Education Of The Southern Colonies

5. The Southern Colonies

DeSoto Map
Map of DeSoto'south 1539-43 exploration through the Southeast

Virginia was the outset successful southern colony. While Puritan zeal was fueling New England'due south mercantile development, and Penn's Quaker experiment was turning the middle colonies into America'southward bread basket, the S was turning to cash crops. Geography and motive rendered the development of these colonies distinct from those that lay to the N.

Immediately to Virginia's due north was Maryland. Begun as a Catholic experiment, the colony's economy would shortly come to mirror that of Virginia, as tobacco became the most important crop. To the south lay the Carolinas, created after the English Ceremonious State of war had been ended. In the Deep South was Georgia, the last of the original xiii colonies. Challenges from Spain and French republic led the king to desire a buffer zone between the cash crops of the Carolinas and foreign enemies. Georgia, a colony of debtors, would fulfill that need.

U.S. Territorial Map, 1775
The Southern colonies included Maryland, Virginia, Due north and South Carolina, and Georgia.

English American Southerners would not savor the by and large adept wellness of their New England counterparts. Outbreaks of malaria and xanthous fever kept life expectancies lower. Since the northern colonies attracted religious dissenters, they tended to migrate in families. Such family unit connections were less prevalent in the South.

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The economic system of growing cash crops would require a labor force that would be unknown north of Maryland. Slaves and indentured servants, although present in the North, were much more important to the South. They were the backbone of the Southern economy.

Settlers in the Southern colonies came to America to seek economical prosperity they could not discover in Old England. The English countryside provided a grand existence of stately manors and high living. But rural England was full, and by police force those corking estates could but be passed on to the eldest son. America provided more infinite to realize a lifestyle the new arrivals could never dream to achieve in their native land.