The Unhealthy Chesapeake
Half the people born in early Virginia and Maryland did not survive to celebrate their 20th birthday.
At the beginning of the 18th Century, Virginia was the most populous colony with 59,000 people. Maryland was the 3rd largest, after Massachusetts, with 30,000.
The Tobacco Economy
By the 1630s, 1.5 million pounds of tobacco were being shipped out of the Chesapeake Bay every year and almost 40 million by the end of the century.
Because of the massive amounts of tobacco crops planted by families, "indentured servants" were brought in from England to work on the farms. In exchange for working, they received transatlantic passage and eventual "freedom dues", including a few barrels of corn, a suit of clothes, and possibly a small piece of land.
Virginia and Maryland employed the "headright" system to encourage the importation of servant workers. Under its terms, whoever paid the passage of a laborer received the right to acquire 50 acres of land.
Chesapeake planters brought some 100,000 indentured servants to the region by 1700. These "white slaves" represented more than 3/4 of all European immigrants to Virginia and Maryland in the 17th Century.
Frustrated Freemen and Bacon's Rebellion
In 1676, about 1,000 Virginians broke out of control - led by a 29-year-old planter, Nathaniel Bacon. They fiercely resented Virginia's Governor William Berkeley for his friendly policies towards the Indians. When Berkeley refused to retaliate for a series of savage Indian attacks on frontier settlements (due to his monopolization of the fur trading with them), the crowd took matters into their own hands. The crowd murderously attacked Indians and chased Berkeley from Jamestown, Virginia. They torched the capitol.
As the civil war in Virginia continued, Bacon suddenly died from disease. Berkeley took advantage of this and crushed the uprising, hanging more than 20 rebels. Charles II complained of the penalties dealt by Berkeley.
Due to the rebellions and tensions started by Bacon, lordly planters looked for other, less troublesome laborers to work their tobacco plantations. They soon looked to Africa.
Colonial Slavery
Africans had been brought to Jamestown as early as 1619, but as late as 1670, they numbered only about 2,000 in Virginia-only about 7% of the total population of the South.
In the 1680s, the wages in England rose, therefore decreasing the number of indentured servants coming to America. By the mid-1680s, black slaves outnumbered white servants among the plantation colonies' new arrivals.
In 1698, the Royal African Company, first chartered in 1672, lost its monopoly on carrying slaves to the colonies. Due to this, many Americans, including many Rhode Islanders, rushed to cash in on the slave trade. (Eventually, Rhode Island became the first state t abolish slavery.)
Blacks accounted for half the population of Virginia by 1750. In South Carolina, they outnumbered whites 2:1.
Most of the slaves came from the west coast of Africa, especially stretching from present-day Senegal to Angola.
Beginning in Virginia in 1662, statues appeared that formally decreed the iron conditions of slavery for blacks. These earliest "slave codes" made blacks and their children the property of the white masters for life.
Africans in America
By about 1720, the proportion of females in the Chesapeake area soon began to rise, making it possible for family life.
On the Sea Islands off South Carolina's coast, blacks evolved a language, Gullah. It blended English with several African languages, including Yoruba, Ibo, and Hausa.
In New York City in 1712, a slave revolt cost the lives of 12 whites and caused the execution of 21 blacks.
In 1739 in South Carolina along the Stono River, a revolt exploded. The rebels tried to march to Spanish Florida but were stopped by a local militia.
Southern Society
Just before the Revolutionary War, 70% of the leaders of the Virginia legislature came from families established in Virginia before 1690.
Social Scale-
Great Planters-owned gangs of slaves and vast domains of land; ruled the region's economy and monopolized political power.
Small Farmers-largest social group; tilled their own modest plots and may have owned one or two slaves.
Landless Whites-many were former indentured servants.
Black Slaves
The New England Family
In contrast with the Chesapeake, the New Englanders tended to migrate in families as opposed to single individuals.
Family came first with New Englanders.
There were low premarital pregnancy rates, in contrast with the Chesapeake.
