Crash Course US History #2, Colonizing America — notes and timestamps

Updated 2026-10-11 · Video: CrashCourse, published 2013-02-07 · 12 min

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The second episode of John Green’s Crash Course US History takes on the founding story most Americans learn first: brave English people sailing across the ocean for religious freedom. Green’s answer, in 12 minutes, is “partly true”. The first lasting English colony, Jamestown in Virginia, was about money and tobacco, and it was built on the work of indentured servants and, from 1619, enslaved Africans. Only then does he turn to New England: the Pilgrims, Squanto, Thanksgiving, and the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay with their city upon a hill. These notes follow the episode’s order, mark the jokes, and add short corrections where the quick version leaves something out. Episode 1 (Native America and the Spanish) is useful background but not required.

Key takeaways

The religious-freedom founding story is only part of the picture. It fits a minority of settlers in New England, not the first English colony (0:43).
Jamestown (1607) was a business venture. The Virginia Company wanted gold, found none, and lost most of its colonists to hunger and disease (1:37).
Tobacco saved Virginia and shaped it. Profits drove the headright system, a society of a few landowners over many servants, a five-to-one ratio of men to women, and the arrival of enslaved Africans in 1619 (3:03).
Maryland (1632) was a proprietary colony, granted to one man, Cecilius Calvert, and open to Catholics (4:38).
Pilgrims and Puritans are not the same. Pilgrims were Separatists who left the Church of England; Puritans wanted to purify it. Plymouth survived its first winter only with Native help (5:30).
Massachusetts Bay put the community first. Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” sermon is about collective duty, and it later became a source for American exceptionalism (8:15).
Puritan self-government was not equality. Only church members could vote, dissenters like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were banished, and slavery was legal (9:51).

Chapter notes

0:00 – 0:43 The myth version of the founding

Green opens by telling the founding story the way a proud, careless textbook might: plucky English people strike a blow for religious freedom, land in an empty country, and invent baseball and Star Trek. Every part of that sentence is wrong on purpose. The land was not “barren” or empty, as episode 1 showed, and the settlers’ motives were mixed. “Me from the past” thinks this means an easy A, which is the setup for the rest of the episode taking the story apart.

John Green at his desk with a globe, a George Washington cut-out and a toy eagle, with a Pilgrim hat drawn on the chalkboard behind him — 0:08 — The set, now with a Pilgrim hat on the chalkboard. The hat signals the subject, and also the myth that the episode is about to complicate.

Painting of a small boat of settlers rowing toward a snowy rocky shore under a pink sunset sky, with a ship anchored in the distance — 0:21 — A romantic landing scene of the kind found in older textbooks. It shows the "barren land containing no people" version of events, the exact claim episode 1 disproved.

Black-and-white still of Nichelle Nichols as Uhura on the bridge of the starship Enterprise — 0:26 — Uhura from *Star Trek*, for the joke that English colonists "invented" it. Pure humor; skip ahead if you are short on time.

0:43 – 1:37 The Pilgrims were not first

The usual story has the country founded by people escaping religious persecution. Green says that is true of the relatively small group who settled Massachusetts Bay, but those Pilgrims and Puritans were not the first people here, not the first Europeans, and not even the first English. The first English colonists went to Virginia, and they came to get rich.

Nineteenth-century painting of Pilgrims kneeling and praying on the deck of a ship, with a rainbow at the left — 0:46 — Pilgrims at prayer before sailing. Paintings like this, made two centuries later, turned the Pilgrims into the face of American origins.

Sepia engraving of a crowd of Pilgrims landing from a boat on a stormy shore — 0:52 — Another heroic landing image, this one of New England. Green's point is that New England was a later and smaller part of English colonization than this image suggests.

Green adds an aside: Virginia was named for Elizabeth I’s reputation as the “Virgin Queen”. Then the first real history of the episode: before Jamestown there were two failed English attempts in the region. The famous one is Roanoke Island, sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh, whose colonists vanished and left behind only the word “Croatoan” carved into wood. For context: Raleigh organized the voyages but did not go himself, and the lost colony was planted in 1587. When a supply ship finally returned in 1590 it found the settlement abandoned. “Croatoan” was the name of a nearby island and its people, so the colonists may have moved there; their fate is still unknown.

