they would plant themselves 100 miles
from the London merchants and adventurers.
226
00:22:28,807 --> 00:22:34,598
The Pilgrims were religious dissenters fired
by a burning contempt for the Church of England,
227
00:22:34,567 --> 00:22:40,164
though subsidised by a loan of £7,000
to be repaid by the fruit of their labours.
228
00:22:41,447 --> 00:22:44,439
But they missed Virginia by 500 miles or more,
229
00:22:44,687 --> 00:22:50,478
and beached themselves at the end of
a long peninsula that curves up into a fish hook.
230
00:22:50,447 --> 00:22:52,915
Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
231
00:22:54,767 --> 00:22:57,645
The Pilgrims are famous for three things.
232
00:22:57,647 --> 00:23:02,641
They sailed on a ship called the Mayflower.
They survived the first, hideous winter.
233
00:23:02,927 --> 00:23:07,921
And their Yorkshire leader summarised
their character in a memorable sentence.
234
00:23:08,207 --> 00:23:12,997
"Being thus passed over the vast ocean,
we had no friends to welcome us,
235
00:23:13,007 --> 00:23:18,001
"no houses, much less towns, to repair to,
and some muttered to turn ashore again.
236
00:23:18,287 --> 00:23:23,680
"But we cried unto the Lord and he heard
our voice and looked on our adversities."
237
00:23:24,527 --> 00:23:30,124
It's a moving story, and has moved
New Englanders to believe that the lush South
238
00:23:30,287 --> 00:23:36,078
was settled by wealthy idlers who turned into
statesmen, a race of Thomas Jeffersons,
239
00:23:36,207 --> 00:23:40,405
whereas bleak New England
was founded by simple, holy men
240
00:23:40,527 --> 00:23:46,397
who somehow turned into a shrewd bourgeoisie,
a population of Calvin Coolidges.
241
00:23:47,727 --> 00:23:52,721
But the Pilgrims were not the true founders
of the New England system.
242
00:23:53,007 --> 00:23:59,480
Still back in England were men who would make
the departure from the government of England.
243
00:24:07,927 --> 00:24:12,921
They were known as Puritans,
and they didn't renounce the Church of England.
244
00:24:13,087 --> 00:24:18,957
They deplored its corruption, its encrustations
of liturgy, the sale of livings to cynical men,
245
00:24:18,847 --> 00:24:22,317
and the fear of Popery and new persecutions.
246
00:24:22,607 --> 00:24:26,361
They saw morality gone to seed.
247
00:24:26,527 --> 00:24:30,679
They didn't reject the Church.
They felt it had rejected them.
248
00:24:30,847 --> 00:24:37,036
They would go to America, and they would there
restore the purity and authority of the Church.
249
00:24:37,087 --> 00:24:41,080
They would build a new England,
and a better one.
250
00:24:41,407 --> 00:24:44,001
Now, their unquestioned leader
251
00:24:44,287 --> 00:24:50,362
was a Puritan who defies all the stereotypes
of their time and ours.
252
00:24:50,527 --> 00:24:54,122
Not the censorious, self-righteous bigot.
253
00:24:53,887 --> 00:24:56,685
He was named John Winthrop,
254
00:24:57,247 --> 00:25:02,719
and he was to a manor born,
and grew up here in Groton in Suffolk.
255
00:25:02,527 --> 00:25:05,325
Now, the manor house itself has gone,
256
00:25:05,407 --> 00:25:10,606
but this house behind me was where
he first held court as the lord of the manor
257
00:25:11,167 --> 00:25:13,283
to settle his tenants' grievances.
258
00:25:14,207 --> 00:25:17,005
Winthrop came from a family of wool merchants,
259
00:25:17,087 --> 00:25:21,717
and this new town, Lavenham,
was the capital of the woollen trade.
260
00:25:21,887 --> 00:25:25,084
He was a lawyer with court connections.
261
00:25:25,247 --> 00:25:28,557
Why should he leave such a privileged life?
262
00:25:28,607 --> 00:25:34,398
To some extent, he was a subversive.
He was a dissenter and he lost his legal practice.
263
00:25:34,687 --> 00:25:39,681
Also, prices were soaring
and the rents of his tenants were fixed by law.
264
00:25:39,967 --> 00:25:44,722
So his personal misfortune
coincided with his dim view of the Church.
