1. Chapter 3, Section 4 Southern Colonies

2. Vocabulary and Timeline
Vocabulary: Indentured servant, constitution, debtor, tenant farmer, mission
Timeline
1610 A.D A.D A.D A.D.
Spanish establish Bacon’s Rebellion The French establish Georgia is founded
Santa Fe occurs city of New Orleans
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3. Coming to America
By 1660, tobacco prices were falling. However, large plantations were able to prosper because they were able to maintain high profits.
Therefore, plantations increased in number. At the same time, the need for workers in the Southern Colonies continued to grow as well.
Establishing a colony was difficult work. Without reliable and capable workers, the colonies would not last.
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4. England and the Colonies
Some of the people who came to the colonies did not come of their own free will.
English criminals and Scottish and Irish prisoners of war were forced to work in the colonies. They could earn their freedom by working for a period of time (usually seven years—therefore they were sometimes called “His Majesty’s seven year passengers”).
Africans were also brought to the colonies as slaves.
Finally, some people came to the colonies as indentured servants – in return for the payment of their passage to America, they agreed to work without pay for a certain period of time.
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In a drear Scottish prison, convicts await transport to the colonies and a hard, brutal existence as indentured servants. The prisons held "idle vagabonds and beggars," poverty being itself sufficient grounds for imprisonment and transport.

5. Establishing Maryland
Maryland was established based on a dream of Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore.
Calvert was a Catholic and wanted a safe place for Catholics to live since they were being persecuted in England and he hoped to make money on the colony as well.
In 1632, King Charles I gave him a proprietary colony north of Virginia.
Unfortunately, Calvert died before receiving the grant. However, his son, Cecilius Calvert took over the claim and ran the colony. He named the colony Maryland after the English queen, Henrietta Maria.
Sir George Calvert
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Cecilius Calvert

6. Establishing Maryland
Cecilius Calvert – the new Lord Baltimore – never lived in Maryland. He sent two of his brothers to run the colony and they reached America in 1634 with two ships and more than 100 settlers.
They entered the Chesapeake Bay and sailed up the Potomac River through fertile countryside. The colonists chose a site in this area and named their new settlement St. Mary’s.
The colonists knew that the Virginia colony prospered due to tobacco farming, so they began with this crop as well.
However, in order to not become too dependent on one crop, a Maryland law declared that “every person planting tobacco shall plant and tend two acres of corn.” Most Maryland tobacco farmers also planted wheat, fruit and vegetables. They also kept livestock.
The city of Baltimore was founded in 1729 and became Maryland’s main port. Before long, Baltimore became the colony’s largest settlement.
St. Mary’s City, Maryland
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Baltimore Harbor in 1849

7. Aristocrats and Farmers
Lord Baltimore gave large estates to his relatives and other English aristocrats.
This created a wealthy and powerful class of landowners in Maryland. However, the colony needed people to work on the plantations.
To bring workers to the colony, Lord Baltimore promised land – 100 acres --- to each male settler, another 100 for his wife, 100 for each servant and 50 for each of his children.
The colony also brought in indentured servants and slaves. Thus, this led to the creation of a much lower class of people as well.
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8. The Mason-Dixon Line
For many years, the Calvert family and the Penn family argued about the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania.
In the 1760s, they hired two British astronomers, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, to map the line between the two colonies.
It took them five years to lay out the boundary stones. Each stone had the crest of the Penn family on one side and the Calvert family on the other.
The Mason-Dixon Line
A "crownstone" boundary monument on the Mason-Dixon Line. The coat of arms of Maryland's founding Calvert family is shown. On the other side are the arms of William Penn.
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9. Act of Toleration
Another problem for Maryland was religion. Lord Baltimore had wanted it to be a haven for Catholics. However, they had welcomed Protestants from the beginning due to the need for workers.
Protestant settlers outnumbered the Catholics from the very beginning of the colony’s establishment.
To protect the Catholics from any attempt to make Maryland a Protestant colony, in 1649, Baltimore passed a law called the Act of Toleration – this act granted Protestants and Catholics the right to worship freely.
This did not lead to the end of disputes between Catholics and Protestants and in 1692, the colony’s Protestant majority repealed the act.
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10. Virginia Expands
Virginia continued to grow as the other colonies were established.
Wealthy tobacco farmers had the best land near the coast, so new settlers had to go inland.
Sir William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia, sent explorers over the Blue Ridge Mountains to open up the backcountry of Virginia.
As the settlers moved to this area, they found Native Americans living there.
In 1644, Berkeley worked out a deal with the Native Americans in order to avoid conflicts. In exchange for a large piece of land, Berkeley agreed to keep settlers from going farther inland.
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Sir William Berkeley
Blue Ridge Mountains