Old engraved map labelled Virginia, with an inset of Powhatan at the upper left and a Native figure at the right — 1:05 — John Smith's map of Virginia, with the Powhatan leader in the corner inset. The land the English called Virginia was already the territory of the Powhatan chiefdom.

Green holding up a gilt-framed portrait of Queen Elizabeth I in an elaborate gown with ships in the background — 1:12 — A portrait of Elizabeth I, for the joke about Virginia being named for her "supposed chastity". The ships behind her are a reminder that England's sea power was growing just as its colonies began.

Painted aerial reconstruction of a small fortified settlement on a riverbank with ships moored offshore — 1:22 — A reconstruction of Jamestown on the James River. The site was chosen to be defensible from Spanish ships, not for its healthy ground, which turned out to be swampy.

Engraving of a small group of settlers beside rough log buildings at the edge of a forest by the water — 1:29 — A settlement of rough log buildings, standing in for the failed early colonies. Small, poorly supplied and dependent on ships from home, they were easy to lose.

Engraving of English settlers looking at the word CROATOAN carved into a tree trunk — 1:35 — The Roanoke mystery: the word "Croatoan" carved into wood. Because Croatoan was a real place nearby, it reads more like a forwarding address than a riddle.

1:37 – 3:03 Jamestown: gold, hunger, and servants

Jamestown, founded in 1607, was run by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company meant to make money for its investors. It never did. The settlers expected gold like Spain had found further south, so the colony brought too many goldsmiths and jewelers and too few farmers. Captain John Smith, who soon took charge, complained that they would rather starve than farm. Half the colonists died in the first year. Hundreds more arrived, but after the “Starving Time” winter of 1609–10 only 65 were left. Word got around that the colony’s first-year survival rate was about one in five, and recruiting became hard.

Green at his desk beside a pop-up graphic of a gold bar — 1:45 — The gold bar the colonists hoped to find. It never existed in Virginia, and the expectation shaped who was sent: craftsmen to work gold instead of farmers to grow food.

Pop-art card of a bearded man in a red coat on a starred background, captioned Fig 4.1 John Smith, with a 'Merica Moment speech box — 1:59 — The "'Merica Moment" card for John Smith. Smith is famous for his own adventure stories; for this episode, remember him as the leader who forced reluctant colonists to work.

Dark painting of colonists carrying a limp body past a wooden palisade at dusk — 2:04 — Colonists carrying one of their dead inside the fort. About half the first settlers died within a year, mostly from disease, bad water and hunger.

Painting of a snowy forest where Native archers shoot at a fleeing colonist — 2:09 — Winter and conflict with the Powhatan people. During the Starving Time the colonists were penned in their fort, unable to hunt or trade safely.

Painting of a dead colonist lying in marsh grass near a fort, with an overturned bucket beside him — 2:13 — The Starving Time of 1609–10. The episode's figures: hundreds of settlers before that winter, 65 after it.

The fix, in 1618, was the headright system: 50 acres for every person a settler paid to bring over. This let wealthy men build large estates, worked mostly by indentured servants. Green calls them “temporary slaves”: they could be bought and sold and had to obey their masters, but after seven to ten years they were owed “freedom dues” that might let them buy a farm. Often the dues were too small, or the servant had died first.

Engraving of a large two-story colonial house with a steep roof and chimney among trees — 2:32 — A substantial planter's house, the kind of estate the headright system made possible. Each servant brought over meant 50 more acres for the person who paid.

Then the ominous date: in 1619, twelve years after Jamestown’s founding, the first Africans were brought to Virginia. A short footnote is useful. The “twenty and odd” Africans who arrived at Point Comfort in August 1619 had been taken from a Portuguese slave ship by English privateers. Their exact legal status in Virginia at first is debated, since slavery was not yet written into Virginia law. But they arrived as captives, and over the following decades Virginia built a system of hereditary, race-based slavery. The same year, Virginia’s first elected assembly met, so representation and slavery began in the colony almost together.

Engraving of chained African captives standing before European buyers in front of a ship — 3:01 — Africans being sold off a ship, for the 1619 arrival in Virginia. This is the start of a story that later episodes return to again and again.

3:03 – 4:38 Tobacco builds Virginia society

What kept Virginia going was tobacco. It had been grown in Mexico since at least 1000 BCE, but Europeans had not known it. Green calls it the Native world’s return gift for smallpox. King James I hated smoking and called it “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose” in a 1604 pamphlet, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, but he liked the tax revenue. Exports grew fast: more than 200,000 pounds a year by 1624 and more than 30 million by the 1680s. The settler usually credited with the breakthrough is John Rolfe, who around 1612 began growing a milder Caribbean variety that sold well in England.