265
00:25:48,247 --> 00:25:53,241
This is the tomb of his parents
in the churchyard at Groton.
266
00:25:53,967 --> 00:25:58,165
Winthrop was an absolutely typical Puritan
of his time,
267
00:25:58,767 --> 00:26:03,761
with rooted convictions
that we don't now associate with Puritanism.
268
00:26:03,567 --> 00:26:09,164
For instance, it was wrong to hunt with a gun
if you did not make a profit from the kill.
269
00:26:09,327 --> 00:26:13,923
And all the Puritans felt
that it would be an actual sin
270
00:26:14,127 --> 00:26:18,917
to plant a colony in the New World
that was not a financial success.
271
00:26:19,407 --> 00:26:25,198
The word "business" has changed. They were
men of business, men of affairs, of substance.
272
00:26:25,167 --> 00:26:27,556
That's to say, responsibility.
273
00:26:27,567 --> 00:26:34,166
All substantial Puritans saw no contradiction
in putting their money where their faith was.
274
00:26:34,287 --> 00:26:39,077
They believed that man was planted
on this earth to use his talents to the full.
275
00:26:39,567 --> 00:26:42,559
Material success was a sign of God's blessing.
276
00:26:42,447 --> 00:26:48,636
And if a man remained poor, it showed that
he was shiftless and his poverty was God's curse.
277
00:26:49,167 --> 00:26:51,965
This, I think, tells us a great deal
278
00:26:52,047 --> 00:26:58,043
about the traditional and certainly American
distaste for what we now call welfare.
279
00:26:58,287 --> 00:27:04,681
And I think it explains something about America
that this man of terrific industry and piety
280
00:27:04,527 --> 00:27:07,837
should have created the model of New England.
281
00:27:07,887 --> 00:27:12,085
To me, it explains at any rate
why, 300 years later,
282
00:27:12,687 --> 00:27:18,080
an American president, Calvin Coolidge,
could say without the hint of a blush,
283
00:27:17,967 --> 00:27:22,279
"The business of America is business."
284
00:27:23,527 --> 00:27:27,520
Well, with other gentlemen
of affairs and learning,
285
00:27:27,847 --> 00:27:30,839
Winthrop secured a royal charter for a company
286
00:27:31,207 --> 00:27:36,804
and he was chosen Governor of the Company
of the Massachusetts Bay in New England.
287
00:27:36,847 --> 00:27:42,524
There were two differences to the company
that sponsored the settlement of Virginia.
288
00:27:42,607 --> 00:27:47,601
They were crucial. First, the Puritans'
religious freedom was guaranteed.
289
00:27:47,887 --> 00:27:53,678
But much more important, this company
was not bound to hold its meetings in London.
290
00:27:53,647 --> 00:27:59,244
This meant that the governor of the company
could become the governor of the colony
291
00:27:59,407 --> 00:28:02,717
and set up any kind of government he wanted.
292
00:28:02,767 --> 00:28:05,281
This was not entirely an oversight.
293
00:28:05,647 --> 00:28:09,640
The King's Council in London
had learned that its experience
294
00:28:09,967 --> 00:28:13,482
fell far short of the whole American experience.
295
00:28:13,327 --> 00:28:15,921
In the year before Winthrop sailed,
296
00:28:16,207 --> 00:28:21,725
their doubts were confirmed
by reports of a ferocious Indian massacre.
297
00:28:22,487 --> 00:28:27,163
In March 1630, John Winthrop sailed
in the flagship of an expedition
298
00:28:27,287 --> 00:28:31,599
which was much the largest
that had gone to the New World.
299
00:28:32,087 --> 00:28:37,081
Not a junket of seamen and footloose
younger sons and other seekers after gold,
300
00:28:36,887 --> 00:28:41,881
but what Winthrop always thought of
as a noble microcosm of the human family.
301
00:28:42,167 --> 00:28:48,356
His four ships carried over 500 men,
women and children leaving England for ever
302
00:28:48,407 --> 00:28:51,126
to set up a city of God.
303
00:28:58,247 --> 00:29:02,559
So he left the inns of court
and the manor at Groton,
304
00:29:02,567 --> 00:29:05,798
and lived in a house as simple as this.
305
00:29:05,927 --> 00:29:08,919
There is, in all his journals and his writings,
306
00:29:09,287 --> 00:29:14,680
no smidge of condescension or complaint
that it had been a poor exchange.
