Differences Between Southern Colonies And New England Colonies

The religion of each colony was also impacted the economy, of whether of not they used slavery, and was a major difference in

Most of them ran away to Florida where the Spanish greeted them with food, clothes and freedom. The slaves in the northern part of England's colonies did not have as hard work. They were farm-hands, dockworkers, sailors and house servants. In the south they were farm workers and they needed to harvest labor intensive crops with worse treatment and were separated from their family. They way that they transported the slaves was horrible.

The colonists developed the stable government structure about “local affairs and landowners, legislature, marriage arrangements, and council and assembly members” (Gillon, pg.52). Moreover, the population in this region increased rapidly because there were more immigrants, and those who were Catholic and Protestant. Even though the Southern Colonies seemed to be another successful region, colonists needed to depended mainly on African labors, who were brought into the regions and caused another religion—African American or Anglican. These Africans were hard workers, and they were limit their abilities and were defined as human properties. “Africans were described as slaves and their offspring were declared to be slaves too” (Gillon, pg. 58).

Document B shows how dense New England's towns were. The houses were very close together, and church and school were in the center of town. Their religious convictions influenced this structure because church was a central part of their lives, so they all needed to live close to a church. Because of their religious devotion, education was also important to the Puritans. Schools were founded much faster than in the southern colonies, because the Puritans "dread[ed] to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churches" (Document E).

The South had very little industry. It was based off of an agrarian economy (Document B). Slaves picked cotton off the plantation and the farmers sold the cotton to make money (Document A). The Southern weren't able to keep their money without slaves working for free. Slavery was vital in the South for the economy.

But the majority of the young white males who came to Jamestown were poor, uneducated, and unskilled. They had no families and no means of supporting themselves, which meant that they caused a potential problem to the political and economic challenge for stability. Since these men had no skills, they would become indentured servants, trading their labor for free passage to the colonies. Elite landowners used this unfree labor to their advantage by growing cash crops like tobacco and exporting their agricultural products, eventuating establishing Jamestown as a boomtown. Once the colony had become stabilized, the first representative legislature general assembly met in the Jamestown church in 1619.

Although some convicts were sentence to serve their time in the New World as workers, many immigrated from other parts of the Europe as indengent servants seeking a better life. Many of them were skilled in craft and trades such as masonry, carpentry, and blacksmith that were important to the building of the New World. The largest population in the New World came with the Slave trade. Plantation owners viewed indigent servitudes and slaves as a valuable asset to the economic growth of the New World especially in the south. Southern planters began to govern base on a class system where rights were given only to the wealthy.

The Industrial Revolution brought down the prices of crops produced by farmers, this meant that farmers were not making enough money to pay off their debts. This increasing problem was slowly digging farmers into a hole with what seemed to be no escape. To add on to their everlasting money problems, middlemen and railroad companies were price gouging the farmers. This meant, the companies were asking farmers to pay prices which had been far higher than the actual value of the products needed for the farmers to raise crops. Companies did this, because they knew that farmers could not buy their goods from other businesses due to the fact that there were not any others in sight.

Due to increased productivity, cotton became a cash crop in the South

Because sharecroppers needed to borrow money for necessities, like tools and food, they seldom were able to make or save any money. Some sharecroppers were still considered slaves and worked for their former owners. Sharecroppers were living proof of the unsuccessfulness of Reconstruction because not much had changed from pre Civil War times. In addition, African Americans were not only struggling to make a living, but were unsupported and discriminated against. Mr. Hiram Revels, the colored Senator from Mississippi, was sworn in and admitted to his seat on February 25, 1870.

The southern colonies were all agriculturally based but they had different structures due to how and by whom each was founded. Jamestown, Virginia and the Carolinas were structured very much on a hierarchy like the English feudal system. They had large plantation owners who were like the lords in England. They were dependent upon slaves and indentured servants (sort of like debtors). Even though the West Indies were also dominated by plantations, there was still a separation because it was French controlled.

Third, the South left because of economic difference. ”The South established a rural way of life supported by an agricultural economy based on slave labor….The North developed an intricate railway system and shipping industry to transport the manufactured goods.” (Doc 3).

The system of sharecropping was only a modified alternative for slavery considering the workers would always have debt owed to the landowner and they were not treated much better. They would rent a small portion of land and then they would give the landowner the majority of the crops. Document D shows how sharecropping was spread widely throughout the South, replacing slavery. This prevented freedmen from being completely free, even after slavery had been abolished. In addition, many African Americans in the North were limited when it came to getting jobs.

When Europeans first colonized North American continent, the need for labor grew. The white servants from Europe did not solve the problem until a solution came up; the use of slaves from Africa. The North was primarily industrial economy while the South was the agrarian economy. Despite the similar intention of the northern and southern colonies to thrive, there were differences in economies that brought the issue of slavery to differ in the two colonies.

The first main cause of the Civil War was economic differences between the Northern and Southern states. During the first few decades of the 19th century, the North had an industrial revolution that brought an economy that relied on laborers. While at the same time, the South continued to rely on slaves for their farming and the production of cotton. The Northerners did not need slaves for their economy, but the Southerners could not make any profit without cotton or slaves. In the 1860’s, the North had twice as many railroads as the South, and the South had a bigger cotton production because of their slave population (Document A).