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Thirteen Colonies.mp4Regions of the Thirteen Colonies.mp4Building the Thirteen Colonies.mp413 Colonies_ Comparing Regions New England, Middle, and Southern.mp413 Colonies_ Colonial Governments & English Influence.mp413 Colonies Part II_ Settlement of Additional Colonies - U.S. History.mp4
Who ruled the Thirteen Colonies?
A colony is a land ruled by another country. The Thirteen Colonies were ruled by England, which eventually became part of Great Britain. The king or queen of Great Britain chose many of the officials who governed the colonies.
What happened to the Roanoke settlement?
We don't know. The colony lasted less than five years. In 1590, English sailors found that all the people, houses, and tools of the colony had disappeared.
The only clues about what happened were the word "CROATOAN" carved into a fence post and the letters "CRO" carved into a tree. Croatoan was the name of a nearby island. Historians still haven't found out what happened to the first Southern colony.
What was the Virginia Company?
The Virginia Company was a group of investors. An investor is a person who puts money into a company with the goal of making more money. The investors of the Virginia Company wanted to make money off their new colony.
The Virginia Company hoped that settlers would find gold and silver, which had been found in the Spanish colonies of Mexico and Peru. The first Virginian colonists set up the settlement of Jamestown in 1607.
Did the Virginian settlers ever find gold or silver?
No. The first years of the colony were a disaster. Of the first 135 settlers, only 38 survived past the first winter. Although the colony survived, no gold or silver was ever found.
The Virginia Company never made much money. So in 1624, the king of England broke up the Virginia Company.
Did Virginians get to vote for all their governing officials?
No. Virginians only got to elect representatives to the House of Burgesses. The House of Burgesses made local laws for the colony. However, the Virginia Company and the king of England appointed many other colonial officials, such as the governor.
Did everyone in Virginia get to vote for their representatives?
No. Native Americans, women, and enslaved people could not vote. Also, only men who owned a certain amount of property could vote. This law kept many poor Virginians from voting.
Many of the English settlers came to Virginia as indentured servants. Indentured servants agreed to work for landowners for a certain number of years.
How long was the term of service for an indentured servant?
Indentured servants agreed to work four to seven years for a landowner. However, landowners could add more years to the contract as punishment for running away or disobeying orders.
Why would anyone decide to be an indentured servant?
Indentured servants usually received some land after their term of service ended. Land was expensive in England. Even though life was hard in the Southern Colonies, many poor Englishmen thought indentured servitude was their best chance for a better future.
Over time, Virginians settled on land claimed by Native Americans.This expansion led to a series of wars. In 1646, the Virginian government signed a peace treaty with local Native American tribes. The treaty said that Virginian colonists would not take more Native American land.
Many Virginians did not like the colonial government's friendly policies toward Native Americans. In 1676, these Virginians violently rebelled against the government in Virginia. This event became known as Bacon's Rebellion.
What caused Bacon's Rebellion?
In the 1670s, many Virginians were angry at William Berkeley, the colonial governor. The colonists disagreed with Berkeley's friendly policies toward Native Americans. They also disliked that Berkeley gave the best land and trade opportunities to his friends only.
Hundreds of colonists rebelled against Berkeley. The planter Nathaniel Bacon led these rebels.
How did the rebellion end?
The rebellion lasted several months. The rebels attacked Native American villages and burned the colonial capital of Jamestown.
The British government sent soldiers to put down the rebels. However, Nathaniel Bacon died of disease before the British soldiers arrived. Governor Berkeley executed 23 of the rebel leaders. Later, however, the king of England removed Berkeley from office.
In 1632, the son of an English politician founded,or started, the colony of Maryland.His name was Lord Baltimore.
Lord Baltimore founded Maryland as a place for Catholics to practice their religion freely. For most of the 1600s, it was illegal for people in England to belong to the Catholic church. Lord Baltimore was Catholic, and he wanted to create a place for Catholics to be safe. Because Lord Baltimore was close with the English king, he was given permission to set up a new colony.
In Maryland's first years, Protestants and Catholics often fought each other. In 1649, the colonial assembly passed a law called the Maryland Toleration Act. This law was meant to stop the fighting between the two Christian groups.
Did the Maryland Toleration Act allow all groups to practice their religious beliefs freely?
No. Here were some of the groups not protected by the act:
Unitarians and some other Christian groups
Jews and other non-Christian religious groups
atheists, or people who did not believe in any god
People of these groups could still be persecuted, or treated badly, for their beliefs.