307
00:29:14,847 --> 00:29:18,556
Of course,
in England he was not a powerful man.
308
00:29:18,687 --> 00:29:23,886
He was an active dissenter and a lawyer,
a small country squire.
309
00:29:23,967 --> 00:29:30,759
Here he was omnipotent, and from the beginning
he laid down the rules of a way of life.
310
00:29:31,167 --> 00:29:37,640
He told an early meeting of settlers
why, by his lights, Virginia had failed.
311
00:29:37,407 --> 00:29:41,798
Its main end was carnal, not religious.
312
00:29:42,207 --> 00:29:48,396
It gathered a multitude
of rude and misgoverned persons.
313
00:29:48,447 --> 00:29:52,838
And it failed to set up
a right form of government.
314
00:29:53,247 --> 00:30:00,278
Well, like most Puritans before and since,
Winthrop knew what was right for other people.
315
00:30:00,447 --> 00:30:05,567
And he was here
to see that they got it good and hard.
316
00:30:06,607 --> 00:30:11,806
The first meeting houses of the congregations
were, like their houses, wooden huts.
317
00:30:12,047 --> 00:30:16,757
But by the 1680s, the people of Hingham,
Massachusetts, felt secure enough
318
00:30:16,847 --> 00:30:21,841
to build something as substantial
as their faith, and this is it.
319
00:30:22,127 --> 00:30:27,121
The sole survivor of its times.
Not a museum, but now the town church.
320
00:30:27,407 --> 00:30:33,721
Today, all denominations come to celebrate
Thanksgiving and the Christian festivals.
321
00:30:33,647 --> 00:30:38,437
But in those earlier meeting houses
there was only one true faith,
322
00:30:38,447 --> 00:30:44,204
which embraced, and in some cases suffocated,
the secular life of the town.
323
00:30:46,087 --> 00:30:52,481
The essence of the Puritan system was
the idea that every community, big and small,
324
00:30:52,807 --> 00:30:59,599
was a government in itself,
a congregation of God's elect run by God's laws.
325
00:30:59,527 --> 00:31:02,837
And who was to elect God's elect?
326
00:31:03,367 --> 00:31:07,758
Governor John Winthrop
and the governing body of clergymen.
327
00:31:07,687 --> 00:31:11,680
The people were allowed
to have a say in the government,
328
00:31:12,007 --> 00:31:16,797
but only if they had been certified
by each local council as true believers.
329
00:31:16,807 --> 00:31:21,403
So what started out
as a trading company organised for profit
330
00:31:21,607 --> 00:31:24,519
turned into a religious dictatorship.
331
00:31:29,567 --> 00:31:32,081
And, looking back on it.
332
00:31:32,447 --> 00:31:39,239
We can see that it does bear a resemblance
to a communist or any totalitarian government.
333
00:31:39,167 --> 00:31:45,561
The party will tolerate you, but you have no say
in the government if you're not a party member.
334
00:31:45,887 --> 00:31:51,678
Life is very real and very earnest,
and you're building a society from the ground up
335
00:31:51,647 --> 00:31:54,445
which cannot be sustained by consent,
336
00:31:54,527 --> 00:31:59,396
but only by the most rigid discipline
imposed from on top.
337
00:31:59,807 --> 00:32:04,597
So the rulers direct every function of society.
338
00:32:04,607 --> 00:32:10,682
Work and play and worship
and morals and business and literature.
339
00:32:10,847 --> 00:32:15,443
And in this case, usually with admonitions
from the Old Testament
340
00:32:15,647 --> 00:32:19,845
interspersed with the thoughts
of Chairman Winthrop.
341
00:32:23,247 --> 00:32:25,841
"Work, for the night cometh.
342
00:32:25,887 --> 00:32:32,486
"There shall be no reward to the evil man.
The candle of the wicked shall be put out.
343
00:32:32,687 --> 00:32:37,636
"Make with thine own hands
all the things that thou needest.
344
00:32:37,767 --> 00:32:42,204
"Whosoever sweepeth a room
for the Lord's sake is blessed.
345
00:32:42,367 --> 00:32:47,282
"Instruct thy children in the laws of God,
that they may truly worship.
346
00:32:48,887 --> 00:32:54,484
"Sow the good seed, and the Lord
will furnish the ripe harvest in its season."
347
00:32:55,607 --> 00:32:58,838
The laws governing behaviour were absolute.