Because southern men frequently died young, leaving widows with small children to support, the southern colonies generally allowed married women to retain separate title their property and gave widows the right to inherit their husband's estates. But in New England, Puritan lawmakers worried that recognizing women's separate property rights would undercut the unity of married persons by acknowledging conflicting interests between husband and wife. When a man died, the Church inherited the property, not the wife.
New England women usually gave up their property rights when they married. In contrast to old England, the laws of New England made secure provisions for the property of widows and even extended important protections to women with marriage.
Above all, the laws of Puritan New England sought to defend the integrity of marriages.
Life in the New England Towns
Massachusetts was at the front of the colonies attempting to abolish black slavery.
New towns were legally chartered by the colonial authorities, and the distribution of land was entrusted to proprietors. Every family received several parcels of land.
Towns of more than 50 families had to have an elementary school.
Just 8 years after Massachusetts was formed, the colony established Harvard College, in 1636. Virginia established its first college, William and Mary, in 1693.
Puritans ran their own churches, and democracy in Congregational Church government led logically to democracy in political government.
The Half-Way Covenant and the Salem Witch Trials
About the middle of the 17th century, a new form of sermon began to be heard from Puritan pulpits - the "jeremiad."
Troubled ministers in 1662 announced a new formula for church membership, the Half-Way Covenant. This new arrangement modified the covenant, or the agreement between the church and its adherents, to admit to baptism-but not "full communion"-the unconverted children of existing members. This move upped the churches' memberships. This boost in membership was just what the money-stricken church needed.
A group of adolescent girls in Salem, Massachusetts, claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women. A witch hunt ensued, leading to the legal lynching of 20 women in 1692.
In 1693, the witchcraft hysteria ended when the governor of Massachusetts prohibited any further trials and pardoned those already convicted. In 1713, the Massachusetts legislature annulled the "conviction" of the "witches" and made reparation to their heirs.
The New England Way of Life
The soil of New England was stony and hard to plant with.
There was less diversity in New England than in the South because European immigrants did not want to come to a place where there was bad soil. The summers in New England were very hot and the winters very cold.
The Native Americans recognized their right to USE the land, but the concept of OWNING was unknown.
The people of New England became experts at shipbuilding and commerce due to the timber found in the dense forests. They also fished for cod off the coasts.
The combination of Calvinism, soil, and climate in New England made for energy, purposefulness, sternness, stubbornness, self-reliance, and resourcefulness.
The Early Settlers' Days and Ways
Women, slave or free, on southern plantations or northern farms, wove, cooked, cleaned, and care for children. Men cleared land; fenced, planted, and cropped the land; cut firewood; and butchered livestock as needed.
Resentment against upper-class pretensions helped to spark outbursts like Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 in Virginia and the uprising of Maryland's Protestants toward the end of the 17th century. In New York, animosity between lordly landholders and aspiring merchants fueled Leisler's Rebellion, an ill-starred and bloody insurgence that rocked New York City from 1689-1691.
In 1651, Massachusetts prohibited poorer folk from "wearing gold or silver lace," and in 18th century Virginia, a tailor was fined and jailed for arranging to race his horse-"a sport only for gentlemen."
Estimated Slave Imports to the New World, 1601-1810
17th Century
18th Century
Total
Percent
Spanish American
292,500
598,600
871,000
11.7
Brazil
560,000
1,891,400
2,451,400
33
British Caribbean
263,700
1,401,000
1,664,700
22.5
Dutch Caribbean
40,000
460,000
500,000
6.7
French Caribbean
155,800
1,348,400
1,504,200
20.3
Danish Caribbean
4,000
24,000
28,000
0.4
British North America and future United States
10,000
390,000
400,000
5.4
TOTAL
X
X
7,419,300
100
Chronology
1619 - First Africans arrive in Virginia
1636 - Harvard College founded
1662 - Half-Way Covenant for Congregational Church membership established
1670 - Virginia assembly disfranchises landless freeman
1676 - Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia
1680s - Mass expansion of slavery in colonies
1689-1691 - Leisler's Rebellion in New York
1692 - Salem witch trials in Massachusetts
1693 - College of William and Mary founded
1698 - Royal African Company slave trade monopoly ended
1712 - New York City slave revolt
1739 - South Carolina slave revolt
