Chapter 4:
Between 1680 and 1750, the population of England's North American colonies, fed by immigration, slave importation, and natural increase, exploded and began to push beyond the Appalachians, where they encountered Indians, communities of escaped slaves and free blacks, French traders, and the Spanish. As they grew, the colonies developed three distinct societies: farming communities of the North, the plantations of the South, and the urban societies of seaboard commercial cities. During the same period, America experienced the First Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept through the cities and countryside alike. While turning Americans to spiritual matters, the Awakening's emphasis on the individual's role in salvation upset social order as it deprived clerics of some authority and introduced the notion of pluralism, hence a separation of church and state, to the American consciousness. Such questions of order were also arising between the colonists and their British rulers, who while sharing political ideas and institutions often disagreed as to the distribution of power among them.
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