348
00:32:58,927 --> 00:33:02,124
Stocks for joking and raillery near the church.
349
00:33:02,287 --> 00:33:06,838
Prison for the smallest theft
or for the singing of lewd songs.
350
00:33:07,007 --> 00:33:09,396
Death for adultery.
351
00:33:12,327 --> 00:33:19,039
Suppose you were a good worker, an obedient
citizen, and said, "Well, I will obey the laws
352
00:33:19,047 --> 00:33:24,440
"but I have religious principles of my own
and I would like to worship by them."
353
00:33:24,807 --> 00:33:27,196
Well, that was an abomination.
354
00:33:27,207 --> 00:33:31,598
The Puritans did not come to America
to practise religious tolerance,
355
00:33:32,007 --> 00:33:34,601
except of the things THEY tolerated.
356
00:33:34,407 --> 00:33:40,926
They came to set up a whole ring of holy cities
rooted in the church of the congregation,
357
00:33:41,127 --> 00:33:46,918
and they never doubted for a moment
that they had the only true prescription.
358
00:33:47,367 --> 00:33:51,963
Consequently, they were much harsher
on the new dissenters
359
00:33:52,167 --> 00:33:55,159
than their oppressors had been on them.
360
00:33:55,007 --> 00:33:57,919
And, inevitably, there were dissenters.
361
00:34:00,287 --> 00:34:02,676
The Quakers were the worst.
362
00:34:02,687 --> 00:34:07,681
They consulted in silence the dangerous heretic
known as their conscience.
363
00:34:07,887 --> 00:34:11,277
They were accused as radical meditators.
364
00:34:11,247 --> 00:34:17,561
"If," said one minister, "they beat the Gospel
black and blue, it is but just to beat THEM."
365
00:34:17,767 --> 00:34:20,964
So it was done. A few were hanged.
366
00:34:21,127 --> 00:34:27,566
The lucky ones took haven in more tolerant
settlements in Rhode Island and Long Island.
367
00:34:29,887 --> 00:34:34,677
This merciless prescription
of what constituted the only good life
368
00:34:34,727 --> 00:34:40,643
was maintained on the usual totalitarian pretext
that it was essential for good order.
369
00:34:43,327 --> 00:34:48,321
It can be truly argued that neighbourliness
was essential to the common safety
370
00:34:48,327 --> 00:34:51,319
in scattered houses harassed by the Indians.
371
00:34:51,207 --> 00:34:55,803
But the worm in the apple of neighbourliness
is the malice of gossip.
372
00:34:56,247 --> 00:35:02,641
Neighbours bound together by a bigoted
conformity see villains in all eccentrics.
373
00:35:02,967 --> 00:35:09,156
Whenever the colony fell on special hard times,
as it did in the 1680s and '90s,
374
00:35:08,887 --> 00:35:13,278
gossip and suspicion
bred the horror of witchcraft.
375
00:35:15,527 --> 00:35:19,918
It descended most notoriously
on Old Salem village,
376
00:35:19,927 --> 00:35:24,637
and whisked a pack of men and women into jail
as accused witches.
377
00:35:27,047 --> 00:35:29,356
As an historic example,
378
00:35:29,447 --> 00:35:34,726
across these fields one day came
a respectable couple to call on their neighbour,
379
00:35:34,687 --> 00:35:37,281
an old lady named Rebecca Nurse.
380
00:35:37,567 --> 00:35:42,163
She was ill,
and, ostensibly, this was a compassionate visit.
381
00:35:45,167 --> 00:35:49,080
Rebecca Nurse's family was at once suspicious,
382
00:35:49,487 --> 00:35:52,877
and, as it turned out, with good cause.
383
00:35:56,407 --> 00:35:59,205
They actually came as snoopers,
384
00:35:59,287 --> 00:36:04,600
as witnesses for several adolescent girls
who'd had fits,
385
00:36:04,567 --> 00:36:09,436
and attributed them to evil spirits
coming out of the old lady.
386
00:36:09,847 --> 00:36:12,315
She was brought to trial as a witch.
387
00:36:12,247 --> 00:36:17,640
39 neighbours testified
that she was a true and blameless Christian.
388
00:36:18,007 --> 00:36:24,003
When the verdict of not guilty was brought in,
two of the girls had fits on the spot.
389
00:36:24,247 --> 00:36:30,038
The jury, which was sent back to reconsider,
took this as certain proof of guilt.
