# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Read an excerpt from Who Was First? by Russell Freedman:
Before Columbus
For a long time, most people believed that Christopher Columbus was the first explorer to "discover" America-the first to make a successful round-trip voyage across the Atlantic. But in recent years, as new evidence came to light, our understanding of history has changed. We know now that Columbus was among the last explorers to reach the Americas, not the first.

Five hundred years before Columbus, a daring band of Vikings led by Leif Eriksson set foot in North America and established a settlement. And long before that, some scholars say, the Americas seem to have been visited by seafaring travelers from China, and possibly by visitors from Africa and even Ice Age Europe.

A popular legend suggests an additional event: According to an ancient manuscript, a band of Irish monks led by Saint Brendan sailed an ox-hide boat westward in the sixth century in search of new lands. After seven years they returned home and reported that they had discovered a land covered with luxuriant vegetation, believed by some people today to have been Newfoundland.

All along, of course, the two continents we now call North and South America had already been "discovered." Before European explorers arrived, the Americas were home to tens of millions of native peoples. While those Native American groups differed greatly from one another, they all performed rituals and ceremonies, songs and dances, that brought back to mind and heart memories of the ancestors who had come before them and given them their place on Earth.

Who were the ancestors of those Native Americans? Where did they come from, when did they arrive in the Americas, and how did they make their epic journeys?

As we dig deeper and deeper into the past, we find that the Americas have always been lands of immigrants, lands that have been "discovered" time and again by different peoples coming from different parts of the world over the course of countless generations-going far back to the prehistoric past, when a band of Stone Age hunters first set foot in what truly was an unexplored New World.
1. Admiral of the Ocean Sea
Christopher Columbus was having trouble with his crew. His fleet of three small sailing ships had left the Canary Islands nearly three weeks earlier, heading west across the uncharted Ocean Sea, as the Atlantic was known. He had expected to reach China or Japan by now, but there was still no sign of land.

None of the sailors had ever been so long away from the sight of land, and as the days passed, they grew increasingly restless and fearful. The Ocean Sea was known also as the Sea of Darkness. Hideous monsters were said to lurk beneath the waves-venomous sea serpents and giant crabs that could rise up from the deep and crush a ship along with its crew. And if the Earth was flat, as many of the men believed, then they might fall off the edge of the world and plunge into that fiery abyss where the sun sets in the west. What's more, Columbus was a foreigner-a red-headed Italian commanding a crew of tough seafaring Spaniards-and that meant he couldn't be trusted.

Finally, the men demanded that Columbus turn back and head for home. When he refused, some of the sailors whispered together of mutiny. They wanted to kill the admiral by throwing him overboard. But, for the moment, the crisis passed. Columbus managed to calm his men and persuade them to be patient a while longer.

"I am having serious trouble with the crew . . . complaining that they will never be able to return home," he wrote in his journal. "They have said that it is insanity and suicidal on their part to risk their lives following the madness of a foreigner. . . . I am told by a few trusted men (and these are few in number!) that if I persist in going onward, the best course of action will be to throw me into the sea some night."

All along, Columbus had been keeping two sets of logs. One, which he kept secretly and showed to no one, was accurate, recording the distance really sailed each day. The other log, which he showed to his crew, hoping to reassure them that they were nowhere near the edge of the world, deliberately underestimated the miles they had covered since leaving Spain.

They sailed on for another two weeks and still saw nothing. There were more rumblings of protest and complaint from the crew. The men seemed willing to endure no more. On October 10, Columbus announced that he would give a fine silk coat to the man who first sighted land. The sailors greeted that offer with glum silence. What good was a silk coat in the middle of the Sea of Darkness?

Later that day, Columbus spotted a flock of birds flying toward the southwest-a sign that land was close. He ordered his ships to follow the birds.

The next night, the moon rose in the east shortly before midnight. About two hours later, at two A.M. on October 12, a sailor on one of Columbus's ships, the Pinta, saw a white stretch of beach, shouted, "Land! Land!" and fired a cannon. At dawn, the three ships dropped anchor in the calm, blue waters just offshore. They had arrived at an island in what we now call the Bahamas.

Excited crew members crowded the decks. People were standing on the beach, waiting to greet them. The natives had no weapons other than wooden fishing spears, and they were practically naked. Who were these people? And what place was this?

Columbus supposed that his fleet had landed on one of the many islands that Marco Polo had reported lay just off the coast of Asia. They must have reached the Indies, he thought-islands reputedly near India and known today as the East Indies. So he decided that those people on the beach must be "Indians," the name by which they have been known ever since. China and Japan, he believed, lay a bit farther to the north.

Though Christopher Columbus was an Italian born in Genoa, he had lived for years in Portugal, where he worked as a bookseller, a mapmaker, and a sailor. He had sailed on Portuguese voyages as far as Iceland in the North Atlantic, and down the coast of Africa in the South Atlantic. During his days at sea, he read books on history, geography, and travel.

Like most educated people at the time, Columbus believed that the Earth was round-not flat, as some ignorant folks still insisted. The Ocean Sea was seen as a great expanse of water surrounding the land mass of Eurasia and Africa, which stretched from Europe in the west to China and Japan in the far distant east. If a ship left the coast of Europe, sailed west toward the setting sun, and circled the globe, it would reach the shores of Asia-or so Columbus thought.

In the past, European explorers and traders had taken the overland route to the Far East, with its precious silks and spices. They traveled for months by horse and camel along the Silk Road, an ancient caravan trail that crossed deserts and climbed dizzying mountain peaks. Marco Polo had followed the Silk Road on his famous journey to China two centuries earlier. But recently, this land route to Asia, controlled in part by the Turks, had been closed to Europeans. And in any case, Columbus was convinced that he could find an easier and faster route to Asia by sailing west.

There were plenty of stories circulating in those years about the possibility of sailing directly from Europe to Asia, an idea first considered by the ancient Greeks. Columbus owned a book called Imago Mundi, or Image of the World, by a French scholar, Pierre d'Ailly, who argued that the Ocean Sea wasn't as wide as it seemed and that a ship driven by favorable winds could cross it in a few days. Next to that passage in the margin of the book, Columbus had written: "There is no reason to think that the ocean covers half the earth."

