Colonial America: Middle and Southern Colonies
The Middle Colonies
Americans have often taken pride in their diverse nature. Nowhere was this more evident than in the MIDDLE COLONIES.
Included Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware.
Many different European ethnic groups lived close by.
Contained Native American tribes of Algonkian and Iroquois, as well as sizable percentage of African slaves.
Quakers, Mennonites, Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists and Presbyterians made dominance of one faith impossible.
Advantaged by their central location, the middle colonies served as important distribution centers in the English mercantile system.
The middle colonies were fertile and land was generally acquired easily.
Wheat and corn from local farms would feed the American colonies.
The middle colonies represented exactly a middle ground between its neighbors to the North and South.
Religious dissidents from all regions could settle in the relatively tolerant middle zone.
Aspects of New England shipbuilding and lumbering and the large farms of the South could be found.
New Netherland to New York
England was not the first European power to settle New York, it was the Dutch.
NEW NETHERLAND became a reality in 1623 after HENRY HUDSON’s expedition.
PETER MINUIT traded trinkets with local Native Americans for Manhattan Island.
The town that was established there was named NEW AMSTERDAM.
The most famous governor of the colony, PETER STUYVESANT, ruled New Amsterdam with an iron fist.
Slavery was common during the Dutch era, as the DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY was one of the most prominent in the world's trade of slaves.
Many different languages could be heard in the streets of New Amsterdam.
Northwest of New Amsterdam, New Netherland approached feudal conditions with the awarding of large tracts of land to wealthy investors.
After CHARLES II came to the throne, the English became very interested in the Dutch holdings.
In 1664, he granted the land to his brother, the Duke of York, before officially owning it.
An English military unit appeared in New Amsterdam, Governor Stuyvesant was forced to surrender and New Netherland became New York.
Cultural contributions left by the Dutch include the transformation of Christmas and Easter by the introduction of Santa Claus and Easter eggs.
Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey
WILLIAM PENN was a dreamer.
Charles II owed his father a huge debt.
To repay the Penns, William was awarded an enormous tract of land in the New World.
People of his faith, the Quakers, had suffered serious persecution in England.
He wanted to establish a religious refuge and in 1681, his dream became a reality.
QUAKERS, as religious dissenters of the Church of England, were targets much like the Separatists and the Puritans.
But Friends were also devout pacifists and believed in total equality.
Therefore, Quakers would not bow down to nobles nor the King.
Their allegiance to the Crown was always in question.
The Quakers of Penn's colony established an extremely liberal government for the seventeenth century.
Religious freedom was granted and there was no tax-supported church.
Penn insisted on developing good relations with the Native Americans.
Women saw greater freedom in Quaker society as they were allowed to participate fully in Quaker meetings.
PENNSYLVANIA, or "Penn's Woods," benefited from the vision of its founder.
Well advertised throughout Europe, skilled artisans and farmers flocked to the new colony.
With Philadelphia as its capital, Pennsylvania soon became the KEYSTONE of the English colonies.
New Jersey was owned by Quakers even before Penn's experiment, and the remnants of NEW SWEDEN, now called Delaware, also fell under their sphere of influence.
William Penn's dream had come true.
City of Brotherly Love — Philadelphia
William Penn had a distaste for cities.
His colony, Pennsylvania, would need a capital that would not bring the horrors of European urban life.
He distributed land in large plots to encourage a low population density.
This, he thought, would be the perfect combination of city and country.
Penn's selection of a site was most careful.
PHILADELPHIA is situated at the confluence of the SCHUYLKILL and DELAWARE RIVERS.
The proprietors of Maryland claimed that Penn's new city lay within the boundaries of Maryland.
Penn returned to England to defend his town many times.
Eventually the issue would be decided on the eve of the Revolution by the drawing of the famed MASON-DIXON LINE.
With Penn promoting religious toleration, people of many different faiths came to Philadelphia.
However, upholding the city's moral code was taken very seriously.
In the early days, slavery was commonplace in the streets of Philadelphia, and William Penn himself was a slaveholder.
Early Philadelphia had its ups and downs.
In William Penn’s absence, Philadelphians quibbled about many issues.
At one point, Penn appointed a former soldier, JOHN BLACKWELL, to bring discipline to town government.
A century later it would emerge as the new nation's largest city, first capital, and cradle of the Liberty Bell, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution.
The Ideas of Benjamin Franklin
Many viewed Americans as irrational religious fanatics or crude pioneers.
American art, literature, and science were snubbed by most cultured Europeans.
BEN FRANKLIN was born in 1706 in colonial Boston.
He ran away to Philadelphia when he was seventeen.
The next twenty-five years of his life he made a fortune out of the three pennies he had carried with him to the city.
Although he gave up active control of his printing business, Franklin kept working.
He founded the COLLEGE OF PHILADELPHIA — now the UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA — one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the world.
He became an inventor, developing products as diverse as an efficient WOOD-BURNING STOVE and BIFOCAL READING GLASSES.
Of course, his most famous work was with electricity.
In his famed experiment with a kite and key, Franklin proved that lightning was a form of electrical energy.
Franklin continued his life as a public servant.
Although he was seventy years old when the Revolution began, he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and as a diplomat abroad.
People liked his insights and his dry wit.
By the age of forty-two, he made enough money to retire.
The Southern Colonies
Virginia was the first successful southern colony.
Geography and motive rendered the development of these colonies distinct from those that lay to the North.
