So, ah, picture this. It's 1758. A young George
Washington is just, he desperately wants to win
this local election for the House of Burgesses
down in Virginia. And, you know, so he does what
literally any self -respecting founding father
would do. He goes out and buys... 39 gallons
of rum. Naturally. Naturally. He throws this
massive, just completely chaotic party for the
local voters. And he wins the election by an
absolute landslide. It's a great story. It really
is. And, you know, welcome to the deep dive,
everyone, because today we are taking you way
past those traditional textbook paintings, you
know, like the ones with the perfectly orchestrated
Symphony of Men and pristine powdered wigs standing
in those tidy little rows exactly like they're
all just reading from the exact same sheet music
of liberty and unity We are we're tearing up
that mythology today to uncover the actual complex
incredibly diverse and well rebellious Society
that laid the real groundwork for the United
States It is just a phenomenal story when you
look the actual historical records you've gathered
for us to discuss but I mean, to truly understand
it, we really have to look at the entire ledger.
We're examining a very wide range of human experiences
here. And some of the mechanics of how this early
society function are, frankly, incredibly dark.
Which brings us to the core mission of today's
Deep Dive. To really understand this era, we
have to look impartially at the historical accounts
you've shared with us. And that means confronting
some brutal realities, like chattel slavery,
the colonial expansion that deliberately displaced
Native American populations, and the intense,
bloody political violence between patriots and
loyalists. Right, and it's important to state
that we are not here to judge or endorse any
of these historical viewpoints or actions. Absolutely
not. Our job today is just to help you, the listener,
understand the mechanics of how this society
actually functioned, exactly as it was recorded
in the history. Okay, let's unpack this. Because
we usually think of the 13 colonies as this one
big unified monolith. But the records break them
down into three distinct regions that really
could not have been more different in their motives.
Yeah. Totally different worlds, really. I like
to think of them as three totally different types
of modern startup hubs. Oh, I like that framing.
How are you defining the different hubs? Well,
so first you have the New England colonies. That's
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire. And looking at their origins, they
operate... almost exactly like a strict, ideologically
-driven, non -profit organization. Right, because
of the religious aspect. Exactly. You have the
Pilgrims arriving in 1620, and then the Puritans
establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in
1628. They didn't cross an entire ocean looking
for quick cash. No, not at all. They literally
moved to build a completely new, ideologically
pure society, because they believed the Church
of England's corporate culture was deeply corrupted.
And, you know, like many radical, ideologically
-driven organizations, they were incredibly strict
about their mission statement. Well, yeah. I
mean, they were seeking a religious haven for
themselves, but they had absolutely zero interest
in religious tolerance for anyone else. Wait,
really? None? Basically none. If you didn't adhere
to the exact Puritan doctrine, you were pushed
out. Roger Williams is the perfect example of
this in the sources. Oh, the Rhode Island guy?
Exactly. He had to flee Massachusetts in 1636,
and he founded Rhode Island specifically because
he was banished for preaching the separation
of church and state. Oh. Yeah, he essentially
had to go found a rival splinter startup just
to survive. That is wild. OK, so that's your
rigid nonprofit hub. Then you pan down to the
southern colonies, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia.
If New England is a nonprofit, the South is a
mass. profit -obsessed agricultural conglomerate.
100%. Right. Janestown, the very first permanent
English settlement in 1607. It wasn't founded
by religious zealots. It was funded by the London
Virginia Company. They were investors looking
for gold. Exactly. And when they didn't find
precious metals, they executed this massive corporate
pivot to Teco as a cash crop. The entire region
was basically built from the ground up for aggressive
economic expansion. And the Carolinas operated
on a very similar wavelength. That province was
a private venture financed by English Lords proprietors.
Sounds fancy. It was. To use your startup analogy,
imagine the King of England literally giving
a massive piece of North America to eight of
his wealthy friends to just run as a private
profit -making fiefdom. That's insane. It is.
They were heavily export -oriented from day one,
focusing entirely on extracting maximum wealth
through cash crops. So we have the zealots and
the agricultural conglomerates and then Wedged
right in between them, you have the middle colonies.
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware.
Merchants. Yeah, this region feels like a chaotic,
incredibly diverse international trading floor.
I mean, New York wasn't even English to begin
with. Right, it was New Netherland. Yes. Founded
by the Dutch West India Company specifically
for the global fur trade. The Swedes even had
a colony in Delaware for a while. It was this
polyglot, highly commercial melting pot environment.
