The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 49then abolished in 1691 when it was replaced by a property qualification. Outside
New England, the absence of one controlling cultural group was still more evident,
since by 1775 half the population was of non-English origin. Scotch-Irish, Scottish,
German, French Huguenot, and Dutch immigrants flooded the eastern seaboard;
the Spanish settled a vast area over which they held dominion stretching from
California to the Gulf Coast; and, by the end of the eighteenth century, more than
275,000 African slaves had been brought to America, mainly to the South. A rising
standard of living encouraged Benjamin Franklin to claim, in 1751, that in the next
century “the greatest Number of Englishmen will be on this side of the water.” It
certainly helped to promote the growing secular tendencies of the age. Religion was
still strong; and it was, in fact, made stronger by a sweeping revivalist movement
known as the Great Awakening, in the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth
century. “Under Great Terrors of Conscience,” as the preacher Jonathan Edwards put
it, many thousands of people “had their natures overborn under strong convictions.”
They were born again, in an experience of radical conversion; and they banded
together in evangelical communities, convinced of the power of “Christ shedding
blood for sinners” and the incalculable, more than rational nature of faith. The
Great Awakening, however, was itself a reaction against what was rightly felt to be
the dominant trend: the growing tendency among colonists to accept and practice
the ideas of the Enlightenment, albeit usually in popularized form. Those ideas
emphasized the determining influence of reason and common sense and the imper-
atives of self-help, personal and social progress. According to the philosophy of the
Enlightenment, the universe was a rational, mechanical phenomenon which, as the
English philosopher John Locke put it, ran rather like a self-winding watch. Once set
in motion by its creator, God or an abstract First Cause, it no longer required His
help or intervention. And man, using his reason and good sense, could ascertain the
laws of this mechanism. He could then use those laws for his own profit, the better-
ment of society, and his own improvement since, as Franklin put it, “the one accept-
able service to God is doing good to man.” It was an ethic with an obvious attraction
for new generations of immigrants eager to stake their place and improve their lot in
a new land with such abundant resources. And, even for those, the vast majority,
who had never heard of the Enlightenment, the secular gospel of reason, common
sense, use, profit, and progress became part of the American way.
The travel journals of two writers of this period, Sarah Kemble Knight (1666–
1727) and William Byrd of Westover (1674–1744), suggest the increasingly secular
tendencies of this period. Both Knight and Byrd wrote accounts of their journeys
through parts of America that tend to concentrate on the social, the curious people
and manners they encountered along the way. There is relatively little concern, of the
kind shown in earlier European accounts of travels in the New World, with the
abundance of nature, seen as either Eden or Wilderness. Nor is there any sense at all
of being steered by providence: God may be mentioned in these journals, but rarely
as a protective guide. Knight composed her journal as a description of a trip she took
from Boston to New York and then back again in 1704–1705. It did not reach printed
form until the next century, when it appeared as The Journals of Madam KnightGGray_c01.indd 49ray_c 01 .indd 49 8 8/1/2011 7:54:55 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 55 AM