390
00:36:30,007 --> 00:36:34,797
Now, Rebecca herself was so imbued
with this religious view
391
00:36:34,807 --> 00:36:39,403
of what today we should consider
clinical cases of hysteria
392
00:36:39,607 --> 00:36:47,002
that her only comment was, "What sin
hath God found out in me unrepented of
393
00:36:47,287 --> 00:36:51,803
"that he should lay this affliction upon me
in my old age?"
394
00:36:54,007 --> 00:36:57,716
She was found guilty, and was hanged.
395
00:36:57,847 --> 00:37:02,238
It was reported that the family
took the body from the common pit
396
00:37:02,167 --> 00:37:07,764
and buried it in the graveyard behind this house
at considerable risk to themselves,
397
00:37:07,927 --> 00:37:14,560
because in the 17th century hysteria, fits,
were not regarded as psychogenic ailments,
398
00:37:15,127 --> 00:37:19,325
but as signs of God's anger
through the Devil's agency.
399
00:37:21,847 --> 00:37:25,840
I don't think we should be
too superior about all this.
400
00:37:26,167 --> 00:37:28,635
In a less pathological form,
401
00:37:29,047 --> 00:37:34,041
it exists today in too many small towns,
not only in America,
402
00:37:33,847 --> 00:37:40,480
namely the impulse to see the eccentric,
the odd man out as a menace to the community.
403
00:37:40,567 --> 00:37:45,960
And this self-protective reflex
extends to the cities.
404
00:37:46,327 --> 00:37:51,720
I'm thinking about the grand jury system
which was invented in England centuries ago,
405
00:37:52,087 --> 00:37:56,080
the idea being
that before a man was brought to trial,
406
00:37:55,927 --> 00:38:02,116
his neighbours, who knew him, would have
a good idea whether there was a plausible case.
407
00:38:02,647 --> 00:38:08,040
Well, it was abolished in England
on the grounds that in a city of several millions
408
00:38:07,927 --> 00:38:11,715
it was unlikely that the grand jury
would know him.
409
00:38:11,767 --> 00:38:16,966
But it's been retained here, and when
the grand jury meets and says there is a case,
410
00:38:17,527 --> 00:38:20,121
it brings in a bill of indictment.
411
00:38:19,927 --> 00:38:25,923
I often wonder how many Americans,
seeing a headline "So-and-so indicted",
412
00:38:26,167 --> 00:38:30,160
how many people
confuse indictment with conviction,
413
00:38:30,487 --> 00:38:34,799
how many tend to think,
with the good neighbours of Salem,
414
00:38:34,807 --> 00:38:38,402
that a man accused is a man guilty.
415
00:38:39,127 --> 00:38:45,316
Well... all this happened
40-odd years after John Winthrop had died.
416
00:38:45,847 --> 00:38:52,161
It was a dreadful, notorious aberration
from the good society that he'd founded.
417
00:38:52,087 --> 00:38:57,480
To me, he's still the most fascinating,
the most majestic of the fathers of New England.
418
00:38:57,847 --> 00:39:03,365
Maybe I've made him out to sound like a tyrant.
If so, he was a benevolent one.
419
00:39:03,207 --> 00:39:10,045
He extended representative government
throughout the colony irrespective of origin.
420
00:39:10,487 --> 00:39:17,086
Any freeman, if only he was God-fearing, could
achieve the highest post in the congregation.
421
00:39:17,767 --> 00:39:20,565
His steady belief that virtue paid dividends
422
00:39:20,647 --> 00:39:25,641
made him rejoice whenever Yankee ships
sailed off to deliver a load of cod fish,
423
00:39:25,927 --> 00:39:29,966
even to Roman Catholics,
for they paid better than anybody.
424
00:39:50,087 --> 00:39:55,480
If tobacco rescued the economy of Virginia,
the cod saved New England.
425
00:40:18,927 --> 00:40:21,725
The sea was the only continuous highway
426
00:40:21,807 --> 00:40:27,006
between these two strong, opposing cultures
of New England and the South.
427
00:40:27,567 --> 00:40:32,357
For between them
lay over 500 miles of roads so primitive
428
00:40:32,447 --> 00:40:38,443
that the leading men of Richmond and Boston
knew London better than they knew each other.
