Mid-Century Challenges

By 1710:
Virginia: 78,281
Massachusetts: 62,390
New York: 21,625
Pennsylvania: 24,450

I. Great Awakening:

Jonathan Edwards

There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.
That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of: there is nothing between you and hell but the air; ‘tis only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and Justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet ‘tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.

"Father Abraham, whom have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? No! Any Presbyterians? No! Any Independents or Methodists? No, No No! Whom have you there? We don't know those names here. All who are here are Christians...Oh, is this the case? The God help us to forget your party names and to become Christians in deed and truth." GW

How is the Great Awakening a challenge to British authority?

II. French and Indian War
“play off” system

Battle of Quebec:
Sept. 13, 1759
50 warships
200 transport ships
8500 men

General James Wolfe:
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

How is the French and Indian War a challenge to British authority?

III. Economic Shift

What is industrialism and how does it change the historical trajectory of the world?


IV. Land Conflicts
A. Susquehannah Company
(Pennamite Wars)
B. Paxton Boys
C. South Carolina Regulators
D. North Carolina Regulators
E. The Boston Fire of 1760
F. The Great Migration of 1773

From 1763 to 1776 there was an influx of immigrants into British North America:
55,000 Protestant Irish
40,000 Scots
30,000 English
12,000 Germans (mostly to Philadelphia)
84,500 enslaved Africans

The colonies have around 200,000 in 1700 and around 2 million in 1776. Does that matter?

How might this immigration alter the historical trajectory of the colonies?

By the way, total population of the
13 colonies was about 2.5 million…

and the largest city in the colonies in 1776 is Philadelphia with 25,000.

…one example, a family of four from Heuchelheim, Germany.

V. Significance