In 1484, he proposed his bold scheme of sailing west to China to King John II of Portugal, a monarch who had paid much attention to the discovery of new lands. Portugal was Europe's leading maritime power. Portuguese explorers in search of slaves, ivory, and gold had already discovered rich kingdoms and colossal rivers in western Africa and would soon reach the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southern tip. From there, they would be able to sail across the Indian Ocean to the famed Spice Islands of southeast Asia.

King John listened to what Columbus had to say, then submitted the Italian sailor's plan to a committee of mapmakers, astronomers, and geographers. The distinguished experts declared that Asia must be much farther away than Columbus thought. They said that no expedition could be fitted out with enough food and water to sail across such an enormous expanse of sea.

Rejected by the Portuguese king, Columbus decided to approach King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, a country he had never before visited. Well-connected friends gave him letters of introduction to the inner circle of the Spanish royal court. Ferdinand and Isabella seemed curious about the route to Asia that Columbus proposed. Like King John, they too appointed a committee of inquiry to consider the matter, but those experts came to the same negative conclusion: Columbus's claim about the distance to China and the ease of sailing there could not possibly be true.

Columbus persisted. He talked at length to members of the Spanish court and convinced some of them, but Ferdinand and Isabella twice rejected his appeal for ships. Finally, angry and impatient after six discouraging years in Spain, he threatened to seek support from the king of France. Columbus actually set out for France, riding a mule down a dusty Spanish road.

With that, royal advisors persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella to change their minds. If another king sponsored Columbus, and his expedition turned out to be a success, then the Spanish monarchs would be embarrassed. They would be criticized in Spain. Let Columbus risk his life, the advisors said. Let him seek out "the grandeurs and secrets of the universe." If he succeeded, Spain would win much glory and would overcome the Portuguese lead in the race to exploit the riches of Asia.

And so Ferdinand and Isabella decided to take a chance. They dispatched a messenger to intercept Columbus on the road and bring him back to court. They were ready to grant him a hereditary title, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and the right to a tenth of any riches-pearls, gold, silver, silks, spices-that he brought back from his voyage. And they agreed to supply two ships for his expedition. Columbus himself raised the money to hire a third ship.

A half hour before sunrise on August 3, 1492, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa María sailed from the port of Palos, Spain, carrying some ninety crew members in all. They were small, lightweight ships called caravels, swift and maneuverable, each with three masts, their white sails with big red crosses billowing before the wind. They had on board food that would last-salted cod, bacon, and biscuits, along with flour, wine, olive oil, and plenty of water, enough for a year. In his small cabin, Columbus kept several hourglasses to mark the passage of time, a compass, and an astrolabe, an instrument for calculating latitude by observing the movement of the sun.

The little fleet stopped for repairs at La Gomera in the Canary Islands, a Spanish possession off the coast of Morocco. On September 6, after praying at the parish church of San Sebastian (which still looks out over the ocean today), Columbus and his three ships set sail again, heading due west, moving now through the unknown waters of the Ocean Sea. Five weeks later, on October 12, his worried crew finally sighted land.

Columbus called the place where they landed San Salvador-the first of many Caribbean islands that he would name. The natives who greeted him called their island Guanahani. They themselves were a people known as the Tainos, the largest group of natives inhabiting the islands of what we today call the West Indies.

Columbus tells us a few things about these now-extinct people. He was impressed by their good looks and apparent robust health. "They are very well-built people, with handsome bodies and very fine faces," he wrote in his log. "Their eyes are large and very pretty. . . . These are tall people and their legs, with no exceptions, are quite straight, and none of them has a paunch." Many of the Tainos had painted their faces or their whole bodies black or white or red. And as Columbus and his men noticed right away, some of them wore gold earrings and nose rings. They offered gifts to the European visitors-parrots, wooden javelins, and balls of cotton thread.

From San Salvador, Columbus sailed on to several more islands, still believing that he was close to Japan "because all my globes and world maps seem to indicate that the island of Japan is in this vicinity." He stopped at Cuba and at Hispaniola (the island that today contains Haiti and the Dominican Republic). And he wrote enthusiastically in his journal of the lush tropical beauty of the islands, the sweet singing of birds "that might make a man wish never to leave here," and the hospitality of the people: "They gave my men bread and fish and whatever they had." And later, "They brought us all they had in this world, knowing what I wanted, and they did it so generously and willingly that it was wonderful."

The Tainos lived in large, airy wooden houses with palm roofs. They slept in cotton hammocks, sat on wooden chairs carved in elaborate animal shapes, and kept small barkless dogs and tame birds as pets. They were skilled farmers, fishermen, and boat builders who traveled from island to island in long, brightly painted canoes carved from tree trunks, each of which carried as many as 150 people.

They told Columbus that they called themselves Tainos, a word meaning "good," to distinguish themselves from the "bad" Caribs, their fierce, warlike neighbors who raided Taino villages, carried off their girls as brides, and, the Tainos insisted, ate human flesh. To fend off Carib attacks, the Tainos painted themselves red and fought back with clubs, bows and arrows, and spears propelled by throwing sticks.

The Tainos themselves were not warlike, Columbus reported to his monarchs: "They are an affectionate people, free from avarice and agreeable to everything. I certify to Your Highnesses that in all the world I do not believe there is a better people or a better country. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the softest and gentlest voices in the world and are always smiling."

A village chief gave Columbus a mask with golden eyes and large ears of gold. And the Spaniards were already aware that many of the Tainos wore gold jewelry. They kept asking where the gold came from. After much searching, they found a river on the island of Hispaniola where "the sand was full of gold, and in such quantity, that it is wonderful. . . . I named this El Rio del Oro" (The River of Gold).

Columbus built a small fort nearby and left thirty-nine men behind to collect gold samples and await the next Spanish expedition. Still believing that he had discovered unknown islands near the shores of Asia, he sailed back to Spain with some gold from Hispaniola and with ten Indians he had kidnapped so he could train them as interpreters and exhibit them at the royal court. One of the Indians died at sea.

