Chapter 6 Section 2

Diversity in the Colonies

Differences• Most early settlers were from England, but

people from other nations also came.

• Each group brought old patterns of prejudice.

• In time, prejudices faded while people began to work together to build new lives.

Prejudice- a bad opinion of people based on their religion, nationality, or appearance.

Religious Differences• Religious prejudice was slower to fade.

• Although most colonists were Protestants, they belonged to many different sects, with different beliefs.

• 1730’s: a revival, called “The Great Awakening”, divided religious groups and increased religious prejudice.

Revival- a renewed interest in religion.

The Great Awakening

Colonists and Indians in Conflict• Prejudices arising from racism led the colonists

to believe they had the right to take Indian land.• Indians had to stay and fight or flee. • Their greatest misunderstanding was over the

land.• Colonists saw the land as private property. They

took over the Indians land to develop settlements and farms.

• Indians felt that they belonged to the land where they farmed, hunted, fished, and gathered food.

Racism- the belief that one race of people is superior to another.

African Americans• Racism also led southern planters to

accept the system of using enslaved Africans on their plantations.

• Under this system, slaves and their children belonged to their owners for life.

• Captured Africans suffered a terrible voyage, separation of family and loss of freedom.

• Atlantic Slave Trade: Every year, American and European captains sailed to West Africa.

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There they traded cloth, rum, and guns for Africans captured by slavers. They carried their human cargo back across the Atlantic for sale in the Americas.

• For the captured Africans, the horrors of that voyage, known as the “Middle Passages,” were beyond imagination. Packed into ships many died of disease.

• Between the 1500’s and the 1800’s, at least 10 to 20 million Africans were sent into slavery in North and South America.

Atlantic Slave Trade

Atlantic Slave Trade

Middle Passage