Extremely diverse for the time. But see, here
is the mechanism I don't quite understand. If
they were so fundamentally different in their
business models, strict religion, massive agriculture,
and international trade, how did they ever function
under one single empire? Well, the secret to
their coexistence was that London didn't actually
try to force them into a single uniform business
model. Really? They just let them be? Sort of,
yeah. Beginning in 1660, the colonies were theoretically
governed from London through a committee of the
Privy Council. It was called the Board of Trade
and Plantations. OK. But practically speaking,
there was a massive ocean between them. A letter
took months to cross the Atlantic, so their destinies
were dictated much more by their initial charters
and their local geography rather than micromanagement
from the Crown. Makes sense. Geography is destiny,
right? Exactly. New England's rocky soil was
terrible for massive plantations, but their deep
harbors and dense forests made them a total powerhouse
for timber and shipbuilding, and the southern
climate was perfectly engineered for cultivating
tobacco, rice, and indigo. while the middle colonies
leveraged deepwater ports like Philadelphia and
New York to become the merchant middlemen. The
British crown Allowed all these different forms
of local government provincial proprietary Charter
to just exist simultaneously because they were
all successfully funneling wealth back to the
Empire So the overarching parent company basically
ignored the day -to -day operations as long as
the quarterly profits kept rolling in precisely
the dynamic and You know regardless of whether
they were building ships in Boston or growing
tobacco in Virginia all three of these regions
shared one undeniable characteristic. An explosive,
almost unprecedented population boom. Oh, yeah.
The demographic data you shared is just staggering
to look at. I mean, in 1625, the estimated colonial
population was less than 2 ,000 people. But by
1775, just on the eve of the revolution, that
number had skyrocketed to 2 .4 million. It's
a phenomenal rate of growth, and it requires
us to look at the daily realities of colonial
life. It wasn't just birth rates. What else was
it? Well, if you could survive the initial brutal
ways of colonial diseases, things like malaria,
diphtheria, yellow fever. Your life expectancy
was actually significantly better in the colonies
than it was back in Europe. No way. Really? Yeah.
Land was abundant, food was plentiful, and the
cities weren't yet choked with the industrial
pollution of London. That's wild. And the ethnic
makeup completely shatters that textbook myth,
too. By 1775, the English only made up about
49 % of the population. You had massive influxes
of Germans pouring into Pennsylvania. the Scots
-Irish pushing out onto the dangerous Western
frontiers, and the Dutch maintaining a really
strong cultural hold in New York. It was incredibly
diverse. But when we look at this demographic
data, it also reveals the darkest engine of this
prosperity. Because by 1775... 20 % of the colonial
population was African, and chattel slavery was
a legal practiced institution in all 13 colonies.
Yes. The historical records point out that about
287 ,000 enslaved people were imported into the
13 colonies over a 160 year period. Wow. And
there's a grim mechanical difference here compared
to the sugar colonies in the Caribbean or Brazil.
How so? Well, in those places, the labor conditions
were so universally lethal that the enslaved
populations had to be continually replenished
through the transatlantic trade. In North America,
the enslaved population grew rapidly through
natural reproduction. And the legal framework
the colonists built to ensure that reproduction
benefited those agricultural conglomerates is
just chilling. It really is. The historical notes
cite William M. Wychick, who outlines the four
specific legal characteristics of American slavery
that these colonies engineered. Right, let's
go through those. So first, it was defined as
a lifetime condition. Second, it was based entirely
on racial identification. Third, legally, an
enslaved person was defined as chattel personal,
meaning they were treated as movable property,
basically no different than a plow or a horse.
But the fourth characteristic is, frankly, the
most insidious. It was made heritable through
the mother. That specific legal innovation is
crucial to understand. By making slavery heritable
through the mother rather than the father, as
was actually common in English common law, the
plantation owners guaranteed themselves a perpetual
self -replenishing labor force. Any child born
to an enslaved woman was automatically born into
slavery and thereby became the property of the
enslaver, regardless of who the father was. It
was a cold, calculated legal mechanism designed
to secure generational wealth for the elites.
Which leads me to a glaring, almost philosophical
paradox. How could a society that was so visibly
obsessed with the rights of Englishmen, with
religious freedom and liberty, simultaneously
invent and codify such a brutal system of absolute
unfreedom? What's fascinating here is how the
historical accounts explain this transition through
the harsh lens of labor economics. Okay, unpack
that. In the early days, these colonies relied
heavily on indentured servants from Europe. These
were people who sold their labor for a set period
of years in exchange for passage across the Atlantic.