Painting of an autumn farmyard with pumpkins, an ox cart and a colonist in a broad-brimmed hat — 3:05 — An idealized colonial harvest. It is the picture of steady family farming that tobacco Virginia did not much resemble.

Seventeenth-century engraving of men in wide hats smoking long pipes and drinking — 3:08 — Europeans smoking. Demand like this in England and Europe was what made Virginia's tobacco profitable.

Painted Mexican codex scene of a seated figure being offered a smoking tube and flowers by attendants — 3:13 — A codex image of smoking in Mexico. Tobacco had a long history in Mesoamerica, often in ceremony, before Europeans turned it into a cash crop.

Old printed illustration of Native people lying under blankets covered in smallpox sores, with one figure tending another — 3:17 — Smallpox victims in a 16th-century Mexican source. It is the "thank you for the smallpox" half of Green's joke, and a link back to the epidemics in episode 1.

Anatomical drawing of human lungs with a tumor in the left lung — 3:18 — The other half of the joke: lung cancer. A punchline, not a claim about 17th-century medicine.

Pop-art card of King James I in royal robes, captioned Fig 2.1 King James, with a 'Merica Moment speech box — 3:23 — King James I, who disliked tobacco but taxed it. It is an early example of a government depending on revenue from a product it disapproved of.

Painting of colonists harvesting tall tobacco plants and loading the leaves onto an ox cart, with a ship on the river behind — 3:31 — A tobacco harvest, with a ship waiting on the river. Plantations sat on the water so the crop could go straight to England, which is one reason Virginia grew few towns.

Engraving of sailing ships at a wharf with barrels being rolled and hauled on carts — 3:35 — Barrels of tobacco loaded for export. The quantities the episode gives, from 200,000 pounds in 1624 to over 30 million in the 1680s, show how fast the trade grew.

Colored print of enslaved African workers processing tobacco leaves under open sheds in front of a white plantation house — 3:40 — Enslaved workers curing tobacco on a plantation. In the 1600s most Virginia field labor was still done by white servants; this image belongs more to the century after.

Tobacco also shaped who lived in Virginia. About three-quarters of 17th-century arrivals were servants, so the colony became a small class of rich landowners on top of many servants, a sharper version of England’s own class system. Green’s line that plantations had “very little in the way of towns or infrastructure to hold the social order together” is sarcasm: a scattered, unequal society was unstable, as later episodes will show.

Animated graphic of a wealthy man sitting in an armchair on top of a pile of servants — 3:58 — The social structure in one picture: a few wealthy landowners sitting on many servants. Keep this image in mind when Bacon's Rebellion comes up later in the series.

The colony was also overwhelmingly male, because men were preferred for field work. Men outnumbered women about five to one. Most women came as servants and could not marry until their term was up, which meant later marriages, fewer children and a slow-growing population. One odd upside: so many husbands died young that a class of widows emerged who could, unusually for the time, make contracts and own property.

Painting of colonial women with baskets and pails talking in a village yard while men work in the background — 4:13 — Women in a colonial village. In Virginia they were scarce and in demand, but most could not marry until their service ended.

Sepia engraving of a colonial household interior with a large hearth, a man seated and a woman spinning — 4:17 — A household interior. A widow who ran a home and property like this could sign contracts in her own name, a legal right most married women lacked.

4:38 – 5:27 Maryland: a colony owned by one man

Maryland, the second Chesapeake colony, was chartered in 1632 as a proprietorship: a huge land grant to one person, Cecilius Calvert, rather than to a company. Calvert hoped to run it almost like a feudal estate for his family and disliked the representative institutions growing up in Virginia. He was Catholic, and Catholics were welcome in Maryland, which was rare in the English world. Two dates help: the first settlers arrived in 1634, and in 1649 the colony passed a Toleration Act protecting Christians of different kinds. Like Virginia, Maryland’s economy came to rest on tobacco.

Old illustrated map titled Mary Land or the Lord Baltimore's Plantation neere Virginia by George Alsop, with rivers, animals and Native figures — 4:41 — A 17th-century map of "Lord Baltimore's Plantation". The title says it all: Maryland was presented as one family's property.

