chapter 4 (level 1)

4.1.L1.1: How did severe disease environments impact family structures in the 17th-century Chesapeake?

High mortality rates meant marriages rarely lasted a decade, creating thousands of orphans and complex step-families.

4.2.L1.1: Why did Chesapeake planters rely on indentured servitude rather than enslaved Africans during most of the 1600s?

Indentured servants were significantly cheaper to purchase than enslaved Africans, and high mortality rates made costly investments in lifelong slaves financially risky.

4.2.L1.2: How did the headright system incentivize wealthy planters to accumulate vast landholdings?

It awarded 50 acres of land to whoever paid an immigrant's passage, allowing wealthy planters to acquire massive estates by importing large numbers of servants.

4.3.L1.1: What core economic grievances fueled Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion in 1676?

Poverty among landless ex-servants, low tobacco prices, high taxes, and Governor Berkeley's refusal to protect frontier settlers from Native raids.

4.4.L1.1: What major economic shift occurred after 1680 that led to the rapid rise of Black slave labor in Virginia?

Rising wages in England reduced the supply of indentured servants, while falling slave prices and fear of landless servant rebellions made African chattel labor preferable.

4.4.L1.2: How did 17th-century legal slave codes fundamentally alter the concept of slavery in British North America?

They defined slavery explicitly along racial lines, making Black people and their children lifetime chattel property of white masters.

4.5.L1.1: How did the slave culture of the deep South (South Carolina) differ from that of the Chesapeake?

South Carolina's rice plantations had lethal climates and isolated labor forces that preserved African customs, whereas Chesapeake tobacco farms were smaller and closer together, fostering faster assimilation.

4.6.L1.1: Describe the social hierarchy of the 17th-century American South from top to bottom.

Merchant-planter elites (FFVs), small landowning farmers, landless whites/former servants, indentured servants, and enslaved Black people.

4.7.L1.1: How did the New England environment foster demographic stability compared to the Chesapeake?

Clean water and cool temperatures prevented the spread of deadly epidemic diseases, yielding long life expectancies and intact family structures.

4.8.L1.1: How did New England town planning reflect Puritan values of community and education?

Towns were systematically chartered around a central meetinghouse and green, with mandatory public schooling to ensure biblical literacy.

4.9.L1.1: What social tension was reflected in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692?

A growing cultural divide between traditional agrarian Puritans and the rising commercial merchant class in Salem Town.

4.10.L1.1: How did New England's geography shape its economic development differently from the South?

Rocky soil prevented cash-crop plantations, steering New England toward a diversified economy of small farms, timber, shipbuilding, fishing, and trade.

4.11.L1.1: What was the primary purpose of early colonial "sumptuary laws"?

To maintain strict social class distinctions by prohibiting lower-class citizens from wearing luxury clothing or displaying wealth reserved for the elite.