He returned to a triumphant welcome. It was said that when Ferdinand and Isabella received him at their court in Barcelona, "there were tears in the royal eyes." They greeted Columbus as a hero, inviting him to ride with them in royal processions. A second voyage was planned. This time, the monarchs gave Columbus seventeen ships, about fifteen hundred men, and a few women to colonize the islands. He was instructed to continue his explorations, establish gold mines, install settlers, develop trade with the Indians, and convert them to Christianity.

Columbus returned to Hispaniola in the fall of 1493. He hoped to find huge amounts of gold on the island. But the mines yielded much less gold than expected, and the European crops planted by the settlers wilted in the tropical climate. Some settlers began to lord it over the Indians, stealing their possessions, abducting their wives, and seizing captives to be shipped to Spain and sold as slaves. Thousands of Tainos fled to the mountains to escape capture. Others, vowing to avenge themselves, attacked any Spaniards they found in small groups and set fire to their huts.

While Columbus was a courageous and enterprising mariner, he proved to be a poor governor, unable to control the greed of his followers. In 1496, he was called back to Spain to answer complaints about his management of the colony. When he appeared at court before Ferdinand and Isabella, he found the king and queen were still willing to support his explorations. Columbus gave them a "good sample of gold . . . and many masks, with eyes and ears of gold, and many parrots." He also presented to the monarchs "Diego," the brother of a Taino chief, who was wearing a heavy gold collar. These hints that more gold might be forthcoming encouraged Ferdinand and Isabella to send Columbus back to the Indies, this time with eight ships.

When he returned to Hispaniola on his third voyage in 1498, he found the island in turmoil, torn by rivalries and disagreements among the settlers. Many colonists, unable to make a living from the gold mines or by farming, were clamoring to return to Spain. Others, rivals of Columbus who wanted to gain control of the colony, rebelled against his rule. When word of the conflict reached Spain, the king and queen sent an emissary, Francisco de Bobadilla, to investigate the uprising and take charge of the government.

Columbus, it seems, made the mistake of arguing with the royal emissary and challenging his credentials. He was promptly arrested and with his two brothers was shipped back to Spain to face charges of wrongdoing. "Bobadilla sent me here in chains," he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella when he landed in Spain. "I swear that I do not know, nor can I think why." Though Columbus was quickly pardoned by the Spanish monarchs, who felt he had been treated too harshly, he was stripped of his right to govern the islands he had discovered, and he lost his title as Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

Even so, he was allowed to make one more voyage, sailing across the Caribbean and exploring the coast of Central America. This final expedition was cursed by bad luck. Two of Columbus's ships became so infested with termites, they sank. When he headed back to Spain, he had to beach his remaining ships at St. Ann's Bay in Jamaica, where he was marooned for a year before being rescued in the fall of 1504. He returned to Spain an ill and disappointed man.

Spanish colonists, meanwhile, had been settling in Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and other islands in the West Indies. The local Indians were put to work as forced laborers in the goldfields or on Spanish ranches. Indians who resisted were killed, sometimes with terrible brutality, or were shipped to Spain to be sold as slaves. Spanish missionaries denounced this mistreatment, but with little effect. "I have seen the greatest cruelty and inhumanity practiced on these gentle and peace-loving [native peoples]," Father Bartolomé de Las Casas would say a half century later, "without any reason except for insatiable greed, thirst, and hunger for gold."

As the number of Spanish colonists increased, the native population of the West Indies quickly declined. Tens of thousands of native people were worked to death or died of smallpox, measles, and other European diseases to which they had no immunity. As the Tainos died off, the colonists brought in black slaves from Africa to labor on ranches and in the spreading sugar-cane fields.

Within fifty years, the Tainos had ceased to exist as a distinct race of people. A few Taino words survive today in Spanish and even in English, including hammock, canoe, hurricane, savannah, barbecue, and cannibal.

Columbus died in a Spanish monastery on May 20, 1506, at the age of fifty-seven, still believing that he had found a new route to Asia, and that China and Japan lay just beyond the islands he had explored. By then, other explorers were following the sea route pioneered by the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and Europeans were already speaking of Columbus's discoveries as a "New World."

The first map of the world to show these newly discovered lands across the Ocean Sea appeared in 1507, a year after Christopher Columbus's death. The mapmaker, Martin Waldseemüller, named the New World "America," after the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, who had explored the coastline of South America and was the first to realize that it was a separate continent, not part of Asia.

Columbus wasn't the first explorer to "discover" America. His voyages were significant because they were the first to become widely known in Europe. They opened a pathway from the Old World to the New, paving the way for the European conquest and colonization of the Americas, changing life forever on both sides of the Atlantic.
Excerpted from Who Was First? Copyright © 2007 by Russell Freedman.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Most of us were taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America. Yet it is far from clear cut. There are alternative theories about who got here first - some well-documented, others much more flimsy in their scholarship. A new book probes their merits.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The first permanent British colony in the New World withstands hostile natives and hardships in its first years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Explorers had been landing in America for some time before English settlers arrived in what is now Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. But it was in that spot on the James River that English colonization began and with it, the history of America.

James I was king of England at that time, and he had granted approval for a group of businesspeople to settle in this new land. They were part of the Virginia Company, and they got the go-ahead in 1606. By December of that year, the expedition was ready. Hearing stories from Spanish explorers and others, they hoped to find gold in the New World.

In all, 214 people set sail for America. They reached it on May 14, 1607. Very soon after they landed, the English found themselves under attack from Algonquins, a Native American tribe who had been living in that area for some time and who didn't exactly welcome new settlers. The English managed to drive off the attackers, who came back every now and then. The English, however, were there to stay.

Under the leadership of Captain John Smith, the English built a fort and other buildings designed to protect their new colony. They also found friendly Native Americans, like Powhatan, who was willing to trade with them.

The terrible winter of 1609 convinced most of the settlers to abandon their new life, however. Only 60 of the 214 settlers survived this harsh winter, which was also hard on Powhatan's tribe and other neighboring Native Americans.

(It is this Powhatan, also, whose daughter Pocahontas eventually married John Rolfe.)

One of the main crops grown by the English settlers was tobacco, which they sold to Native Americans and to people back in England, beginning in 1612. Tobacco became a very popular crop because it was easy to grow and because it brought in so much money. The settlers never did find gold, but they were happy to have the money that other people were paying for tobacco.