429
00:40:38,367 --> 00:40:44,556
Between Virginia and New England were
New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware,
430
00:40:44,927 --> 00:40:50,399
whose one tough link was the English language
and the English common law.
431
00:40:51,767 --> 00:40:55,760
This is the old courthouse
of Newcastle, Delaware.
432
00:40:57,047 --> 00:41:02,360
Like all middlemen - like Sweden,
always lying between two monolithic powers -
433
00:41:02,407 --> 00:41:06,605
these middle colonies
tended to neutrality and tolerance.
434
00:41:06,727 --> 00:41:12,040
They more readily welcomed German Lutherans,
Swedish Protestants, Jacobites, Mennonites,
435
00:41:12,487 --> 00:41:15,001
and Maryland was founded by a Catholic.
436
00:41:15,167 --> 00:41:17,635
They produced a flexible society
437
00:41:17,807 --> 00:41:23,006
in which, at the end of the day, the parson
joined the baker, banker and tallow chandler
438
00:41:23,087 --> 00:41:28,002
for a talk on predestination,
a game or cards or a little fiddle-playing.
439
00:41:29,647 --> 00:41:33,640
Pennsylvania bred independent large farmers
without slaves.
440
00:41:33,727 --> 00:41:36,605
Although its establishment was Quaker,
441
00:41:36,607 --> 00:41:40,998
a dozen religious sects
lived together without bigotry.
442
00:41:41,287 --> 00:41:46,884
In particular, the middle city of Philadelphia
produced a new sort of American,
443
00:41:47,087 --> 00:41:51,205
a scholar citizen,
politically alert, intensely practical.
444
00:41:51,367 --> 00:41:56,885
An English visitor in the 18th century remarked
that Philadelphia had many learned men
445
00:41:57,207 --> 00:42:01,246
"whose learning is, however,
always ingenious and useful".
446
00:42:01,247 --> 00:42:07,243
The fine flower of this type
was a man who began his career as a printer.
447
00:42:07,487 --> 00:42:11,480
And in the 18th century,
both in England and America,
448
00:42:11,327 --> 00:42:14,524
printing was not then a humble trade.
449
00:42:15,647 --> 00:42:21,119
The printer was the publisher.
He was the television network president.
450
00:42:21,407 --> 00:42:24,399
He was the government information officer.
451
00:42:24,287 --> 00:42:30,476
If he dared to risk violating his government
licence, he might be the radical propagandist.
452
00:42:30,527 --> 00:42:34,520
Because he was the man
who owned the only means
453
00:42:34,847 --> 00:42:40,240
whereby the people could be persuaded
whether they were well or badly governed.
454
00:42:41,007 --> 00:42:45,717
Well, the man that we're talking about
is Benjamin Franklin.
455
00:42:45,807 --> 00:42:51,803
He was born to an English emigrant to Boston,
a dyer from Banbury,
456
00:42:52,247 --> 00:42:56,445
and he was the tenth and last child
of a second marriage.
457
00:42:56,567 --> 00:43:00,560
A dozen people in a tiny house
was, to him, normal.
458
00:43:00,887 --> 00:43:07,281
So above the howl of the small fry he played
his tin whistle and argued theology with his father
459
00:43:07,127 --> 00:43:09,516
and he read the "Spectator".
460
00:43:10,007 --> 00:43:14,205
He sailed his boats on the river
and he made his first invention,
461
00:43:14,327 --> 00:43:20,846
a pair of water wings on which, he said,
you can float agreeably down the river.
462
00:43:21,047 --> 00:43:25,643
He came to Philadelphia in his teens.
He was a free thinker at 15.
463
00:43:25,847 --> 00:43:30,443
And at 71, the elder statesman
of the American Revolution.
464
00:43:31,407 --> 00:43:34,604
In between, he invented the lightning rod.
465
00:43:34,767 --> 00:43:37,361
He started the first public library.
466
00:43:37,167 --> 00:43:41,877
He was one of the founders
of the American Philosophical Society.
467
00:43:41,967 --> 00:43:44,845
And he thought up the idea of daylight saving.
468
00:43:45,287 --> 00:43:51,078
He took part in every sort of political debate
in the Pennsylvania Assembly.
469
00:43:51,047 --> 00:43:56,519
He argued eloquently on the floor
of the House of Commons against the Stamp Act.
470
00:43:56,807 --> 00:43:59,605
And he was the American Minister to France.