11. Bacon’s Rebellion
Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy, young farmer, was a leader in the western part of Virginia.
He opposed the colonial government because it was controlled by easterners.
Many westerners also did not like Governor Berkeley’s arrangement with the Native Americans.
Some of these westerners settled in the Native American lands and then blamed the government in Jamestown for not protecting them from the Native American raids.
Nathaniel Bacon

12. Bacon’s Rebellion
In 1676, Bacon led westerners in attacks on Native American villages. Bacon’s army then marched to Jamestown, set fire to the capital and drove Berkeley into exile.
Only Bacon’s sudden illness and death kept him from taking over the government of Virginia.
After Bacon died, British troops helped Berkeley restore order and end the rebellion.
This rebellion is referred to as Bacon’s Rebellion. The rebellion showed that settlers did not want to be forced to stay on the coast.
Therefore, in 1677, the colonial government signed a treaty with the Native Americans to open up more land for settlement.

13. Settling Toward the Carolinas
In two charters issued in 1663 and 1665, King Charles II created a large proprietary colony south of Virginia called Carolina which means “Charles’s land” in Latin.
The king gave the colony to eight members of his royal court. The proprietors carved out large estates for themselves and hoped to make money by selling and renting land.
They provided money to bring settlers over from England. Settlers began arriving in the colony in 1670.
By 1680, they had founded a city called Charles Town after the king. The city later became known as Charleston.

14. Settling Toward the Carolinas
John Locke, an English political philosopher, wrote a constitution for the colony.
This constitution, or plan of government, covered land distribution and social ranking.
Locke was also concerned about principles and rights. He argued that “every man has a property in his own person.”
Carolina did not develop as planned. The people of the north and the south went their separate ways and created two colonies.
John Locke

15. Northern and Southern Carolina
The north of Carolina was mainly settled by farmers from Virginia’s backcountry.
They grew tobacco and sold forest products like timber and tar.
The north did not have a good harbor. Therefore, they depended upon the ports and merchants of Virginia to sell their goods and conduct their trade.

16. Northern and Southern Carolina
The south of Carolina was more prosperous because of fertile farmland and a good harbor at Charles Town.
Trade in corn, lumber and cattle flourished.
In the 1680s, planters also found that rice grew well in the coastal lowlands. Rice soon became the colony’s leading crop.
In the 1740s, Eliza Lucas developed another important crop – indigo. Indigo, a blue flowering plant, was used to dye textiles. It became the “blue gold” of Carolina.

17. Slave Labor
Most of the settlers in southern Carolina came from another English colony—the island of Barbados in the West Indies.
In Barbados, the colonists used enslaved Africans to grow sugar. The colonists brought these slaves with them to Carolina.
Many enslaved Africans worked in the rice fields. Some knew a lot about rice growing since they had come from rice growing areas in West Africa. Rice growing requires a lot of labor, so the demand for slaves increased.

18. The Division of North and South Carolina
By 1700, more than half the people who arrived in Charles Town were enslaved Africans.
Tensions grew between the wealthy farmers of southern Carolina and the colonists with small farmers in northern Carolina.
In 1719, the settlers seized control of the colony from its proprietors.
In 1729, Carolina was formally divided into two colonies – North and South Carolina.

19. Georgia
Georgia was the last of the British colonies to be established in America.
It was founded in 1733 by a group led by General James Oglethorpe. They received a charter to create a colony where English debtors and poor people could make a new start.
In Great Britain, debtors—those who were unable to pay debts—were usually thrown in prison.
The British government also created the colony of Georgia in order to protect the other colonies from a Spanish attack.
Great Britain and Spain had been at war in the early 1700s and they continued to fight over new territory. Since Georgia was located between the other English colonies and Spanish Florida, it served as a military barrier.