Once the money started flowing in regularly, the Jamestown colony grew, as did other settlements in Virginia and in other states along the eastern seaboard.

America's first elected assembly, the House of Burgesses, met in Jamestown for the first time on July 30, 1619. This group boasted many famous members through the years, including Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.

The year 1619 also saw another significant development: the first arrival of black slaves on boats from Africa.

The Virginia Colony-and Jamestown, in particular-were gripped by a particularly violent series of events in 1676, known as Bacon's Rebellion. A few hundred armed colonists rebelled against the governor, who was himself backed by a few hundred armed English troops. One of the causes of the insurrection was a disagreement over land policies regarding Native Americans. Deaths, of both Englishmen and Native Americans, numbered in the dozens.

Jamestown was also the capital of Virginia and remained so until 1698.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jamestown: First English Colony in America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Explorers had been landing in America for some time before English settlers arrived in what is now Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. But it was in that spot on the James River that English colonization began and with it, the history of America.

# data[].attributes.headline
The New World.....The movie, Check out the trailer 

# data[].attributes.subject
The New World.....The movie, Check out the trailer 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kids learn about the biography and life of various world explorers from Columbus to Neil Armstrong.

# data[].attributes.headline
Look how Europeans pushed back the Native Americans (MAP)

# data[].attributes.subject
Look how Europeans pushed back the Native Americans (MAP)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jamestown Colony - The 13 Colonies for Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
They had other problems. The colonists were badly equipped to start a colony. About half of the colonists had been "gentlemen" back in England. They had little or no work experience. They knew nothing about farming or building. They had no intention of doing any of the work.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who Came to the New World? - The 13 Colonies for Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There was some truth in this. Criminals, given the choice of death or immigration chose immigration. But, for the most part, those who chose to come to the New World were people with courage, who wanted a better life for themselves and their families.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What to the Slave is the 4th of July?

As immortalized in the above Frederick Douglass quote, the United State has contended with the moral and economic problems of slavery from the beginning. Follow the timeline to learn more about the history of slavery in the United States, including the arrival of the first African slaves to America, the federal banishment of slave importation, and the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Back to back there are two crucial events for the legal status of slavery in the colonies. In Virginia in 1640, although lifelong slavery is not yet codified practice, this begins to change with the case of John Punch. Punch is a Black African indentured servant who tries to escape his indenture alongside two white European servants. All three are captured. The two Europeans are sentenced to an additional year of service. Punch is sentenced to slavery for life. This case marks the most important early legal distinction between white and Black people in the United States.

A year later Massachusetts passes new slave codes. Though these codes are mostly focused on the many situations in which one cannot take another as a slave (many Puritans opposed slavery for religious reasons), they did allow a few select circumstances in which it was permissible to make a slave of a "stranger," who was not an English subject. The colonists would soon identify this legal distinction with Black Africans and natives. This marks a new turn in the import of slaves from Africa and the Caribbean.

The city of Charles Towne (Charleston) is founded in Carolina. Charleston will become the largest slave port in the American colonies, both import and export. Carolina is one of the few colonies to have a majority enslaved population, and will have the second-highest total number of slaves within the next century. As well, upwards of 50,000 members of nearby native nations will be exported to slaveholders in the Caribbean. Carolina slaveholders are largely responsible for the expansion of slave codes.

Through the 1700s, the slave population continues to steadily grow in the British colonies, especially in the agricultural South. The slave trade does not reach its peak until after the Revolutionary War in the later half of the century. Some of the Southern states that would later become major slaveholding states, like Georgia, are not yet deeply implicated in the slave trade. The English fear that slaves might collude with the Spanish in Florida. The status of slavery becomes an issue of national political importance during the American Revolution, as the colonies are split over the future status of slavery. The issue won't be resolved until the passing of the Constitution decades later.

1787
Slavery is made illegal in the Northwest Territory. The U.S Constitution states that Congress may not ban the slave trade until 1808. In the years after the Constitution is passed, the slave trade accelerates. Many people try and acquire slaves before it becomes illegal to import them. The number of slave owners grows substantially. Illegal imports will continue for some time after the 1808 date, but this is the peak of slave voyages from Africa and the Caribbean.

By this time, all Northern states have banned slavery or begun phasing it out, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Although racism will continue to be a massive problem for free Black people in the North, the free states offer an escape from slavery for many people. The abolition movement starts to gain ground, especially around the city of Boston.

1808
Congress bans the importation of slaves from Africa. Illegal shipments will still arrive for some time, but they are uncommon. Instead, the trade of slaves within the United States becomes bigger than ever before. The market price for slaves increases, and people begin to make an industry of

1831
Nat Turner, an enslaved African American preacher, leads the most significant slave uprising in American history. He and his band of followers launch a short uprising in Southampton County, Virginia. Local militia suppress the uprising, and Turner is eventually hanged. As a consequence, Virginia institutes much stricter slave laws.

The same year, William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator, a weekly paper that advocates the complete abolition of slavery. He becomes one of the most famous figures in the abolitionist movement.

The British outlaw slavery in all of their colonies in the Atlantic and elsewhere. American slavery is rapidly becoming an outlier, and slave owners in the South work harder to entrench the system and make it persist. The British, whose textile mills drive global demand for cotton, help fuel the slave economy. During the Civil War, the British consider siding with the Confederacy to hold onto their cheap cotton.

1846
The Wilmot Proviso, introduced by Democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, attempts to ban slavery in territory gained in the Mexican War. The proviso is blocked by Southerners, but continues to inflame the debate over slavery. The Wilmot Proviso will play an important role in the lead up to the Compromise of 1850.

1850
The continuing debate whether territory gained in the Mexican War should be open to slavery is decided in the Compromise of 1850: California is admitted as a free state, Utah and New Mexico territories are left to be decided by popular sovereignty, and the slave trade in Washington, DC is prohibited. As a concession, it establishes a much stricter fugitive slave law than the original, passed in 1793. This is a major point of discontent in the North, and stokes anti-slavery sentiments.

1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. It becomes one of the most influential works in U.S. history, flying off the shelves and increasing Northern opposition to slavery. Several authors published books in the South as parodies or criticisms of Uncle Tom, but none of these are well remembered.