Engraving of a man in a ruff writing at a desk by a leaded window, with a globe beside him — 4:48 — A gentleman proprietor at his desk, for Cecilius Calvert. The Calverts governed Maryland largely from England.

Green at his desk beside an on-screen note listing five generations of the Calvert family and the Maryland charter — 4:53 — The show's on-screen note on the Calverts: Maryland was named for Queen Henrietta Maria, the family lost the charter in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution and later got it back, and the last Lord Baltimore's heir never inherited because of the American Revolution.

Engraving of men in wigs seated around a table writing, with others watching — 4:58 — An assembly at work. Calvert would have preferred to rule without one, but Maryland's settlers, like Virginia's, gained an elected assembly.

5:27 – 7:02 Thought Bubble: Puritans, Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving

After a fake-out (“I will not be talking about Thanksgiving”), the Thought Bubble sorts out two groups that are often mixed up.

Puritans were strict Protestants who thought the Church of England was still too Catholic, with its kneeling, incense and bishops. The name was an insult used by others. Those who settled New England were Congregationalists: each congregation chose its own leaders and form of worship, with no bishops above them.
Pilgrims went further. They were Separatists who wanted to leave the Church of England more or less completely. They moved first to the Netherlands, then raised money from investors for a colony of their own in 1620.

Green says they left the Netherlands because the Dutch were “too corrupt” for them. A fairer summary: the Dutch tolerated them, but the Pilgrims found it hard to make a living and worried that their children were becoming Dutch.

Animated title banner reading Sec 2.0 Colonizing America, with a row of Pilgrim, Native and European figures above it — 5:28 — The Thought Bubble title card. The lineup of Native people, Europeans and settlers previews who will share the stage in New England.

Animated village of log houses and a red brick church under an orange sky, with a banner reading Sec 2.3 New England, Early 17th Century — 5:31 — New England in the early 1600s. The church at the center of the village is accurate in spirit: in Puritan towns, the meetinghouse was the center of public life.

Animated white Gothic cathedral flying a British flag on top of a cloud — 5:36 — The Church of England, floating on its cloud. Puritans wanted to strip it of what they saw as Catholic leftovers; Separatists wanted out of it entirely.

Animated Puritan couple in black clothes and a white collar standing in front of a crowd of silhouettes and a church — 5:41 — Puritans, standing for the congregation that governs its own church. That habit of local self-rule carried over into New England's town governments.

Animated group of Pilgrims standing in a line in front of trees, one holding an electric guitar — 5:54 — The Pilgrims, drawn as an even more radical group (hence the electric guitar). The joke marks them as the Separatist extreme of the Puritan movement.

Animated map of the North Atlantic with a dotted route from England to a label reading Netherlands, looping out to sea — 6:05 — The Pilgrims' route: from England to the Netherlands first, and only later across the Atlantic. Their first exile was in Europe, not America.

The Pilgrims were meant to land in Virginia but were blown off course and founded Plymouth in what is now Massachusetts. Before landing, still aboard the Mayflower, 41 of the passengers signed the Mayflower Compact, promising to obey “just and equal laws” made by their chosen leaders. Green calls it the first written framework for government in what became the US. One number needs fixing: the Mayflower carried about 102 passengers, not 150, and the 41 signers were the adult men. It is worth knowing that Virginia already had an elected assembly from 1619, so the Compact was not the first self-government in English America, but it was the first written agreement of its kind.

Animated scene below deck on a ship, with Pilgrims gathered around a table where one man signs a document — 6:22 — Signing the Mayflower Compact below deck. Notice who is at the table: only men signed, which tells you who counted as a political member of the colony.

Animated Mayflower anchored off a forested shore with a single crate on the beach — 6:33 — The Mayflower arrives with one lonely crate on the beach: Green's joke about how little food and livestock the Pilgrims brought.

The same animated scene in winter at night, with snow, frozen ground and a cobwebbed empty crate — 6:39 — The same scene in winter, the crate now empty and cobwebbed. About half the Pilgrims died before spring.

They survived because local Native people gave them food and taught them to plant corn and where to fish. A year later, with the help of an alliance with the Wampanoag leader Massasoit, the Pilgrims held a harvest feast, the “first Thanksgiving”. Green’s statement that it happened on the fourth Thursday in November is a joke, and the show’s on-screen note admits it: details of the 1621 feast are thin, and the fourth-Thursday date was fixed only in 1941. The jab at “mid-October” is aimed at Canada, which celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October. That is the “When is Thanksgiving?” of the episode title.

