Chapter 3Section 2

pages 72-78

The Southern Colonies and Slavery

Objectives

• 1. Discuss how and why the Chesapeake differed from New England.

• 2. Analyze the factors that slowed the growth of towns in the Chesapeake, and explain the long-term effects on the region.

• 3. Identify the events that led to Bacon’s Rebellion.

• 4. Explain why Chesapeake planters came to favor slavery over indentured servitude.

Settling the Chesapeake

• 1640-Virginia was a productive colony, before slavery was firmly established. Tobacco was a valuable export.

Chesapeake Bay Colony-settled by an Englishman George Clavert.

1632- After his death King Charles I made his son Cecilius Calvert owner of million of acres in the upper Chesapeake. The colony was named Maryland, after Charles French wife Henrietta Maria. Calvert was free to govern and use the land as he wished.

• Calvert wanted to create a haven for Catholics who feared persecution in Protestant England.

• He definitely wanted to make money, but knew there wasn’t enough Catholic immigrants. So he opened up the colony to protestant settlement.

• To protect Catholic minority’s legal rights the Maryland Assembly passed in 1649 the Toleration Act –which granted a degree of religious freedom. The Maryland governor William Stone promised immigrants to Maryland “liberty in religion and privileges of English subjects.”

Chesapeake Society

• Catholic and Protestants settled in Maryland and followed Virginia’s lead and went towards tobacco production.

• Population:Most white colonist came to the Chesapeake were indentured

servants. The Treatment of Indentured Servants: In the Chesapeake

colonial laws banned masters from abusing their servants “with intolerable oppression and hard usage.” However, officials rarely enforced these laws. Masters controlled their servants with brute force and sometimes fined, beat, or branded those whom they suspected of disobedience. Masters could also rent out, bequeath, and even sell their servants.

Population

• 75 percent of the indentured servants who came to Virginia were men or boys betwwen the ages 15 and 24.

• Many were attracted to the colonies by the influence of pamphlets. One in particular published in 1666, by George Alsop Character of the Province in Maryland. His pamphlet promoted life in the colonies in a positive, yet misleading way.

He tried to recruit women to the colonies, but many didn’t respond. Others were persuaded into marriage very quickly. Many men never married, due to gender imbalance in the colonies.

High death rates affected the Chesapeake population. 1600s-diseases affected colonists such as typhoid,

malaria, and other diseases. As many as 40 percent of immigrants died within two years of arriving in the colonies.

In the early years only immigration assured Virginia’s survival.

1700-Life expectancy slowly improved due to colonists building up an immunity to various diseases in the region.

Due to high death rates families were different in the Chesapeake then they were in New England. In New England most colonists only married once.

1600s- One Maryland county most marriages ended within seven years due to the death of a partner. The surviving partner many times remarried.

The trend in the Chesapeake was to have mixed families that included stepparents, stepchildren, half siblings, and in some cases children of deceased relatives or friends.

Rural Society

• Majority of the colonists in the Chesapeake lived on scattered farms and plantations.

• Production was mainly tobacco and they grew or produced many of the things they needed.

• Many of the large plantations were located on the rivers in and around the Chesapeake Bay

• Towns were slow to grow due to the lack of a central market for planters. Due to the lack of large towns this hindered the developing class of artisans and shopkeepers.

The slow growth of towns hurt the development of schools in the Chesapeake.

In many parts of the rural Chesapeake there wasn’t enough children to establish a school.

Education was definitely left up to the individual family. Families of wealth hired tutors to educate both boys and girls.

The majority of residents didn’t believe in schooling for others. Unfortunately, the literacy rate was low compared to New England.

Life in the Remote Chesapeake

• Some Chesapeake residents found the region’s decentralized, rural lifestyle extremely boring. One called his environment “solitary and unsociable.” A young lawyer complained that he lived in “ a forest” and that has isolated location prevented him from hearing important news. To relieve the monotony, many colonists turned to books.

Activity

• Pick a partner• Task: list at least two economic factors that

slowed the growth of town in the Chesapeake.• Then expand your list by describing how the

slow growth of towns affected the Chesapeake. • Consider what you know about both New

England and the Chesapeake. Which region would you have wanted to live during colonial times. Justify your choices.