Immediately to Virginia's north was MARYLAND.
Begun as a Catholic experiment, the colony's economy would soon come to mirror that of Virginia, as tobacco became the most important crop.
To the south lay the Carolinas, created after the English Civil War had been concluded.
In the Deep South was GEORGIA, the last of the original thirteen colonies.
Outbreaks of malaria and YELLOW FEVER kept life expectancies lower.
Since the northern colonies attracted religious dissenters, they tended to migrate in families.
Such family connections were less prevalent in the South.
The economy of growing CASH CROPS would require a labor force that would be unknown north of Maryland.
Slaves and indentured servants were much more important to the South and were the backbone of the Southern economy.
Settlers in the Southern colonies came to America to seek economic prosperity they could not find in Old England.
Maryland — The Catholic Experiment
In 1632, CECELIUS CALVERT, known as LORD BALTIMORE, was granted possession of all land lying between the POTOMAC RIVER and the CHESAPEAKE BAY.
Lord Baltimore saw this as an opportunity to grant religious freedom to the Catholics who remained in Anglican England.
Maryland, named after England's Catholic queen HENRIETTA MARIA, was first settled in 1634.
Economic opportunity was the draw for many Maryland colonists.
The first inhabitants were a mixture of country gentlemen (mostly Catholic), workers and artisans (mostly Protestant).
This mixture would doom the Catholic experiment.
The geography of Maryland was conducive to growing tobacco.
The desire to make profits from tobacco soon led to the need for low-cost labor.
As a result, the number of indentured servants greatly expanded and the social structure of Maryland reflected this change.
Fearful that the Protestant masses might restrict Catholic liberties, the HOUSE OF DELEGATES passed the MARYLAND ACT OF TOLERATION in 1649.
This act granted religious freedom to all Christians.
Unfortunately, Protestants swept the Catholics out of the legislature within a decade, and religious strife ensued.
Indentured Servants
The growth of the plantation economy created a tremendous need for labor in Southern English America.
While slaves existed in the English colonies throughout the 1600s, indentured servitude was the method of choice employed by many planters before the 1680s.
This system provided incentives for both the master and servant to increase the working population of the Chesapeake colonies.
Virginia and Maryland operated under what was known as the "HEADRIGHT SYSTEM."
The leaders of each colony provided incentives for planters to import workers.
For each laborer brought across the Atlantic, the master was rewarded with 50 acres of land.
In addition they received the services of the workers for the duration of the indenture.
This system seemed to benefit the servant as well.
Each INDENTURED SERVANT would have their fare across the Atlantic paid in full by their master.
A contract was written that stipulated the length of service — typically five years.
The servant would be supplied room and board while working.
Upon completion of the contract, the servant would receive "freedom dues," this might include land, money, a gun, clothes or food.
Only about 40 percent of indentured servants lived to complete the terms of their contracts.
Female servants were often the subject of harassment from their masters.
Early in the century, some servants were able to gain their own land as free men.
But by 1660, much of the best land was claimed by the large landowners.
After BACON'S REBELLION in 1676, planters began to prefer African slavery to the headright system.
Creating the Carolinas
The Stuart King, Charles I, was beheaded as the result of a civil war in 1649.
A dictatorship led by OLIVER CROMWELL ruled England until 1660.
The colonies that were created under Charles II’s rule were known as RESTORATION COLONIES.
It was in this environment that the Carolinas were created.
Soon the slave economy of the sugar islands reached the shores of Carolina.
The cultivation of rice in the plantation system quickly became profitable.
At the heart of the colony was the merchant port of Charles Town, later to be known as CHARLESTON.
African slaves became a majority of the population before the middle of the eighteenth century.
South Carolina even experimented with Indian slavery.
Such was not the case for the northern part of the Carolina colony.
Its earliest inhabitants were displaced former indentured servants.
Most established small tobacco farms.
Slavery existed but in far smaller numbers.
Northern Carolina, like Rhode Island in the North, drew the region's discontented masses.
As the two locales evolved separately calls for a formal split emerged.
In 1712, NORTH CAROLINA and SOUTH CAROLINA became distinct colonies.
Debtors in Georgia
Georgia was founded in 1733 being the last colony created.
Europe was in the midst of an intellectual revolution known as the ENLIGHTENMENT.
Enlightened thinkers championed the causes of liberty and progress.
JAMES OGLETHORPE and a group of charitable investors asked KING GEORGE for permission to create a utopian experiment for English citizens imprisoned for debt.
England's prison population could be decreased, and thousands of individuals could be given a new chance at life.
With these lofty goals, Georgia was created.
His advisers pointed out that such a colony in Georgia might provide defense for the South Carolina rice plantations from Spanish Florida.
Three major laws governed the colony.
The first dealt with the distribution of land.
The second and third reflected Enlightened ideals.
No slavery was permitted in Georgia, and the possession of alcohol was prohibited.
Each debtor was to receive 50 acres of land to farm, and this land could not be sold.
Silkworms were transported from Europe with the hope of developing a silk industry in Georgia's mulberry trees.
Unfortunately, the plan itself was a miserable failure.
Georgia residents complained that some citizens received fertile land while others were forced to work infertile soil.
The mulberry tree plan failed.
The alcohol ban was openly flouted.
Cries to permit slavery followed.
Eventually many fled for the Carolinas.
King George revoked the charter in 1752 and Georgia became a royal colony.