Animated Native man in a feathered headdress with his arm around a Pilgrim next to an open crate of food — 6:47 — A Native man offers food to a starving Pilgrim. Without that help Plymouth would almost certainly have failed in its first year.

Animated scene of Native people showing Pilgrims how to farm and fish beside a winding river — 6:54 — Lessons in planting corn and fishing. The Pilgrims' survival depended on Native knowledge of local crops and seasons.

Animated feast at a long table with Pilgrims and Native people and a turkey in front — 6:59 — The 1621 feast as it is usually pictured. The turkey is traditional rather than documented; the one firsthand account mentions fowl and deer brought by Massasoit's men.

7:02 – 8:01 Squanto, and Massachusetts Bay takes over

Green singles out Squanto (Tisquantum), who returned to find almost all of his Patuxet people dead of disease, settled with the Pilgrims on the site of his old village, and later died of disease himself. The episode leaves out the reason Squanto could help at all. In 1614 an English captain kidnapped him and others and took them to Spain to be sold; he made his way to England, learned English, and only got home in 1619. Two small corrections: Squanto was an interpreter and go-between, not the leader of the local Native people (that was Massasoit), and he died in 1622.

Green at his desk with an on-screen note saying details about the 1621 Thanksgiving are sketchy and the fourth Thursday date was set in 1941 by Franklin Roosevelt — 7:06 — The show corrects its own joke on screen: the 1621 details are sketchy, and Franklin Roosevelt set the fourth-Thursday date in 1941 to help the economy (a longer shopping season before Christmas).

Old engraving of a Native man crouching in a field holding a fish — 7:17 — Squanto as later illustrators imagined him, holding a fish. The well-known story is that he showed the Pilgrims how to use fish to fertilize corn.

Old engraving of a Native man with a feather in his hair gesturing among tall corn plants — 7:22 — Squanto among the corn. His English, learned during years of captivity abroad, made him useful to both the Pilgrims and Massasoit.

Plymouth struggled on until 1691, when it was absorbed into the much larger Massachusetts Bay Colony. Massachusetts Bay was chartered in 1629 by London merchants who, like the Virginia Company, hoped to profit. The key difference is that its board of directors moved to America, taking the charter with them. That gave the colony far more self-government than Virginia had. Its Puritan mission also meant that, at least at first, the common good came before individual rights. Green ends the chapter by linking this North–South difference in ideas about government to the present day.

Old map of Massachusetts Bay showing Boston, Cambridge, Plymouth, Cape Cod and the first anchorage of the Mayflower — 7:35 — Massachusetts Bay on the map: Boston and its neighbors to the north, little Plymouth to the south, and the Mayflower's first anchorage at the tip of Cape Cod.

Green at his desk with an on-screen note about the Cambridge Agreement of 1629 — 7:44 — The on-screen note names the Cambridge Agreement of 1629, in which the company's members agreed to move control of the company to the colony itself. It also led directly to the founding of Boston.

8:01 – 9:51 Mystery Document: a city upon a hill

The Mystery Document returns, with the same rules as episode 1: guess the author or get shocked. The passage asks the community to be “knit together in this work as one man”, to give up its extras for the needs of others, and to remember that it shall be “as a city upon a hill” with all eyes on it. If it breaks faith with God, it will become a byword for failure around the world.

Wide shot of the set with a Mystery Document banner over an empty gold armchair, and Green at his desk — 8:02 — The Mystery Document segment begins. The game is the series' way of practicing sourcing: work out who wrote a text from clues inside it.

Parchment graphic with old-spelling text beginning Wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man — 8:22 — The opening lines, in original spelling ("wee", "knitt", "worke"). Green's first clue is the spelling, which places the text before English spelling was standardized.

Parchment graphic continuing with abridge our selves of our superfluities for the supply of others necessities — 8:32 — "Abridge our selves of our superfluities": give up luxuries so others have necessities. Green reads this as close to socialism; "Christian charity" inside a strict hierarchy is a more accurate label.

