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By William Cecil Headrick
The early classes of the colonies were counterparts of the European social classes -- except for an overabundance of middle class elements in New England and eastern Pennsylvania, and a lack of middle class elements in Quebec, Spanish America, and the southern colonies. This was, then, in spite of the abundance of wealth in resources, not a land of equal or unusual opportunity, beyond the case with which a family could attain food. There was much social class rigidity and, during the colonial era, even an intensification of social stratification. This fact will become the more clear as a review is made of the upper or aristocratic classes.
The upper classes in colonial times. The extent to which colonial society was stratified and the part that the upper classes played in that stratification is summarized by Carman in these words: 16
We have already noted how, during the century and a half preceding the American Revolution, two fairly distinct social and economic classes developed in Colonial America. One, the conservatives, composed of the rich and the well-born -- of merchants, large landholders, and money-lenders -- dominated every phase of colonial life. It owned or controlled the economic resources of the colonies -- the bulk of the land, forests, fishing grounds, the agencies of commerce, and the fluid capital. By means of property qualifications for voting and office holding, and by recourse to the devices of wire pulling, log rolling, and bossism, it was able to limit greatly the political power of the rank and file. Socially, its members considered themselves superior to the common people, toward whom they assumed a snobbish attitude. Indeed, unless one had money or was a member of an "old respectable" family, or was well educated or had served the state in some prominent capacity, he was regarded as socially inferior. Even at Harvard College students' names, to the eve of the Revolution, were arranged in the order of the "respectability of their parentage."
Social life in the colonies was
"burdened and charmed" by those of
aristocratic ways. This was as might
have been expected because colonial
society was copied after that of
England. As the Beards state:
17
So in a fashion the society of
England was duplicated. Sons of the
landed proprietors went in for trade
as well as the Church and the army;
daughters of rich merchants married
sons of the landed families; and
after . . . 1685, a little flavor of
the court gave tone to the
ceremonial life of the upper
classes.
Myers summarizes his study of early
fortunes, tracing the power of the
upper classes to their early control
of the land. It tended to be their
natural resource. He says:
18
The sinister effects of this first
great grasping of land long
permeated the whole fabric of
society and were prominently seen
before and after the Revolution, and
especially in the third and fourth
decades of the eighteenth century.
The "badge of aristocracy" was worn
even in prosaic Massachusetts by the
socially most respectable students;
they were allowed to eat at the
fellow's table at Harvard, a custom
imported from Cambridge. "Among
those so privileged was one Salton
stall of the class of 1659."
19
(This and other names on the
modern social calendar indicate, to
some extent, the degree of social
class mobility which this nation has
maintained.)
Some of the leading names of
families of high standing are noted
in that
20
many of the gentlemen
settlers had a right to bear arms,
as the Washingtons, Harrisons,
Balls, Berkeleys, Byrds, Pages,
Carys, Bollings, Clairbornes,
Burwells, and others in Virginia, as
had the Penns, Logans, Penningtons,
Lloyds and numerous Pennsylvania
families, as well as many of those
who emigrated to New Jersey,
Delaware, New York and to the New
England and Southern Colonies.
No aristocracy can sustain itself on
the dry toast of lists of
precedence. The meat and broth of
high social class are a resource to
exploit and the customary habit of
marrying within the "clan." These
nourish and sustain it -- they
provide for its present and its
future. In colonial times the upper
classes had both natural and human
resources to exploit, and they
contracted their formal alliances
with foresight. The circumstances
that enabled them to flourish are
described by Adams thus:
21
As has already been said, access to
official society was a prerequisite
to the securing of this influence
[land grants, etc.] and as that
society was comparatively limited,
intermarriage among its members
became increasingly frequent and
everywhere added its weight to the
building up of local aristocracies .
. . . In all the colonies, the
councils were almost wholly made up
of the members of these small
aristocracies, or plutocracies, and
as the suffrage was very limited,
their influence extended to the
assemblies . . . the aristocrats by
1700 were fastening a firm grip both
on the political management and
commercial exploitation of the New
World.
Footnotes:
16.
Carman, op. cit., p. 265.
17.
Beard and Beard, op. cit., p. 77.
18.
Myers, op. cit., pp. 34 - 35.
19.
Franklin B. Dexter, On Some
Social Distinctions at Harvard and
Yale Before the Revolution
(Worcester, 1894) p. 5.
20.
Anne Hollingworth Wharton, English
Ancestral Homes of Noted Americans
(Philadelphia, 1915) p. 296.
21.
Adams, op. cit., pp. 66 - 67.
This does not fulfill the American
Dream. The more one learns about the
colonial age, the less can one
detect any signs of increasing
equality or open opportunity or
"most intensive" social mobility.
The schoolbook fiction that at first
a few aristocrats arrived with their
inept personal coteries, that their
influence was not long felt, and
that the eighteenth century
experienced an increase in the
political institutions of democracy
and economic opportunity for the
little man (according to the
Benjamin Franklin pattern) should
perhaps be replaced. Truer is the
thought that in some of the colonies
there was a shortage of upper class
families for several decades; but as
the 1700 corner was turned, those on
the inside and provided with the
advantages were setting a fast pace,
a stride which left the masses of
men further and further behind with
each passing decade up to the
Revolution, at least.
Control of politics, class and
social class consciousness, and
capital accumulation created "upper
classmen" out of elements, some of
which were no doubt of lower middle
class and even, though rarely, of
proletarian backgrounds. But these
same factors contributed more to
bringing to full bloom the
ostentation of those classes which
had come over "passage paid, with
furniture and servants." They became
a clique of beautifully mansioned,
proud, and fashionable folk. These
realities of colonial life are
depicted in the following:
22
In New York an extraordinary
proportion of the landed wealth was
in the hands of Sir William Johnson
or representatives of these great
aristocratic families who throughout
the colonial period, and even after,
dominated every phase of the
colony's institutional activity . .
. . In Virginia and the Carolinas
millions of acres of fertile lands
of the back country fell into the
hands of speculators like Robert
Beverly, Richard Henderson, the
Washingtons, the Carters, and Lord
Fairfax . . . .
Legal contests and long-drawn-out quarrels between the older and richer
families engaged in land speculation
on the one hand, and the poorer
inhabitants and the newcomers
anxious to acquire homes and landed
property on the other, featured the
history of practically every colony
throughout the colonial period.The manner in which favoritism and
social standing played their part in
the distribution of wealth is shown
in the following:
23
For the acquisition of a rapid
fortune in land merely by standing
well with the powers that be, New
York offered a rich field. Among
Governor Fletcher's grants, for
example, was one to his favorite . .
. Captain John Evans, of an area . .
. between three hundred and fifty
thousand and six hundred thousand
acres, a quitrent of only twenty
shillings for the whole, for which
Evans alleged he was later offered
10,000 pounds in England.
High social class is more than
family rank, money, and social
prestige -- it is a way of life,
especially a way of recreation. In
New York, for instance, where
distinctions were more definitely
pronounced than in New England or
the other Middle Colonies, the
finest families spent their winters
in the city at the mouth of the
Hudson, "where amusements of various
kinds from the theater to
bull-baiting were furnished for
their diversion . . . . "
24
22.
Carman, op. cit., pp. 70 - 71.
23.
Adams, op. cit., p. 66.
24.
Beard and Beard, op. cit., p. 144
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| Article Name: Social Rigidities In Colonial America | ||||
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