Southern Colonies
The Southern Colonies comprised five British colonies located south of Pennsylvania, initially including Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. These colonies were primarily established for financial gain rather than for religious freedoms, which differentiated them from the Northern Colonies. The region's favorable geography and climate facilitated the development of a prosperous agricultural economy, dominated by cash crops like tobacco and rice. This agricultural focus led to the significant reliance on slave labor, a factor that would create enduring social and economic divides between the North and South in the years to come.
Virginia, established in 1607, became the first permanent English settlement in North America. It was later followed by Maryland, which was founded as a refuge for Catholics, and the Carolinas, which split into North and South in 1712 due to governance challenges. Georgia, the last of the original thirteen colonies, was created as a buffer against Spanish Florida and initially prohibited slavery. However, this ban was lifted in 1751, aligning Georgia's economy with the other Southern Colonies. As these colonies developed, their economic structures and reliance on slavery became pivotal issues leading up to the American Civil War, highlighting the complex legacy of the Southern Colonies in American history.
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Southern Colonies
The Southern Colonies refers to the five British colonies located south of the border of the Pennsylvania colony. The original Southern Colonies were Maryland, Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia; Carolina split into North and South Carolina in 1712. While the Northern Colonies were founded primarily by settlers seeking religious and political freedoms, the Southern Colonies were founded for reasons of financial gain. The geography and climate of the colonies made them a prosperous agricultural region, dominated by crops such as tobacco and rice. This reliance on agriculture led to the growth of slavery in the Southern Colonies, a development that profoundly affected the relationship between North and South for centuries.
Background
The voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World in 1492 began a centuries-long period of exploration and colonization by Europe's great powers. Just five years after Columbus's journey, John Cabot, an Italian explorer sailing for England, sighted Newfoundland in what would become Canada. By the early sixteenth century, the French had begun exploring the region and sailing up the St. Lawrence River. Spanish explorers had journeyed to Florida, the American Southwest, and Central and South America; it was the Spanish who established the first permanent European settlement in the United States at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565.
Despite the success of Cabot's expedition, England did not join in the race to colonize the New World for nearly a century. It was more concerned with trade with other European nations and its own interests in the British Isles. By the 1570s and 1580s, that stance began to change. England's Queen Elizabeth granted two charters to establish British colonies in North America; however, neither was successful.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert failed in several attempts to establish military outposts in Newfoundland. He was lost at sea in 1583 on the return voyage to England. Two years later, an expedition led by Sir Walter Raleigh established the Roanoke Colony in a territory he named Virginia in honor of Elizabeth, who was known as the "virgin queen." The Roanoke Colony lasted only a year, but in 1587, Raleigh tried again. On this attempt, more than one hundred men, women, and children settled the colony at Roanoke. Three years later, a resupply mission found the colony abandoned. The fate of the colonists remains a mystery more than four centuries later.
Overview
In 1606, English King James I granted a charter to a trading venture called the Virginia Company of London to launch a new colony in North America. A year later, about one hundred colonists landed in Virginia and established the first permanent British settlement on the continent. Named Jamestown after the king, the purpose of the colony was to bring the region's natural resources back to England to make a profit. The colonists' primary goal was to discover gold, but they also were interested in the area's timber resources.
Skirmishes with the native population and starvation pushed the colony to the brink of failure in its first few years of existence. A resupply mission in 1610 brought a new group of settlers, and the colony began expanding. To survive, however, the colony needed to find a profitable means to support itself. In 1612, colonist John Rolfe began planting tobacco crops at the settlement. Tobacco had been imported to Europe by Christopher Columbus and grew in popularity throughout the sixteenth century. The soil and warm climate of Virginia were perfect for growing tobacco, and by 1619, the crop had become the colony's largest export.
The demand for tobacco also increased the demand for a labor force to harvest the crop. At first, Virginia relied on indentured servants, laborers who agreed to work for a certain period until they fulfilled the terms of their contract. The first African laborers arrived in Virginia in 1619 not as slaves but as indentured servants. As the century wore on, slavery slowly replaced indentured servitude. Virginia was the first British colony to legalize slavery in 1661, and by the early 1690s, slaves outnumbered white indentured servants by a four-to-one margin.