Green spots the city-upon-a-hill metaphor and correctly names the source: John Winthrop’s sermon “A Model of Christian Charity”, given in 1630 as the first big wave of Massachusetts Bay settlers arrived. (The image comes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew.) Green draws two lessons. First, the Puritan mission was collective, not individualist: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, a line borrowed from Star Trek. Second, the metaphor became one root of American exceptionalism, the idea that America is specially chosen to be a model for other nations, though for Winthrop only as long as the community held together. Ronald Reagan made it the centerpiece of his farewell address in January 1989.

Teal text card reading In other words, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, with small Pilgrim icons — 9:34 — "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few": Green's one-line summary of Puritan collectivism, borrowed from *Star Trek*. A useful memory hook for the sermon's main idea.

Green beside a gilt-framed video still of Ronald Reagan speaking from the Oval Office — 9:50 — Ronald Reagan, whose 1989 farewell address turned Winthrop's phrase into a "shining city upon a hill". This is how a 17th-century sermon entered modern politics.

9:51 – 11:22 Self-government without equality

New England towns were governed democratically, but only within limits. Only church members could vote or hold office, and full membership required being judged a “visible saint”, so power stayed with the church elite. Society was less unequal than in the Chesapeake or England, but far from equal. Winthrop himself said that “some must be rich, some poor”. Green also quotes the historian Eric Foner: Puritans saw inequality as God’s will, and the colony kept separate lists of rights for freemen, women, children and servants. Slavery existed in Massachusetts too; the episode dates the first recorded slaves to 1640.

Pop-art card of John Winthrop with a ruff collar, captioned Fig 2.5 John Winthrop, with a 'Merica Moment speech box — 10:20 — John Winthrop, the colony's longtime governor. The same man who preached charity also defended a fixed ranking of rich and poor.

Teal text card quoting a historian that inequality was considered an expression of God's will and there were separate lists of rights for freemen, women, children — 10:32 — The Eric Foner quotation on screen. "Separate lists of rights" is the phrase to remember: liberty in Massachusetts depended on your rank.

In one way the Puritans did promote equality: they wanted everyone to be able to read the Bible, and town councils could punish parents who did not teach their children to read. Massachusetts later turned this into laws requiring towns to keep schools (1647). But religious dissent was not tolerated. Roger Williams, who argued that people should be free to practice any religion, was banished and went on to found Rhode Island. Anne Hutchinson, who taught that church membership should depend on inner grace rather than outward behavior like church attendance, was banished too. She was doubly threatening because she was a woman preaching unorthodox ideas.

Engraving of a man in a long coat raising his hat as he leaves a house, with a woman and children clinging to him — 10:55 — A man leaving his family, for Roger Williams's banishment. He left Massachusetts in the winter of 1636 and survived with help from the Narragansett people.

Sepia illustration of a woman raising her arm as she preaches to a seated group of Puritan men and women — 11:01 — Anne Hutchinson preaching. Her meetings at home drew large crowds, including men, which alarmed the colony's ministers as much as her theology did.

Engraving of a Puritan stepping from a canoe to shake hands with Native men on a riverbank — 11:07 — Roger Williams greeted by Native people as he reaches the site of Providence. Rhode Island became the colony where religious freedom actually applied.

Engraving of a woman standing before a table of stern Puritan magistrates and ministers — 11:12 — Hutchinson on trial before the colony's leaders in 1637. She defended herself well until she claimed direct revelation from God, which sealed her banishment.

Green says Hutchinson was then “further banished” to Westchester, New York, where Native people killed her and her family. The outline is right, but two details need adjusting. She was not banished a second time; after a few years in Rhode Island she moved by choice to the Dutch colony of New Netherland. And she was killed in 1643, during a war between the Dutch and local peoples, near what is now Pelham Bay in the Bronx. Green’s “finally, somebody who doesn’t die of disease or starvation” is gallows humor about how many people in this episode die.

Engraving of Native warriors attacking a colonial family outside a log house, with a man lying dead on the ground — 11:17 — A 19th-century engraving of the attack that killed Hutchinson. Images like this were made long afterwards and tend to show Native people only as attackers, never the war that caused the raid.

11:22 – 11:53 Mythology versus history

The closing argument ties the episode together. Americans like to think the country was founded by pioneers of religious liberty escaping English oppression. That is only partly true. Puritan “equality” and “representation” were narrow; America was also founded by Native peoples and Spanish settlers; and the earliest English colonies were about money, not religion. Green promises that this tension between American mythology and American history will come back every week, which makes it a good question to bring to the rest of the series.

