ABSTRACT
In the year 1775, when the War of Independence began, the thirteen colonies had a population of perhaps 2,418,000 people, of whom possibly one-fifth were black. Their mores—that is, their moral habits and beliefs, their social customs, their intellectual inclinations, their prejudices—were British in origin. True, their religion, long before, had come from Jerusalem by way of Rome; it had not sprung up prophetically at Canterbury. Nevertheless, the people of British North America had learned their Christian doctrine from British lips and British pens. In short, American Christianity was British Christianity, of whatever persuasion, transplanted. Mores and morals flowing from religious doctrine, the colonials' morality and folkways were the products of British culture. In view of the motives of immigrants to British North America during the colonial era, this characteristic might have been expected. In school and in college, the British approach as transmitted to America had been exacting—which had not made it popular with egalitarians.