Bacon’s Rebellion

• Nathaniel Bacon-Like many Chesapeake colonists, Nathaniel Bacon despised American Indians. As a new settler, he had several negative encounters with his Indian neighbors. In September 1675, for example. Bacon kidnapped members of the Appomattox nation on the grounds that they had stolen some corn-although none belonging to him or his neighbors. His beliefs strongly influenced his behavior in the later rebellion, in which he killed hundreds of friendly American Indians.

• Virginia continued to increase in immigration and life expectancy. Also, a number of freed indentured servants living in Virginia.

• 1660- tobacco prices tumbled making it difficult for many to make a enough money to start their own farms. Many grew discontented.

• 1675-violence erupted in western Virginia.

• Farmers wanted to settle the western part of Virginia which had been guaranteed to the Powhatan in a 1646 treaty. Many ignored the treaty and moved into the lands. Some settlers killed local Indians and no compensation was given to the nation. So Indians attacked outlying farms.

• Colonists demand was against all Indians in the Chesapeake.

• Governor William Berkeley refused, Nathaniel Bacon pushed ahead anyway.

• 1676-Nathaniel Bacon raised an army of western settlers and attacked Indians on the frontier. Followers of Bacon joined with indentured servants and enslaved Africans, looted wealthy plantations.

• The settlers seized and burned Jamestown and for awhile took over the government.

• Bacon’s Rebellion-ended with its leader’s sudden death from illness.

• King Charles II ordered Governor Berkeley to return to Great Britain.

• House of Burgesses- Virginia’s representative assembly of large planters. Limiting the governor’s power over land and by opening Indian lands to colonists.

Slavery

• Bacon’s Rebellion was short-lived, but the results were long term.

A. Strengthened the planters to switch from indentured servants to slave labor.

B. Indentured servants would eventually be released, producing more discontented freed servants.

Time line Activity

• Divide into groups of three to four.• Create a time line of the events that led to

Bacon’s Rebellion. (1646, 1660, 1675, 1676)• After creating a time line go back and explain

how each entry contributed to Bacon’s Rebellion.

• Be prepared to discuss in class and time lines will be displayed.

The Slave Trade

• The slave trade expanded into United States with the slave trade coming from Africa. Many were inspected, branded, and held until enough slaves could fill a ship.

• Middle Passage- ships so crowded that many died of disease, suffocation, or violence during the trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

The experience of slaveryOlaudah Equiano

After purchasing his freedom, Olaudah Equiano traveled to the Mediterranean, the Arctic, and Central America, but he never got the opportunity to visit Africa, the land of his birth and childhood. Equiano made every attempt to return to Africa. He volunteered to serve there as a missionary, but the sponsoring organization denied his request. He actually secured a job as inventory manager to a group of freed slaves returning to Sierra Leone-a position that would have allowed him to travel to the country-but lost the post in England, just before the party set sail for Africa.

Olaudah arrived in the colonies, he was purchased by a Virginia planter. Then he was sold to a British naval officer, Michael Pascal. Again, sold to an English merchant, for whom he worked as a sailor.

By 1777 Equiano settled in England. Concentrated on the antislavery movement.

1789-Popular autobiography convinced many people of the need to stop the slave trade.

Reactions to slavery

• Quakers-members of a Protestant sect that rejected wealth and even clergy-took a public stand against slavery 1688.

• Abolitionists-those who wanted slavery abolished, didn’t become a strong force until the 1800s.

• 1660-Africans were by law and by custom treated as inferior to whites.

1705-Virginia consolidated its various laws and customs into one “slave code.”

The slave codes were developed to prevent escape and discourage revolt. Slaves could not meet in large numbers, leave the plantation without permission, to learn to read or write, or to own weapons. A slaveholder couldn’t be tried for murder if a slave died while being disciplined.

Rebellion did occur and many ran away after arriving in the colonies.

Activity

• Conduct research on a specific Southern plantation.

• Draw a plan or diagram of your chosen plantation.

• Explain the history of the plantation and how the plantation has evolved into the 21st century.