First Paper US history

Paola Longo
Deadline: 09/23/10

2. Historians of early America have

often highlighted the themes of
diversity and unity in their
interpretation of the development of the
English North American colonies.
Discuss this apparent contradiction by
describing the sharp regional
differences that separated colonial
Americans and the process by which a
sense of an American community
became stronger.

By the year 1733 the English owned thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast of North
America. These colonies began in New Hampshire in the north and ended in Georgia in
the south. They could be divided into three different groups which had their own
characteristics and social dynamics, result of many factors such as geography, origin of
the population and economic development. Still, however diverse their lifestyles were,
a common sense of nation was eventually forged.

First of all, in the far north was the New England group, where the people had spread
inland and along the coast. Most of them were craftsmen and some were small farmers.
They lived in small villages and towns. There were those who also depended on the sea
to live. They used trees to build ships and the fishing of cod was their main activity. In
this way, some cities, such as Boston, became busy port towns and their prosperity
depended on trade with Europe. The harsh weather also promoted the development of
alternative ways of surviving such as trading. In terms of religion, these colonies were
not tolerant of diversity. Protestants who arrived in America escaping the prosecution
of the Anglican Church in 1620 and the Great Puritan migration in 1930 helped shape
most of the moral values characteristic of the United States nowadays. Because of the
need this group had to spread their religious beliefs, great importance was given to
education. This led to the building of schools and the first universities in the country
(such as Harvard).

Secondly, near the New England colonies, going to the south, were the Middle colonies.
Among the most important cities of this colony were New York and Pennsylvania.
People became skilled craftsmen and traders but some farming was still present at the
time. The people in this colony were more tolerant in terms of religion and newcomers
mainly because of the diverse population that comprised their society and the multiple
professions performed in these cities. In terms of education, the Middle colonies also
became an important centre of learning and culture: during the 1770 Philadelphia was
the centre of the cultural life of the region and activities such as concerts, theatre and
communal libraries thrived.

Thirdly, the southern colonies, Virginia, Carolina and Georgia, among others, were
formed by wealthy landowners who profited from the hot weather and the fertile land to
install large plantations. Their houses were big and expensive and they were situated
near the cotton or tobacco fields. Black slavery was the main source of labour in these
colonies, unlike in the rest of the colonies. As the farming business grew, landowners
became more dependant on slavery to prosper and the population of Black slaved
increased. In religious terms, each state had a state church, which was a branch of the
Church of England which caused a generalised indifference. Education was provided
by private tutors to the children of landowners. These tutors came from England or
from the Northern colonies to instruct the children of the richest men on the land.

In all three colonies, most people lived less than fifty miles from the coast. This
tendency changed in the beginning of the XVIII cent. when settlers began moving
deeper into the continent. Settling in a new land always started in the same way: first,
they cleared the land from forests and used the wood to build a house and a barn. Then,
they ploughed the soil and sowed their seeds. As new people arrived, they had to
venture into deeper lands and, thus, pushing the frontier. As frontier farms and villages
became often separated, their inhabitants had to rely upon themselves to survive and a
special spirit grew among these people: they were rough and self-reliable but at the
same time they depended on each others. The combination of these two ideas
(independence and cooperation) strengthened the feeling that people are equal and need
to cooperate with each other. The frontier way of life helped democratic ideas to grow
in America.

Likewise, all English colonies in America shared a tradition of representative

government. Therefore, all the people had a saying in how they were governed. Each
colony had its own government, which depended on the cooperation of the assemblies
elected by the colonists. In most colonies only white men who owned land had the right
to vote but since a lot of colonists owned land, it meant that the majority of them could
cast a vote, which was a sharp contrast to what was happening in Europe at the time. In
America, the representative assemblies voted their own taxed as well as some social
regulations such as education and, therefore, started developing a mature government
and democratic participation. This led, in the long run, to a need to develop a common
national identity however diverse their different regions were.
4. Slavery developed in all of the
English colonies in North America. Was
this institution the same in all the
colonies? Did this form of labour have
the same level of importance in each of
the areas? Why? Why not?

Early trade of slaves in America can be traced back to the Portuguese who would
receive people as servants when dealing with African tribes. These Africans were sent
to America to work on sugar plantations. Later on, the Dutch became the leaders in
slave trading but it was the British who copied what the Portuguese had done and
installed slavery in America. However, this phenomenon became more important in the
southern colonies than in the northern ones due to the needs of the economy of the
region.

During most of the British colonial period, slavery existed in all the colonies. People
enslaved in the North typically worked as house servants, artisans, labourers and
craftsmen. There were great numbers of slaves in the cities in the North. However, the
South had a significantly high number and proportion of slaves in the population. Early
on, slaves in the South worked primarily in agriculture, on farms and plantations
growing indigo, rice, and tobacco. Cotton also became a major crop after the 1790s.
Tobacco was very intensive labour, as was rice cultivation. In South Carolina in 1720,
about sixty five percent of the population consisted of slaves. Planters used slaves to
cultivate commodity crops or what was called “cash crops” such as tobacco itself.
Backwoods subsistence farmers, a later wave of settlers in the eighteenth century,
seldom owned slaves.

Ownership of slaves in the South meant that rich planters invested in human labour and
acquired in return a lifetime of service, which proved profitable in the long run. As
time passed, the social life in the southern colonies changed and the gap between social
classes became wider. Thus, the middle class became almost non existent and the richer
families, usually plantation and slave owners, became increasingly wealthy. In
Louisiana it was sugar, rather than cotton, the main crop. Between 1810 and 1830 the
number of slaves increased four hundred percent. New Orleans became important as a
slave port, and by the 1840s, it had the largest slave market in the country. Dealing with
sugar cane was even more physically demanding than growing cotton and planters
preferred young males, who represented two-thirds of the slave purchases.

The growing demand for cotton led many plantation owners further west in search of
suitable land. It was for this reason that slavery did not spread to the north, instead
spreading west. Regarding family bonds, only a minority moved with their families and
existing master. Slave traders had little interest in purchasing or transporting intact slave
families; in the early years, only young male slaves were in demand. Later on, in the
interest of creating a "self-reproducing labour force", planters purchased nearly equal
numbers of men and women. Slavery became, thus one of the most profitable
enterprises in the South besides plantation itself.
By 1810 there were 7.2 million people in the United States and 1.2 of those people were
African American slaves. It was clear for the landowners in the south that it was
impossible to cultivate the fields of tobacco, rice and cotton without slave workers.
However, the north had an uneasy conscience about this issue and had no real need of
their services to work the land since their farms were smaller and the climate cooler.
Some northerners opposed slavery for moral and religious reasons. Moreover, in time,
many of them became strong abolitionist and, by the nineteenth century, many northern
states had passed laws abolishing slavery inside their own boundaries.