Fashioning a New Society in the Wilderness

1
Fashioning a New Society in the Wilderness

• Chapter 3

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Understanding Where Colonists Came From

• Poverty in 1500s England
• Noblesse Oblige
• Catholics tradition of sharing wealth
• Protestants giving as a moral duty
• Most charity in 1600s and earlier from private
  philanthropies and religious institutions

3
Inheriting European Policies

• Elizabethan Poor Law Act of 1601
• England consolidated laws assigning welfare roles
  to local parishes
• when parishes cant meet need, counties required
  to assume responsibility
• Gvt thus becomes chief enforcer of poor relief,
  supplanting the Church of England

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Inheriting European PoliciesTwo Forms Of Aid

• Outdoor relief
• aid to persons in their homes, cash or in-kind
• Indoor relief
• aid to persons on condition of being in
  institutions,
• almshouses/poorhouses/workhouses
• or required to be indentured servants or
  apprentices
• much more punitive

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Depiction of 1837 Poor Laws Workhouse
http//learningcurve.pro.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot
08/snapshot8.htm
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Understanding Where Colonists Came FromThe
Constitution

• John Locke (1600s) (limited gvt, free speech,
  secularism, optimism, science, use of reason to
  discover natural laws -English Enlightenment)
• gvt did not exist in the state of nature
• instead, citizens developed a contract for a
  limited gvt when they discovered some people
  attacked and robbed others
• citizens constructed gvt to preserve law and
  order
• to avoid despots, checks and balances

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Understanding Where Colonists Came FromThe
Constitution

• Adam Smith
• questioned excessive governmental intrusion into
  private matters
• Voltaire
• opposed state religions

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The Constitution

• The Federalist Papers

Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton

• Strong Executive Branch
• Centralized Gvt
• Efficient
• Elitist

• Strong People
• Decentralized
• Egalitarian
• Democratic

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Who Won?

• Washington Usually Sided with Hamilton
• 1800, Jefferson narrowly defeated Adams for
  president
• Jefferson served 2 terms
• With few exceptions all 19th century presidents
  (1800s) subscribed to Jeffersons view of
  limited government.
• Strong defense of the federal governments
  role in social welfare is relatively recent in
  Americas history.
• If Hamilton and the Federalists had dominated, we
  might have a very different welfare system,
  federal centralization might have occurred much
  earlier than the new deal.

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• Ended class here
• The following slides are for your interest only,
  not part of class notes.

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Benjamin Rush

• Philadelphia Physician
• Committee of Inspection and Observation
• to implement measures passed at the Continental
  Congress 1774
• advocated need to develop public education system
• advocated temperance, lead to American Temperance
  Movement
• Crusade Against Slavery

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Outgroups
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Triangular Passage
Source http//www.juneteenth.com/mp2.htm
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Slave Shipshttp//www.regentsprep.org/Regents/ush
isgov/themes/immigration/laws.htm
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Slave Trade

• Triangular trade system - named because the ships
  embarked from European ports, stopped in Africa
  to gather the captives, after which they set out
  for the New World to deliver their human cargo,
  and then returned to the port of origin. (like a
  triangle)
• The Middle Passage was that leg of the slave
  triangle that brought the human cargo from West
  Africa to North America, South America, and the
  Caribbean.

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Precursors to a Reluctant Welfare State

• Cultural themes
• emphasis on individualism
• limited gvt
• Political themes
• lack of large class of landless people
• subjugation of people of color
• so little pressure to redistribute land or
  resources

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Precursors to a Reluctant Welfare State

• Institutional themes
• weak centralized government
• relatively weak local jurisdictions