The term Uncle Tom has come to disparagingly refer to Black people who are too conciliatory or servile to white people. The reasons for this are a bit complex. In the original story, at least, Uncle Tom sacrifices his life to protect the whereabouts of two women who have escaped slavery.

1854
Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, establishing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The legislation repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing both states to vote on whether they are slave states or free states. Abolitionists and slavers both begin campaigns of sending settlers to the territory to influence the votes. The tensions in the territories lead to a series of violent raids and attacks across the territory lines, known as Bleeding Kansas.

1863
By the midpoint in the war, President Lincoln had expressed the belief that preserving the Union and ending slavery were the same goal. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring "that all persons held as slaves" within the Confederate states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Notably, this does not free slaves in the border states that had not joined the Confederacy. Per the Dred Scott ruling, the federal government couldn't overturn slavery in the states. Rather, the Emancipation Proclamation is issued under Lincoln's military authority as commander-in-chief, and tenuously allowed as the Confederate states are in rebellion.

1865
The Union Army accepts General Lee's surrender at Appomattox. The Civil War ends. Lincoln is assassinated. The 13th Amendment abolishes slavery throughout the United States, and it will soon be followed by the 14th and 15th amendments, which try in some small measure to guarantee the equal treatment of former slaves.

On June 19 slavery in the United States effectively ended when 250,000 slaves in Texas finally receive the news that the Civil War had ended two months earlier. This day will later be commemorated in the Black community as the holiday Juneteenth. This further means that slavery is abolished in all of North America, although the legacy of slavery will last much, much longer.

The states will quickly come up with many other tactics to suppress the Black community and to maintain an economy of underpaid Black labor, but the matter of legal slavery is resolved.

The Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume III: AD 1420-AD 1804, Edited by David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

The Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume IV: AD 1804-AD 2016 Edited Seymour Drescher, David Eltis, and Stanley L. Engerman (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

What to the Slave is the 4th of July?

As immortalized in the above Frederick Douglass quote, the United State has contended with the moral and economic problems of slavery from the beginning. Follow the timeline to learn more about the history of slavery in the United States, including the arrival of the first African slaves to America, the federal banishment of slave importation, and the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Back to back there are two crucial events for the legal status of slavery in the colonies. In Virginia in 1640, although lifelong slavery is not yet codified practice, this begins to change with the case of John Punch. Punch is a Black African indentured servant who tries to escape his indenture alongside two white European servants. All three are captured. The two Europeans are sentenced to an additional year of service. Punch is sentenced to slavery for life. This case marks the most important early legal distinction between white and Black people in the United States.

A year later Massachusetts passes new slave codes. Though these codes are mostly focused on the many situations in which one cannot take another as a slave (many Puritans opposed slavery for religious reasons), they did allow a few select circumstances in which it was permissible to make a slave of a "stranger," who was not an English subject. The colonists would soon identify this legal distinction with Black Africans and natives. This marks a new turn in the import of slaves from Africa and the Caribbean.

The city of Charles Towne (Charleston) is founded in Carolina. Charleston will become the largest slave port in the American colonies, both import and export. Carolina is one of the few colonies to have a majority enslaved population, and will have the second-highest total number of slaves within the next century. As well, upwards of 50,000 members of nearby native nations will be exported to slaveholders in the Caribbean. Carolina slaveholders are largely responsible for the expansion of slave codes.

Through the 1700s, the slave population continues to steadily grow in the British colonies, especially in the agricultural South. The slave trade does not reach its peak until after the Revolutionary War in the later half of the century. Some of the Southern states that would later become major slaveholding states, like Georgia, are not yet deeply implicated in the slave trade. The English fear that slaves might collude with the Spanish in Florida. The status of slavery becomes an issue of national political importance during the American Revolution, as the colonies are split over the future status of slavery. The issue won't be resolved until the passing of the Constitution decades later.

1787
Slavery is made illegal in the Northwest Territory. The U.S Constitution states that Congress may not ban the slave trade until 1808. In the years after the Constitution is passed, the slave trade accelerates. Many people try and acquire slaves before it becomes illegal to import them. The number of slave owners grows substantially. Illegal imports will continue for some time after the 1808 date, but this is the peak of slave voyages from Africa and the Caribbean.

By this time, all Northern states have banned slavery or begun phasing it out, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Although racism will continue to be a massive problem for free Black people in the North, the free states offer an escape from slavery for many people. The abolition movement starts to gain ground, especially around the city of Boston.

1808
Congress bans the importation of slaves from Africa. Illegal shipments will still arrive for some time, but they are uncommon. Instead, the trade of slaves within the United States becomes bigger than ever before. The market price for slaves increases, and people begin to make an industry of

1831
Nat Turner, an enslaved African American preacher, leads the most significant slave uprising in American history. He and his band of followers launch a short uprising in Southampton County, Virginia. Local militia suppress the uprising, and Turner is eventually hanged. As a consequence, Virginia institutes much stricter slave laws.

The same year, William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator, a weekly paper that advocates the complete abolition of slavery. He becomes one of the most famous figures in the abolitionist movement.

The British outlaw slavery in all of their colonies in the Atlantic and elsewhere. American slavery is rapidly becoming an outlier, and slave owners in the South work harder to entrench the system and make it persist. The British, whose textile mills drive global demand for cotton, help fuel the slave economy. During the Civil War, the British consider siding with the Confederacy to hold onto their cheap cotton.

1846
The Wilmot Proviso, introduced by Democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, attempts to ban slavery in territory gained in the Mexican War. The proviso is blocked by Southerners, but continues to inflame the debate over slavery. The Wilmot Proviso will play an important role in the lead up to the Compromise of 1850.

1850
The continuing debate whether territory gained in the Mexican War should be open to slavery is decided in the Compromise of 1850: California is admitted as a free state, Utah and New Mexico territories are left to be decided by popular sovereignty, and the slave trade in Washington, DC is prohibited. As a concession, it establishes a much stricter fugitive slave law than the original, passed in 1793. This is a major point of discontent in the North, and stokes anti-slavery sentiments.