Right, the classic indentured servitude model.
Exactly. But as economic conditions slowly improved
in Europe and the intense religious persecutions
began to ease up a bit, European labor became
incredibly difficult to recruit. Ah, so the labor
pool dried up exactly at the moment when the
demand for labor was skyrocketing. That is the
exact friction point. The southern colonies had
successfully engineered these vast export oriented
plantation economies. And tobacco, rice, and
indigo are incredibly labor intensive crops to
cultivate. So to fuel this massive economic engine
without a steady supply of European servants,
the colonists turned entirely to the transatlantic
slave trade. The paradox you mentioned, where
the profound freedom and prosperity of some was
built directly on the absolute subjugation of
others, That became the foundational economic
reality of the American colonies. And we have
to remember this massive labor driven economic
engine wasn't just enriching the colonists. It
was feeding an entire global empire. Absolutely.
So you have these vastly different colonies generating
unprecedented wealth. But London isn't just going
to sit back and let the colonists keep all that
profit. I mean, they needed a system to siphon
that wealth back across the Atlantic. Which brings
us to the British economic policy of mercantilism.
Right. was the reigning economic philosophy of
the 18th century. The core tenet of mercantilism
is that global wealth is finite. Therefore, a
nation's power depends on accumulating as much
gold and silver as possible by exporting more
than it imports. Let's bring back our startup
metaphor for a second. If the colonies were the
startups, Mercantilism was basically London acting
as this predatory venture capital firm with a
terrible corporate non -compete clause. That's
a great way to look at it. Right. The basic idea
was that colonial trade had to be exclusively
concentrated within the British Empire. The colonies
were treated as captive markets. They were forced
to supply all their raw materials, timber, fur,
tobacco directly to Britain at a discount. Then
they were legally prohibited from manufacturing
their own goods. forcing them to buy finished
products back from Britain at a massive markup.
It was a deliberately closed loop. The British
Parliament even passed a series of laws called
the Navigation Acts to enforce this. I've heard
of those. Yeah. The mechanics of these acts were
very strict. Certain valuable colonial goods
could only be shipped on British vessels. They
had to be manned by British crews and sold exclusively
to British merchants. It was entirely designed
to block the Americans from trading with the
French, the Spanish, or the Dutch. But, I mean,
the colonists didn't just passively accept this
closed loop, did they? They looked at the Navigation
Acts and essentially turned smuggling into the
ultimate colonial side hustle. Oh, smuggling
became an absolute way of life. The colonists
realized there were incredibly profitable trade
partners sitting right next door in the Caribbean.
Right. So Boston and New York merchants started
illegally trading colonial foodstuffs and wood
for French and Dutch West Indian sugar and coffee.
They built vast illicit fortunes simply by circumventing
London's mercantilist policies. And the British
government's response to this massive open secret
smuggling ring is where the friction really starts
to spark. Yeah, the crackdown. To fight the smugglers,
royal officials started utilizing what were called
writs of assistance. And the mechanics of these
are Very controversial. They weren't like modern
search warrants where you have to prove probable
cause to a judge for a specific location. They
were open -ended general warrants. A British
customs official could just search any ship,
kick down the door of any warehouse or tear through
any private home at any time looking for smuggled
goods. Just imagine the psychological impact
of that. You are a wealthy, influential merchant
in Boston and suddenly a low -level royal appointee
has the absolute legal authority to ransack your
property without any specific evidence. It's
crazy. The colonists viewed this as a massive,
tyrannical overreach that completely violated
their rights under English common law. The records
highlight a specific moment in 1761. A Boston
lawyer named James Otis fought against these
writs in court, and he argued that an act against
the Constitution is void, even if passed by Parliament.
A bold claim at the time. Very bold. He actually
lost the case, but a young John Adams was sitting
in the courtroom taking notes. Adams later reflected
on Otis's passionate argument, writing, then
and there the child independence was born. If
we connect this to the bigger picture, the distinction
James Otis and the colonists were making is critical.
The historical data notes that the colonists
generally didn't actually mind the British regulating
their external trade on the high seas. Wait,
they didn't? No, they understood they were part
of a broader empire and accepted the Navigation
Acts in theory, even if they smuggled to avoid
them anyway. Uh, okay. What they vehemently opposed
was internal overreach, when the enforcement
mechanism physically entered their hometowns,
the local businesses, and their private homes.