Green speaking to camera beside the globe and the Washington cut-out — 11:34 — Green's closing point: the founding myth leaves out Native peoples, the Spanish and the profit motive. Episode 3 picks up with the English and Native peoples.

Skip list

0:15 – 0:34 The “Libertage” montage and the Star Trek joke.
5:19 – 5:27 The “I will not be talking about Thanksgiving” fake-out.
11:53 – 12:26 Credits and subscribe reminder.

Key terms

Joint-stock company — a business owned by many investors who share profits and losses; the Virginia Company that founded Jamestown was one.
Starving Time — the winter of 1609–10 at Jamestown, when the colony fell to about 65 people.
Headright system — from 1618, 50 acres of Virginia land for each person whose passage a settler paid.
Indentured servant — a worker bound to a master for a fixed term, usually seven to ten years in this episode, in exchange for passage and “freedom dues” at the end.
Proprietary colony — a colony granted to one person or family, such as Maryland under Cecilius Calvert.
Puritans — English Protestants who wanted to purify the Church of England of Catholic practices.
Congregationalism — church government in which each congregation chooses its own leaders and worship, without bishops.
Separatists (Pilgrims) — Puritans who broke away from the Church of England entirely; they founded Plymouth.
Mayflower Compact (1620) — the agreement signed aboard the Mayflower to form a government and obey its “just and equal laws”.
“A Model of Christian Charity” (1630) — John Winthrop’s sermon calling Massachusetts Bay “a city upon a hill”.
American exceptionalism — the idea that the United States is uniquely chosen or destined to be a model for other nations.
Visible saint — a person judged by a Puritan church to show signs of God’s grace; only such members could vote in early Massachusetts.

Review questions

What parts of the “plucky English people seeking religious freedom” story does Green accept, and what parts does he reject?
Why did Jamestown nearly fail in its first years, and what changes allowed it to survive?
How did the headright system and indentured servitude shape who lived in Virginia and who owned its land?
How did tobacco affect Virginia’s towns, class structure and balance of men and women?
What made Maryland different from Virginia in how it was founded and governed?
What is the difference between Puritans and Pilgrims, and where did each group settle?
Why was the Mayflower Compact important, and what are its limits as a “first framework for government”?
What two lessons does Green draw from Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” sermon?
In what ways was Massachusetts Bay democratic, and in what ways was it unequal or intolerant?

FAQ

What is the difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans?

Both were English Protestants who thought the Church of England was still too close to Catholicism. Most Puritans wanted to reform that church from within; the Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay from 1630 ran their churches as self-governing congregations. The Pilgrims were Separatists who wanted to break away from the Church of England altogether. They went first to the Netherlands and then, in 1620, founded Plymouth, a much smaller colony that Massachusetts Bay absorbed in 1691.

Why was Jamestown founded, and how did it survive?

Jamestown (1607) was a business venture of the Virginia Company, whose investors hoped to find gold as Spain had. There was no gold, and about half the settlers died in the first year; after the Starving Time of 1609–10 only about 65 were left. The colony survived because tobacco turned out to be hugely profitable, and because the headright system of 1618 gave land to anyone who paid for settlers to come, which brought in thousands of indentured servants.

What was the Mayflower Compact?

It was an agreement signed aboard the Mayflower in November 1620 by 41 of the male passengers before they landed at Plymouth. The signers agreed to form a 'civil body politic' and to obey the 'just and equal laws' made for the colony. The episode calls it the first written framework for government in what became the US. It was a short pledge of self-government, not a full constitution.

Was the first Thanksgiving really on the fourth Thursday in November?

No. That line in the episode is a joke, and the show's own on-screen note says the details of the 1621 feast are sketchy. The Pilgrims and their Wampanoag allies held a harvest celebration some time in the autumn of 1621. The fourth-Thursday date was fixed in 1941 under Franklin Roosevelt. Canada's Thanksgiving, the 'mid-October' one Green mocks, falls on the second Monday of October.

What does John Winthrop's "city upon a hill" mean?

In his 1630 sermon 'A Model of Christian Charity', Winthrop told the Massachusetts Bay settlers that the whole world would be watching them, so they had to live together as one community under God. If they failed, they would become a byword for failure. The phrase, borrowed from the Gospel of Matthew, later became a basis for one strand of American exceptionalism, and Ronald Reagan used it in his 1989 farewell address.

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