1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. It becomes one of the most influential works in U.S. history, flying off the shelves and increasing Northern opposition to slavery. Several authors published books in the South as parodies or criticisms of Uncle Tom, but none of these are well remembered.

The term Uncle Tom has come to disparagingly refer to Black people who are too conciliatory or servile to white people. The reasons for this are a bit complex. In the original story, at least, Uncle Tom sacrifices his life to protect the whereabouts of two women who have escaped slavery.

1854
Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, establishing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The legislation repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing both states to vote on whether they are slave states or free states. Abolitionists and slavers both begin campaigns of sending settlers to the territory to influence the votes. The tensions in the territories lead to a series of violent raids and attacks across the territory lines, known as Bleeding Kansas.

1863
By the midpoint in the war, President Lincoln had expressed the belief that preserving the Union and ending slavery were the same goal. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring "that all persons held as slaves" within the Confederate states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Notably, this does not free slaves in the border states that had not joined the Confederacy. Per the Dred Scott ruling, the federal government couldn't overturn slavery in the states. Rather, the Emancipation Proclamation is issued under Lincoln's military authority as commander-in-chief, and tenuously allowed as the Confederate states are in rebellion.

1865
The Union Army accepts General Lee's surrender at Appomattox. The Civil War ends. Lincoln is assassinated. The 13th Amendment abolishes slavery throughout the United States, and it will soon be followed by the 14th and 15th amendments, which try in some small measure to guarantee the equal treatment of former slaves.

On June 19 slavery in the United States effectively ended when 250,000 slaves in Texas finally receive the news that the Civil War had ended two months earlier. This day will later be commemorated in the Black community as the holiday Juneteenth. This further means that slavery is abolished in all of North America, although the legacy of slavery will last much, much longer.

The states will quickly come up with many other tactics to suppress the Black community and to maintain an economy of underpaid Black labor, but the matter of legal slavery is resolved.

The Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume III: AD 1420-AD 1804, Edited by David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

The Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume IV: AD 1804-AD 2016 Edited Seymour Drescher, David Eltis, and Stanley L. Engerman (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As immortalized in the above Frederick Douglass quote, the United State has contended with the moral and economic problems of slavery from the beginning. Follow the timeline to learn more about the history of slavery in the United States, including the arrival of the first African slaves to America, the federal banishment of slave importation, and the abolition of slavery in the United States.

# data[].attributes.headline
Who brought the first slaves to America?

# data[].attributes.subject
Who brought the first slaves to America?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton. By the mid-19th century, America's westward expansion and the abolition movement provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody Civil War. Though the Union victory freed the nation's four million enslaved people, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the Reconstruction to the civil rights movement that emerged a century after emancipation and beyond.

When Did Slavery Start?

Hundreds of thousands of Africans, both free and enslaved, aided the establishment and survival of colonies in the Americas and the New World. However, many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619, when the privateer The White Lion brought 20 enslaved African ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the Portuguese slave ship Sao Jao Bautista.

Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans.

Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million enslaved people were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.
READ MORE: The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s. It Just Surfaced
In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia.

After the American Revolution, many colonists-particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the agricultural economy-began to link the oppression of enslaved Africans to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery's abolition.

Did you know? One of the first martyrs to the cause of American patriotism was Crispus Attucks, a former enslaved man who was killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre of 1770. Some 5,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

But after the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution of slavery, counting each enslaved individual as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress and guaranteeing the right to repossess any "person held to service or labor" (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

Cotton Gin

In the late 18th century, with the land used to grow tobacco nearly exhausted, the South faced an economic crisis, and the continued growth of slavery in America seemed in doubt.

Around the same time, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop whose production was limited by the difficulty of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers by hand.

But in 1793, a young Yankee schoolteacher named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a simple mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years, the South would transition from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region's dependence on enslaved labor.
READ MORE: 40 Years a Slave: The Extraordinary Tale of an African Prince Stolen from His Kingdom
Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region's businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Between 1774 and 1804, most of the northern states abolished slavery or started the process to abolish slavery, but the institution of slavery remained vital to the South.

Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the enslaved population in the United States nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.
READ MORE: The Shocking Photo of 'Whipped Peter' That Made Slavery's Brutality Impossible to Deny
History of Slavery

Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most lived on large plantations or small farms; many masters owned fewer than 50 enslaved people.

Landowners sought to make their enslaved completely dependent on them through a system of restrictive codes. They were usually prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement were restricted.

Many masters raped enslaved women, and rewarded obedient behavior with favors, while rebellious enslaved people were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among the enslaved (from privileged house workers and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands) helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their masters.

Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families; most owners of enslaved workers encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.
READ MORE: Enslaved Couples Faced Wrenching Separations, or Even Choosing Family Over Freedom
Slave Rebellions

Rebellions among enslaved people did occur-notably, ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822-but few were successful.

The revolt that most terrified enslavers was that led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner's group, which eventually numbered around 75 Black men, murdered some 55 white people in two days before armed resistance from local white people and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them.

Supporters of slavery pointed to Turner's rebellion as evidence that Black people were inherently inferior barbarians requiring an institution such as slavery to discipline them, and fears of similar insurrections led many southern states to further strengthen their slave codes in order to limit the education, movement and assembly of enslaved people.

Abolitionist Movement

In the North, the increased repression of southern Black people only fanned the flames of the growing abolitionist movement.

From the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength, led by free Black people such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the bestselling antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious "free-labor" argument, which held that slaveholding was regressive, inefficient and made little economic sense.

Free Black people and other antislavery northerners had begun helping enslaved people escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice, known as the Underground Railroad, gained real momentum in the 1830s. Conductors like Harriet Tubmanguided escapees on their journey North, and " stationmasters" included such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass, Secretary of State William H. Seward and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Althoughestimates vary widely, it may have helped anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 enslaved people reach freedom.

The success of the Underground Railroad helped spread abolitionist feelings in the North; it also undoubtedly increased sectional tensions, convincing pro-slavery southerners of their northern countrymen's determination to defeat the institution that sustained them.
READ MORE: How the Underground Railroad Worked
Missouri Compromise
WATCH: Missouri Compromise
America's explosive growth-and its expansion westward in the first half of the 19th century-would provide a larger stage for the growing conflict over slavery in America and its future limitation or expansion.