They were fiercely protective of their local
economy and their personal property. And you
can see how that fierce protection of their own
money naturally bled into their uniquely American
brand of local politics. Yes. The political culture
that developed in these 13 colonies was entirely
distinct from what existed back in Europe. This
part of the research completely blew my mind.
I mean, when we think of early democracy, we
usually picture these highly dignified philosophical
debates in grand halls. Right. The powdered wigs
again. Exactly. But the records describe early
American elections as absolute chaotic carnivals.
To understand the mechanics of why these elections
were so wild, you really have to look at how
voting was tied to land ownership. OK, break
that down. In Britain, The political system was
entirely dominated by a hereditary aristocracy.
Land was scarce, so the wealthy gentry owned
almost everything. As a result, roughly 19 out
of 20 British men were politically controlled
by their landlords and had no right to vote.
19 out of 20. Yes. The British insisted that
colonial voters also had to hold an interest
in society to vote, which legally meant owning
real estate. But the British accidentally broke
their own system because of the geography. In
the colonies, land wasn't scarce. It was cheap
and violently abundant, usually taken from native
populations. Exactly. Because land was so accessible,
instead of a tiny 5 % fraction of men being able
to vote, you had between 50 and 80 % of white
men owning enough property to be fully eligible
to vote. The voter base was massive compared
to Europe. Massive. And there were no hereditary
aristocrats in America. No. However, The political
culture still emphasized a concept historians
call deference. The men who ran for political
office were almost always the local wealthy elites
like the successful merchants or the massive
plantation owners. But here's the catch. Because
the voting base was so incredibly wide, those
wealthy elites still had to appeal directly to
the common dirt farming landowner. There were
no organized political parties yet to manage
campaigns, just these sort of ad hoc coalitions.
So election days became these massive rural parties.
Everyone came to town to eat, drink, and gamble.
That was fun. Right. Which brings us right back
to our opening story. George Washington knew
he had to swill the planters with bumbo, bumbo
being rum. He literally bought his way into office
with 39 gallons of alcohol. Here's where it gets
really interesting. Does this mean the elites
were actually terrified of the common farmer?
Was early democracy just one big frat party to
keep the masses happy? Well, it's a bit more
nuanced than that, but you were hitting on a
profound power dynamic. Elections were the one
day of the year where the traditional social
restraints were completely relaxed. OK. For that
single day, the wealthy elite and the common
farmer were effectively equal. It was a uniquely
American blend of aristocratic leadership and
glass roots populism. The elites held the offices,
but they served at the pleasure of a very loud,
very demanding electorate who literally voted
by shouting their choices aloud in the town square.
If you didn't buy them rum and listen to their
grievances, they would shout for your opponent.
Okay, so let's put all these pieces together.
You have this massive population of fiercely
independent, self -governing people. They are
used to running their own local startups, smuggling
goods past the authorities, breeding their own
captive labor forces, and shouting down their
politicians in the town square. A volatile mix.
Very. And then, suddenly, they are forced to
deal with the heavy hand of the British military.
Which brings us to the real catalyst for the
revolution. Right. That tipping point was the
French and Indian War, which raged from 1754
to 1763. Which was actually just the North American
theater of the massive global conflict known
as the Seven Years War. Yes. The sources note
a fascinating reversal here. Previous colonial
wars always started over in Europe and eventually
bled over into the colonies. But this specific
war started in America, in the Ohio Valley, and
spread outward to engulf Europe. It was an existential
conflict between Britain and France for control
of the continent. And crucially, it forced these
13 disparate squabbling colonies to truly collaborate
for the very first time. Wow. Really the first
time. Pretty much. Colonial militias had to fight
side by side with the professional British army.
Men travel hundreds of miles across the continent
fighting alongside people from entirely different
colonies, which began to foster a very nascent
shared sense of being American. That makes a
lot of sense. It's also where colonial officers,
most notably George Washington, received elite
military training directly from British generals.
So Britain and the colonies win the war together.
Francis Bush out. And Britain gains control of
all this incredible territory east of the Mississippi
River. You would think everyone would be thrilled.
You would think. But the war left the British
Empire in massive crippling debt. So the British
Parliament looks over at the colonies and decides,
hey, we just spent an absolute fortune deploying
our army to defend you. It's time you chipped
in. The tax era begins. Yeah. They start passing
taxes. They passed the Sugar Act in 1764, the
Stamp Act in 1765, the Townsend Acts, and the
Tea Act. Which provoked absolute outrage across
the colonies. Remember, the colonists had spent
a century forming their own local assemblies
and managing their own internal affairs. They
immediately insisted on the principle of no taxation
without representation. Let me play devil's advocate
for a second here, looking at the British data.