In 1663, a group of men called the Lords Proprietor founded the colony of Carolina.
The Lords Proprietor had to convince settlers that moving to Carolina was worth the risk of dying by disease or Spanish attack. So, they granted 150 acres of land to each new settler. This method of granting land to settlers was a headright system.
Who were the enslaved people of the Carolina Colony?
Both Native Americans and people of African descent were enslaved in South Carolina. Enslaved people of African descent were brought from Africa or other British colonies. Enslaved Native Americans were often captured in wars or sold to the Carolinians by enemy tribes.
What was the difference between an indentured servant and an enslaved person?
Indentured servants usually did the same hard work on Southern plantations as enslaved people.
However, indentured servants had contracts that freed them after a certain number of years. An enslaved person had no contract. An enslaved person usually stayed enslaved for his or her entire life.
Who moved to the Carolina colony?
Many of the Europeans who moved to the Carolina colony didn't actually come from Europe! Some of them came from the British colonies in the Caribbean. Many of these colonists had experience running plantations of enslaved people.
Some religious groups moved to Carolina to avoid discrimination. For example, hundreds of Jews came to Carolina after they had been forced out of Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Caribbean and South America.
The Yamasee War
The Yamasee and the Carolinians often traded with each other. The Yamasee would sell the colonists animal skins and enslaved Native Americans captured from other tribes.
However, the Carolinians began demanding more goods and even started enslaving some of the Yamasee. In 1715, these demands and colonist expansion into Yamasee land, led to war.
The Yamasee War became one of the bloodiest conflicts in the history of the Thirteen Colonies. Some Native American groups joined the Yamasee, while others fought for the Carolinians. By 1717, the colonists had pushed the Yamasee and their allies out of Carolina.
Why did the Lords Proprietor divide North and South Carolina?
Even when they were part of one colony, the people of the northern and southern parts of Carolina lived very different lives. The economy of southern Carolina was based around large farms controlled by a small group of people. On the other hand, the economy of northern Carolina was based around small farms.
Partly due to these differences, the Lords Proprietor often appointed different sets of officials to run the different parts of the colony. Eventually, the Lords Proprietor divided the Carolina Colony in two.
In 1732, James Oglethorpe founded the colony of Georgia. Oglethorpe founded the colony in order to give certain people a chance to improve their lives.
James Oglethorpe's plan for Georgia
Oglethorpe did not want Georgia to be controlled by a small group of rich plantation owners. He wanted the Georgia to be made up of many people who owned small farms.
To accomplish his plan, Oglethorpe created a series of laws for Georgia. Some of his laws included banning both slavery and owning more than fifty acres of land. Many Georgia colonists were upset by these rules. They thought Oglethorpe had no business telling them what to do.
Eventually, all of Oglethorpe's rules were repealed, or canceled. Large plantations and enslaved people became key parts of the colony's economy.
Georgia and Spanish Florida
Georgia was the closest of the Thirteen Colonies to Spanish Florida. Since Great Britain and Spain were enemies, the two colonies sometimes attacked each other. In 1742, the Spanish invaded Georgia after a failed British invasion of Florida.
British soldiers and Georgia colonists eventually forced the Spanish to retreat back to Florida. After the invasion, Spanish Florida and Georgia continued to fight small battles with each other.
A warmer climate: an opportunity
The Southern Colonies had a warmer climate than the other colonies. Southern colonists could grow many different kinds of crops since the winter was so short.
A warmer climate: a risk
Warmer weather also helped spread disease in the Southern Colonies. For example, warm weather was good for mosquitoes carrying malaria, a blood disease. Newcomers to the Southern Colonies often got sick and died within a few years.
Did all colonial farmers grow cash crops?
No. Most colonial farmers focused mainly on growing food for their families. Subsistence farming is when a farmer grows crops for his or her own family's use. Sometimes, these subsistence farmers sold their extra crops. Only a small portion of the colonists had large cash crop farms.
What is indigo?
The indigo plant was grown in many places with hot climates, including the Southern Colonies. Indigo can be used to make blue dye. During the colonial period, people used blue dye to make colorful clothes.
Making indigo dye
Once the indigo plant was picked, it had to be put in water and pounded with sticks for hours. Then, it was dried into cakes of dye. These cakes of dye were then shipped to Great Britain.
Which countries did the Southern Colonies trade with?