In 1820, a bitter debate over the federal government's right to restrict slavery over Missouri's application for statehood ended in a compromise: Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state and all western territories north of Missouri's southern border were to be free soil.

Although the Missouri Compromise was designed to maintain an even balance between slave and free states, it was able to help quell the forces of sectionalism only temporarily.

Kansas-Nebraska Act
WATCH: Kansas-Nebraska Act
In 1850, another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of slavery in territories won during the Mexican-American War.

Four years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict, leading pro- and anti-slavery forces to battle it out-with considerable bloodshed-in the new state of Kansas.

Outrage in the North over the Kansas- Nebraska Act spelled the downfall of the old Whig Party and the birth of a new, all-northern Republican Party. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court (involving an enslaved man who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him into free territory) effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by ruling that all territories were open to slavery.

John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

In 1859, two years after the Dred Scott decision, an event occurred that would ignite passions nationwide over the issue of slavery.

John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia-in which the abolitionist and 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown's sons raided and occupied a federal arsenal-resulted in the deaths of 10 people and Brown's hanging.

The insurrection exposed the growing national rift over slavery: Brown was hailed as a martyred hero by northern abolitionists but was vilified as a mass murderer in the South.

Civil War

The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America; four more would follow after the Civil War began.

Though Lincoln's anti-slavery views were well established, the central Union war aim at first was not to abolish slavery, but to preserve the United States as a nation.

Abolition became a goal only later, due to military necessity, growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the self-emancipation of many people who fled enslavement as Union troops swept through the South.
READ MORE: How Many US Presidents Owned Enslaved Workers?
When Did Slavery End?

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that "slaves within any State, or designated part of a State...in rebellion,...shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

By freeing some 3 million enslaved people in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation didn't officially end all slavery in America-that would happen with the passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War's end in 1865-some 186,000 Black soldiers would join the Union Army, and about 38,000 lost their lives.
READ MORE: What Is Juneteenth?
The Legacy of Slavery
WATCH: The Civil War and Its Legacy
The 13th Amendment, adopted on December 18, 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed Black peoples' status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period.

Previously enslaved men and women received the rights of citizenship and the "equal protection" of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment and the right to vote in the 15th Amendment, but these provisions of the Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for Black citizens to gain a foothold in the post-war economy thanks to restrictive Black codes and regressive contractual arrangements such as sharecropping.

Despite seeing an unprecedented degree of Black participation in American political life, Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating for African Americans, and the rebirth of white supremacy-including the rise of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)-had triumphed in the South by 1877.

Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era led to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which achieved the greatest political and social gains for Black Americans since Reconstruction.
PHOTOS: See America's First Memorial to its 4,400 Lynching Victims

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Slavery in America was the legal institution of enslaving human beings, mainly Africans and African Americans. Slavery existed in the United States from its founding in 1776 and became the main cause behind the country's bloody Civil War. Slavery officially ended in America with the passage of the 13th Amendment following the Civil War's end in 1865.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Pilgrims and everything you need to know about them

# data[].attributes.subject
The Pilgrims and everything you need to know about them

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The people we know as Pilgrims have become so surrounded by legend that we are tempted to forget that they were real people. Against great odds, they made the famous 1620 voyage aboard the ship Mayflower and founded Plymouth Colony, but they were also ordinary English men and women. To understand them, it is important that we look beyond the legend. This story will help you get to know these people, now known as the Pilgrims, through their first years in New England.

England was a Roman Catholic nation until 1534, when King Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547) declared himself head of a new national church called the Church of England. Although he and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603), changed some things that made the Church of England different from the Roman Catholic Church, a few people felt that the new Church retained too many practices of the Roman Church. They called for a return to a simpler faith and less structured forms of worship. In short, they wanted to return to worshipping in the way the early Christians had. Because these people wanted to purify the church, they came to be known as "Puritans." Another group, considered very radical, went even further. They thought the new Church of England was beyond reform. Called "Separatists," they demanded the formation of new, separate church congregations. This opinion was very dangerous; in England in the 1600s, it was illegal to be part of any church other than the Church of England.

The Separatist church congregation that established Plymouth Colony in New England was originally centered around the town of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, England. Members included the young William Bradford and William Brewster. Like others who refused to follow the Church of England's teachings, some of them were harassed, fined or even sent to jail. When they felt they could no longer suffer these difficulties in England, they chose to flee to the Dutch Netherlands. There, they could practice their own religion without fear of persecution from the English government or its church.

The Pilgrims in Holland (the Netherlands)

Although they had religious freedom, life in the Netherlands was not easy. The Separatists had to leave their homeland and friends to live in a foreign country without a clear idea of how they would support themselves. The congregation stayed briefly in Amsterdam and then moved to the city of Leiden. There they remained for the next 11 or 12 years. Most found work in the cloth trades, while others were carpenters, tailors and printers. Their lives required hard work. Even young children had to work. Some older children were tempted by the Dutch culture and left their families to become soldiers and sailors. Their parents feared that they would lose their identity as English people. To make matters worse, the congregation worried that another war might break out between the Dutch and Spanish. They decided to move again.

The Move to America

After careful thought, the congregation decided to leave Holland to establish a farming village in the northern part of the Virginia Colony. At that time, Virginia extended from Jamestown in the south to the mouth of the Hudson River in the north, so the Pilgrims planned to settle near present-day New York City. There they hoped to live under the English government, but they would worship in their own, separate church. Because their own money wasn't enough to establish their village, they entered into an agreement with financial investors. The company of investors would provide passage for the colonists and supply them with tools, clothing and other supplies. The colonists in turn would work for the company, sending natural resources such as fish, timber and furs back to England. All assets, including the land and the Pilgrims' houses, would belong to the company until the end of seven years when all of it would be divided among each of the investors and colonists. The colonists and investors had many disagreements, but eventually the Pilgrims were able to leave Europe for America.