Virginia, like the other British colonies that followed it, was ruled by a governor appointed by the King of England. In 1619, Virginia established the House of Burgesses, the first elected assembly of representatives in colonial North America. In 1643, the assembly was split into two houses, the House of Burgesses and the Governor's Council. As tensions between England and its colonies grew in the mid-eighteenth century, members of Virginia's House of Burgesses became outspoken opponents of the king's policies. Several notable Founding Fathers of the United States, including future presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were members of Virginia's House of Burgesses.
The Maryland colony was established in 1632 when King Charles I agreed to grant a charter to English statesman George Calvert, the First Lord Baltimore. Calvert was a Catholic and wanted to create a colony where Catholics could live free of religious prejudice. At the time, Catholics and Protestants were embroiled in a bitter religious conflict in England. Calvert died before he could receive the charter, but his son, Cecilius Calvert, was granted the contract in his place. The first settlers arrived in 1634 and named the colony Maryland after Charles I's wife, Queen Henrietta Maria.
Despite its position as a refuge for Catholics, Maryland also was home to many Protestants, and religious disagreements were common in the colony. In 1649, Maryland governor William Stone passed the Toleration Act, the first legislation guaranteeing religious freedom in the American colonies. The act was repealed when Protestants briefly gained control of the colony in 1654. In 1689, Protestant forces rebelled against Catholic control, ousted the Calvert family from power, and seized the colony.
As in Virginia, Maryland's economy was driven by tobacco exports, and slave labor was used to harvest the crop. In 1664, Maryland adopted a code of law similar to Virginia's that declared all blacks slaves for life. During the early eighteenth century, Maryland and Pennsylvania were engaged in a dispute over the boundary line between the colonies. In 1750, the colonies hired two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, to determine the official border between the states. The boundary they established became known as the Mason-Dixon Line and later acted as the official demarcation line between North and South.
The Carolina Province was chartered in 1629 and named for King Charles I, whose name in Latin was Carolus. Charles I was overthrown and executed in 1649, but his son, Charles II, regained the throne in 1660. In 1663, Charles II granted land rights in Carolina to eight English statesmen who helped him win back the Crown. The men were given the title of Lord Proprietors of the Province of Carolina.
The original Province of Carolina was large, stretching from Virginia into present-day Georgia. The northern half of the province was rural farmland mostly settled by tobacco farmers and released indentured servants from Virginia. The southern half produced a profitable trade in corn, rice, lumber, and livestock. While slavery was slow to spread in the northern half, the southern half began importing slaves from the British West Indies, and by the middle of the eighteen century, African slaves made up the majority of its population.
The proprietors of Carolina realized almost from the start that the province was too big to be effectively governed as a whole. In 1691, they appointed a deputy governor to handle affairs in the northern half. In 1712, the province was divided into North and South Carolina. In 1719, the more prosperous South Carolina was officially named a royal colony. A decade later, North Carolina became a colony as well.
Georgia was founded in 1732 and was the last of the original thirteen American colonies. The colonial charter was granted to James Oglethorpe, an English politician and social reformer who wanted the colony to be a haven for those sentenced to debtors' prison. Despite his wishes, however, the first settlers in Georgia were not prisoners. King George II, for whom the colony was named, wanted Georgia to act as a buffer area between the rich plantations of South Carolina and Spanish-held Florida to the south. He ordered a series of forts to be built along the coast and the border with Florida. These fortifications were defended by the settlers, who successfully repelled Spanish attacks on a number of occasions.
Unlike the other Southern Colonies, Georgia initially banned slavery. It was the only colony not ruled by a governor; it was administered by a board of trustees based in London. The king eventually legalized slavery in 1751 and placed Georgia under the control of a governor a year later. With the ban on slavery lifted, Georgia established a profitable trade in crops such as rice, cotton, and indigo, a plant that produced a popular blue dye.
The original land charters of the Southern Colonies extended much farther westward than their modern boundaries, often incorporating territories that are now the states of Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. The colonies officially became part of the United States with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. However, as the new nation was forming, differences between the industrialized North and the agricultural South led to many disagreements over the role of slavery. The Southern states had relied on the practice since the seventeenth century and believed their economies depended on it. The two regions attempted to forge numerous compromises, but the issue continued to plague the United States until it erupted into the American Civil War (1861–1865).
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