20. Oglethorpe’s Town
Oglethorpe led the first group of people to Georgia in 1733 and established a town called Savannah.
They also build forts to defend themselves against the Spanish.
Oglethorpe wanted the people of Georgia to be hardworking, independent, and Protestant.
He kept the size of farms small and banned slavery, Catholics, and rum.
Although Georgia had been established as a debtors’ colony, it did not receive many debtors. Hundreds of poor people came from Great Britain. Religious refugees also came from Germany and Switzerland. A small group of Jewish settlers also came to settle there.
Georgia soon had a higher percentage of non-British settlers (more than any other colony in the Americas).

21. The Colony Changes
Many settlers did not like the restrictions on farm sizes and slave labor.
They referred to Oglethorpe as “our perpetual dictator.”
Oglethorpe was frustrated by their demands and the slow growth of the colony.
He agreed to let them have larger farms and land holdings and he also allowed them to have slaves and to drink alcohol.
In 1751, he gave the colony back to the king.

22. New France The English were not the only ones colonizing the Americas.
The French and the Spanish were also setting up settlements.
The French had founded Quebec in However, they did not want to set up large settlements at first. They were only interested in fur trading and fishing.
Later, in 1663, New France became a royal colony.
King Louis XIV limited the privileges of the fur companies and he appointed a royal governor who supported new explorations in the Americas.

23. Father Jacques Marquette
Down the Mississippi
In the 1670s, two Frenchman, Louis Joliet, a fur trader, and Jacques Marquette, a priest, explored the Mississippi River by canoe.
They were looking for gold, silver, and other precious metals.
They were also looking for a passage to the Pacific Ocean.
They eventually realized that Mississippi flowed south into the Gulf of Mexico and not west into the Pacific.
Father Jacques Marquette

24. Down the Mississippi
A few years later, Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle, followed the Mississippi River all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.
La Salle claimed the area for France and named it Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV.
In 1718, the governor of Louisiana founded the port city of New Orleans.
King Louis XIV
Robert La Salle

25. Growth of New France Growth in New France occurred very slowly.
Growth mainly occurred along the St. Lawrence River with the development of estates.
The estate owners received land in exchange for bringing settlers to the colony.
These settlers were known as tenant farmers – they paid the estate owner annual rent and worked for him for a fixed number of days each year.
The French had better relations with the Native Americans. The French trappers and missionaries lived among Native Americans, learned their language, and respected their culture.
Also, since the colonies of France grew so slowly, they did not push the Native Americans off of their lands.

26. New Spain
The Spanish controlled most of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
They also expanded into the western and southern parts of the current-day United States.
Spain did not want the other European nations to threaten their empire in the Americas.
To protect their land, the Spanish sent soldiers, missionaries, and settlers north into present-day New Mexico.
In 1610, these people founded the city of Santa Fe.

27. New Spain Another group went to present-day Arizona in the late 1600s.
When the French began exploring the lands around the Mississippi River, the Spanish went into present-day Texas.
The Spanish wanted to control the area between the French territory and their colony in Mexico.
In the early 1700s, they established the city of San Antonio and seven other military posts in Texas.

28. Missions in California
Spanish priests built several missions along the coast of the Pacific Ocean.
Missions are religious settlements established to convert people to a particular faith.
These missions allowed the Spanish to take control of the area that is now present-day California.
The Spanish also used the missions to force the Native Americans to serve as laborers in fields and workshops.
Mission Santa Barbara

29. Missions in California
In 1769, Junipero Serra, a Franciscan monk, founded a mission at San Diego.
During the next fifteen years, he established more than eight missions along a route called El Camino Real (The King’s Highway).
These missions grew into cities like Los Angeles and Monterey.
Serra worked for the rights of Native Americans and he worked to prevent Spanish army commanders in the region from mistreating them.

30. European Conflicts in North America
Britain and Spain fought many wars in the early 1700s.
When the two countries fought in Europe, the fighting carried over to the colonies (especially in Georgia and Florida).
However, France and Great Britain were the main rivals of the colonial period.
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, wars in Europe between the British and French shaped events in the Americas.