Starting in the 1650s, England passed a series of laws called the Navigation Acts. These laws said that the American colonies could only trade with England and its other colonies, such as those in the West Indies.
The Navigation Acts made many colonists angry. Despite the laws, colonists would smuggle, or illegally trade, goods with other places. Colonial smugglers would secretly buy goods from or sell goods to other countries. It was hard for the English to stop colonial smuggling.
The Southern Colonies were part of triangular trade routes. One part of the triangular trade route was called the Middle Passage.
What was the Middle Passage like?
Enslaved people were crammed onto ships to cross the Atlantic. The journey could take 8 to 12 weeks. During those weeks, enslaved people were chained together to keep them from trying to escape. Many enslaved people died of diseases along the way.
How many enslaved people crossed the Middle Passage?
We don't know for sure. Many of the shipping records have been lost. Historians estimate between 10 to 12.5 million enslaved people came to North and South America between the 15th and 19th centuries.
Did African American people make up most of the population in all the Southern Colonies?
No. In the other colonies, there were more small plantations and farms with white workers. South Carolina had larger plantations than the other colonies.
The Gullah people
Many African traditions survived in parts of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. The enslaved people of these regions developed their own language that blended English and African languages. The descendants of these people are called the Gullah.
Rice Plantation
What was an enslaved person's life like on a plantation?
Most enslaved people worked from dawn until dusk in the heat. Slaveholders always looked for ways to force enslaved people to work even harder.
Often, enslaved people were sold to other plantations, separating them from their friends and family.
Enslaved people still built strong communities and families. Colonial law did not recognize marriages between enslaved people. But enslaved people held their own weddings anyway.
What was life like for a plantation owner?
Plantation owners such as William Byrd II were the most powerful people in the Southern Colonies. They usually controlled colonial legislatures such as the Virginia House of Burgesses. In other words, they wrote the laws.
Plantation owners made money by selling cash crops to Europe. When the price for the crops was low, plantation owners found it hard to make enough money to support their expensive habits. Many plantation owners borrowed money so they could always afford to live comfortably.
Why aren't there many records written by enslaved people?
Enslaved people were not allowed to go to school, so most did not know how to write. Also, enslaved people could be punished for expressing their opinions. So, many did not leave written records.
Olaudah Equiano's autobiography is one of the few records of an enslaved person's life in the Southern Colonies.
The story of Olaudah Equiano
In 1789, A formerly enslaved person named Olaudah Equiano published his autobiography, or a book about his own life. Equiano told the story of being captured in Africa and carried across the Middle Passage. Unlike most enslaved people, Equiano's master let him learn to read and write.
Equiano wrote his autobiography to convince people that the slave trade was wrong. He thought it was important for people to know how bad it was to be enslaved.
This passage from Olaudah Equiano's autobiography describes his time in Savannah, Georgia. Read the passage. Then answer the question below.
[A master and his friend] beat and mangled me in a shameful manner, leaving me near dead. I lost so much blood from the wounds I received, that I lay quite motionless, and was so benumbed that I could not feel any thing for many hours.
mangled: hurt
benumbed: without feeling
Why did the two men attack Equiano?
Right before the attack, Equiano was speaking to some enslaved people in their owner's yard. According to Equiano, the owner was upset that an unfamiliar enslaved person was in his yard. So, the owner and his friend attacked Equiano.
After the beating, Equiano was taken to jail. No lawyer would help Equiano, because he was an African American person. Equiano's story showed that colonial laws did not help people of African descent.
The table shows three colonial laws about slavery and race. These laws were passed in Virginia and Carolina in the 1600s.
Why did the Southern Colonies pass laws targeting African American people?
Most colonists believed that African American people were inferior to, or less important than, white people. As slavery grew in the colonies, Southern laws made it harder for African American people to become free.
White colonists also worried that enslaved people might rebel. To stop enslaved people from rebelling, Southern laws made it easier to punish enslaved people. Enslaved people also were not allowed to defend themselves in court.
What are some ways enslaved people could resist, or fight against, slavery in the Southern Colonies:
running away. By running away, enslaved African American people hoped to escape from slavery. Running away was dangerous. When runaway enslaved people were captured, they faced harsh punishments.
slowing down their work. Slaveholders wanted enslaved people to work as hard as possible, no matter how hard it made the lives of enslaved people. By slowing down their work, enslaved people were trying to make their lives more manageable.
breaking tools. Many tools were needed for growing crops on a plantation. Slaveholders often complained that broken tools slowed down the work.
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