471
00:43:59,687 --> 00:44:04,078
He was so much
the most familiar American in England
472
00:44:04,487 --> 00:44:10,881
that Staffordshire potters got out a statuette
of him and sold it under three titles.
473
00:44:12,167 --> 00:44:18,083
"B Franklin." "G Washington."
Nobody knew what HE looked like.
474
00:44:18,087 --> 00:44:21,921
And "Old English Country Gentleman."
475
00:44:23,047 --> 00:44:25,641
What makes him, after two centuries,
476
00:44:25,927 --> 00:44:32,116
not merely impressive, but as lovable
as Jefferson, and for the same reason,
477
00:44:32,167 --> 00:44:39,562
is that he had this... childlike delight
in the morning innocence of America,
478
00:44:39,847 --> 00:44:46,844
a blithe but steady belief that
they were founding a purer order of society.
479
00:44:48,007 --> 00:44:53,798
I'm afraid this is a feeling that has long gone,
but in 18th-century America it was a fact.
480
00:44:54,247 --> 00:44:56,841
Once, when Franklin came home,
481
00:44:57,127 --> 00:45:03,123
he opened a package and found that his wife
had ordered some silver knives from London.
482
00:45:02,887 --> 00:45:08,678
He sighed in his journal,
"Alas, it is by luxury and the vanity of women
483
00:45:09,127 --> 00:45:11,766
"that empires decay."
484
00:45:13,367 --> 00:45:15,961
Every state is proud to recall its origins,
485
00:45:15,887 --> 00:45:21,883
but once a year the whole nation honours
New England in a festival celebrating its birth.
486
00:45:21,847 --> 00:45:25,840
Let's say grace. Dear God, our Heavenly Father.
487
00:45:26,167 --> 00:45:32,356
We bow our heads in thanksgiving for the many
blessings which we have received from thee.
488
00:45:32,407 --> 00:45:38,801
Give us the courage which our forefathers had
on this first Thanksgiving Day 350 years ago.
489
00:45:39,047 --> 00:45:45,520
Bless this food, O Lord. May it strengthen us
to do thy will and further thy kingdom on earth.
490
00:45:47,607 --> 00:45:49,598
Oh, isn't that lovely?
491
00:45:50,007 --> 00:45:52,396
0n the last Thursday in November,
492
00:45:52,607 --> 00:45:56,600
the first harvest of the Pilgrims
is celebrated by every state.
493
00:45:56,687 --> 00:46:01,283
0n that day, the simplest
and the most sophisticated families
494
00:46:01,447 --> 00:46:07,443
gather and eat the turkey and cranberry sauce,
pumpkin pie, sweet potato, squash, corn bread.
495
00:46:07,687 --> 00:46:13,478
All the autumn vegetables and native dishes
the pilgrims had learned from the Indians,
496
00:46:13,447 --> 00:46:19,636
and which assured that they would survive
and plant here a new, if not a better England.
497
00:46:19,927 --> 00:46:22,885
There's the cranberries.
498
00:46:22,927 --> 00:46:27,717
Are you ready for corn bread?
Doesn't that look nice?
499
00:46:28,007 --> 00:46:30,805
- Corn bread?
- Thanks.
500
00:46:34,727 --> 00:46:39,721
You want some bread?
Take a piece. Take a piece off the plate.
501
00:46:39,527 --> 00:46:46,763
# We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing
502
00:46:47,207 --> 00:46:54,158
# He chastens and hastens
his will to make known
503
00:46:54,407 --> 00:47:01,245
# The wicked oppressing
now cease from distressing
504
00:47:01,287 --> 00:47:06,884
# Sing praises to his name
He forgets not... #
505
00:47:07,047 --> 00:47:12,838
In the old church at Hingham, they are singing
a hymn that the Pilgrims brought from Holland,
506
00:47:13,087 --> 00:47:15,476
a prayer of thanksgiving.
507
00:47:15,487 --> 00:47:18,877
"May thy congregation escape tribulation.
508
00:47:18,847 --> 00:47:23,682
"Thy name be ever-praised.
0 Lord, make us free. "
509
00:47:24,127 --> 00:47:31,477
# May thy congregation escape tribulation
510
00:47:31,807 --> 00:47:35,436
# Thy name be ever-praised
511
00:47:35,167 --> 00:47:40,082
# O Lord, make us free
512
00:47:40,447 --> 00:47:46,238
# Amen #