Sexual revolution in early America - Godbeer

In 1695, John Miller, a clergyman travelling through New York, found it appalling that so many couples lived together without ever being married and that no one viewed "ante-nuptial fornication" as anything scandalous or sinful. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766, described the region as a "stage of debauchery" in which polygamy was "very common", "concubinage general", and "bastardy no disrepute". These depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture sharply contradict the stereotype of Puritanical abstinence that persists in the popular imagination.;In this book, Richard Godbeer overturns conventional wisdom about the sexual values and customs of colonial Americans. His historical account spans two centuries and the whole of British North America, from New England to the Caribbean, exploring the social, political, and legal dynamics that shaped a diverse sexual culture. Drawing on research into diaries, letters, and other private papers, as well as legal records and official documents, Godbeer's narrative uncovers a persistent struggle between the moral authorities and the widespread expression of popular customs and individual urges.;Godbeer begins with a discussion of the complex attitude that the Puritans had toward sexuality. For example, although believing that sex could be morally corrupting, they also considered it to be such an essential element of a healthy marriage that they excommunicated those who denied "conjugal fellowship" to their spouses. He next examines the ways in which race and class affected the debate about sexual mores, from anxieties about Anglo-Indian sexual relations to the sense of sexual entitlement that planters held over their African slaves. He concludes by detailing the fundamental shift in sexual culture during the 18th century towards the acceptance of a more individualistic concept of sexual desire and fulfilment. Today's moral critics, in their attempts to convince Americans of the social and spiritual consequences of unregulated sexual behaviour, often hark back to a more innocent age; as this work makes clear, America's sexual culture has always been rich, vibrant, and contentious.