From London's perspective, the British elite
were the most heavily taxed people in Europe
at the time. Very true. They looked across the
ocean at the Americans who were incredibly wealthy,
generally healthier and barely paying any imperial
taxes at all. Weren't the British entirely justified
in asking for a little return on investment to
pay for the army that literally just saved the
colonies from the French? This raises an important
question, and it's exactly how the parliament
in London viewed it. It highlights a tragic unbridgeable
disconnect between the two sides. How so? Well,
the British felt the colonists were behaving
like ungrateful, rebellious children. But the
colonists felt they had already paid for the
war in blood. They had sent their own sons to
die in a conflict they felt ultimately served
London's imperial interests more than their own
local security. Furthermore, they drew a hard
line between external tariffs, which they accepted,
and internal taxes. Like the Stamp Act. Exactly.
When Britain passed the Stamp Act, which placed
a direct tax on every piece of printed paper
used inside the colonies, from legal documents
to playing cards, the colonists saw it as a fundamental
violation of their rights as English subjects
to be taxed only by their own elected representatives.
And that philosophical disconnect rapidly escalated
into physical violent action. It did. You get
massive boycotts of British manufactured goods.
You get the Sons of Liberty executing the Boston
Tea Party in 1773, destroying thousands of pounds
of East India Company tea to protest the Tea
Act. And Britain responds with the sledgehammer.
Intolerable acts. Yeah. They practically stripped
Massachusetts of its right to self -government,
closed the port of Boston, and allowed British
soldiers to be quartered in civilian homes. And,
you know, it shows how quickly loyal, prosperous
subjects can turn into violent revolutionaries
when their local autonomy and economic engines
are threatened. By 1774, the colonies convened
the first Continental Congress. Right. It's important
to note they aren't actually asking for full
independence yet. They are asserting that they
owe allegiance to the king, but they completely
reject Parliament's authority to legislate their
internal lives. But London isn't willing to negotiate
with startups they view as subordinates. The
British military governor in Massachusetts sends
troops to seize Patriot arsenals, which leads
directly to the battles of Lexington and Concord
in April 1775. The shooting starts. There's no
going back then. No. The Second Continental Congress
forms the Continental Army, puts George Washington
in charge, and by July 4, 1776, they issue the
Declaration of Independence. The chaotic, disparate
hubs had officially merged into a unified rebellion.
And ultimately, with massive financial and naval
assistance from France and, to a lesser extent,
Spain and the Dutch Republic, they managed to
defeat the British military, securing their formal
independence with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
So what does this all mean for you and me today?
When we look back at the actual records, it's
abundantly clear that the 13 colonies weren't
born as a unified nation with a single pristine
vision of liberty for all. Not even close. They
were a messy, diverse... rum drinking, smuggling
group of distinct regions. They operated on completely
different business models. They relied heavily
on the brutal engineered machinery of chattel
slavery, and they fiercely protected their local
power. Very fierce. They were only pushed together
into a unified front by intense economic pressure
from their imperial parent company and a shared
deep seated desire for local self -governance.
It is a profound, messy transformation. And to
leave you with one final fascinating fact from
the historical data that I think puts this entire
narrative into a wild perspective. Oh, late on
me. We always focus on the 13 colonies that rebelled.
But in 1776, Britain actually had another dozen
colonial possessions in the Americas. Wait, really?
A whole dozen more? Yes. Places like Jamaica,
Bermuda, the Bahamas, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland,
and even East and West Florida. These colonies
experienced the exact same British empire, they
operated under the exact same mercantilist policies,
and they answered to the exact same parliament.
Yet when the shooting started, they stayed completely
loyal to the British crown throughout the entire
Revolutionary War. That is wild to think about.
It invites you to explore a really compelling
historical puzzle on your own. What was it about
those specific 13 colonies that made them the
rebellious exception? rather than the imperial
rule. It certainly makes you look at that perfect
powdered wig symphony in a totally different
way. Next time you picture the founding of the
country, don't think of a neatly trimmed, predictable
lawn. Think of that overgrown, chaotic, wildly
diverse garden that somehow managed to produce
a revolution. Thank you for joining us on this
deep dive. Keep questioning the myths and we'll
catch you next time.