The entire congregation could not come to America together. Those who could settle their affairs in Leiden went first while the greater number, including their pastor John Robinson, remained behind. The congregation purchased a small ship, Speedwell, to transport them across the sea and to use for fishing and trading in America. At Southampton, a port in England, they were joined by a group of English colonists who had been gathered by the investors. Speedwell and Mayflower - a ship rented by the investors - departed for America together. After twice turning back to England because Speedwell leaked, they were forced to leave the ship. As a result, many families were divided when some passengers had to be turned back for lack of space. A month after first leaving England, on September 6, 1620, Mayflower set out alone with 102 passengers.

Arrival at Plymouth

Mayflower arrived in New England on November 11, 1620 after a voyage of 66 days. Although the Pilgrims had originally intended to settle near the Hudson River in New York, dangerous shoals and poor winds forced the ship to seek shelter at Cape Cod. Because it was so late in the year and travel around Cape Cod was proving difficult, the passengers decided not to sail further and to remain in New England. It was here, in Cape Cod Bay, that most of the adult men on the ship signed the document that we know as the Mayflower Compact. It laid the foundation for the community's government.

A party of the most able men began exploring the area to find a suitable place to settle. After several weeks, the exploring party arrived at what appeared to be an abandoned Wampanoag community. The plentiful water supply, good harbor, cleared fields, and location on a hill made the area a favorable place for settlement.

Mayflower arrived in Plymouth Harbor on December 16, 1620 and the colonists began building their town. While houses were being built, the group continued to live on the ship. Many of the colonists fell ill. They were probably suffering from scurvy and pneumonia caused by a lack of shelter in the cold, wet weather. Although the Pilgrims were not starving, their sea-diet was very high in salt, which weakened their bodies on the long journey and during that first winter. As many as two or three people died each day during their first two months on land. Only 52 people survived the first year in Plymouth. When Mayflower left Plymouth on April 5, 1621, she was sailed back to England by only half of her crew.

Building a Town & Relationships with Native People

Although they occasionally caught glimpses of Native People, it wasn't until four months after their arrival that the colonists met and communicated with them. In March 1621, they made a treaty of mutual protection with the Pokanoket Wampanoag leader, Ousamequin (also known as Massasoit to the Pilgrims). The treaty had six points. Neither party would harm the other. If anything was stolen, it would be returned and the offending person returned to his own people for punishment. Both sides agreed to leave their weapons behind when meeting, and the two groups would serve as allies in times of war. Squanto, a Wampanoag man who had been taken captive by English sailors and lived for a time in London, came to live with the colonists and instructed them in growing Indian corn.

In the fall of 1621, the colonists marked their first harvest with a three-day celebration. Massasoit and 90 of his men joined the English for feasting and entertainment. In the 1800s this famous celebration became the basis for the story of the First Thanksgiving.

Over the next six years, more English colonists arrived and many of the people who had to stay behind in England or Holland when Mayflower left England were able to join their families. By 1627, Plymouth Colony was stable and comfortable. Harvests were good and families were growing. In 1627, about 160 people lived in Plymouth Colony.

Why "Pilgrims"?

A pilgrim is a person who goes on a long journey often with a religious or moral purpose, and especially to a foreign land. After the Mayflower arrived, the first baby born was a boy. His parents (William and Susannah White) named him Peregrine - a word which means travelling from far away and also means pilgrim. The writer of Mourt's Relation in 1622 refers to the Plymouth Colonists as pilgrims. Governor William Bradford calls the Plymouth settlers pilgrims when he writes about their departure from Leiden, Holland to come to America: "They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country; and quieted their spirits." Governor Bradford also wrote a poem in which he refers to himself as a pilgrim.

'Pilgrim' became (by the early 1800s at least) the popular term applied to all the Mayflower passengers - and even to other people arriving in Plymouth in those early years - so that the English people who settled Plymouth in the 1620s are generally called the Pilgrims.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The people we know as Pilgrims have become so surrounded by legend that we are tempted to forget that they were real people. Against great odds, they made the famous 1620 voyage aboard the ship Mayflower and founded Plymouth Colony, but they were also ordinary English men and women.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
French Immigration to America: History for kids ***

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find facts and timeline of French Immigration to America for kids. Reasons and history of French Immigration to America. Statistics of French Immigration to America for kids, children, homework and schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dutch Immigration to America: History for kids ***

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find facts and timeline of Dutch Immigration to America for kids. Reasons and history of Dutch Immigration to America. Statistics of Dutch Immigration to America for kids, children, homework and schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Thirteen American Colonies

Part 1: Coming to America

The first colonies in North America were along the eastern coast. from Spain, France, Sweden, Holland, and England claimed land beginning in the 17th century. The struggle for control of this land would continue for more than a hundred years.

The first permanent settlement in North America was the English colony at Jamestown , in 1607, in what is now Virginia. John Smith and company had come to stay. The Pilgrims followed, in 1620, and set up a colony at Plymouth , in what is now Massachusetts.

Other English colonies sprang up all along the Atlantic coast, from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. Swedish and Dutch colonies took shape in and around what is now New York.

As more and more people arrived in the New World, more and more disputes arose over territory. Many wars were fought in the 1600s and 1700s. Soon, the two countries with the largest presence were England and France.

The two nations fought for control of North America in what Americans call the French and Indian War (1754-1763). England won the war and got control of Canada, as well as keeping control of all the English colonies.

By this time, the English colonies numbered 13. They were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Thirteen American Colonies Part 1: Coming to America The first colonies in North America were along the eastern coast. from Spain, France, Sweden, Holland, and England claimed land beginning in the 17th century. The struggle for control of this land would continue for more than a hundred years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Regions of the Thirteen Colonies - BrainPOP

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn the features that defined the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies, and set the foundation for America!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Check out this site for facts and information about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. History of the US via the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. Facts and information about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Colonial America for Kids: Food and Cooking

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kids learn about food people ate and cooked during Colonial America including farming, hunting, fishing, meals, and how they prepared for winter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Colonial America for Kids: Women's Clothing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kids learn about women's clothing during Colonial America including the gown, petticoats, shift, stay, shoes, ruffles, cloak, apron, mob caps, hair styles, and hats.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kids learn about the history of colonial America. Educational articles for teachers, students, and schools including the thirteen colonies, culture, daily life, clothing, housing, events, people, religion, Jamestown, Plymouth Colony, and fun facts.