1. Colonial America Chapter 3, Lesson 4 The Southern Colonies
Essential Question: How does geography influence the way people live? Do Now: Write a paragraph describing what life would have been like to walk down a busy street in the port city of New Amsterdam/New York City. What might you have seen, heard, felt?

2. Southern Colonies Maryland Virginia North Carolina South Carolina
Georgia

3. Virginia and Maryland
The Virginia colony depended on tobacco for its success.
Labor was needed to grow this valuable crop.
Labor was in the form of:
Enslaved Africans
Criminals/prisoners of war- earn release by working for a period of time-usually 7 years.
Indentured servants- people who agreed to work for a certain number of years for no pay, in exchange for their passage to America.

4. Virginia and Maryland (cont.)
1634 – Maryland, a new colony, is founded as a safe place for English Catholics.
They faced persecution in England.
More Protestants than Catholics living in the colony.
Act of Toleration passed in 1649 to protect the Catholics. The act ensured Protestants and Catholic the right to worship freely.
Maryland and Pennsylvania argued over borders.
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon hired to map the border.
Mason-Dixon Line became the official boundary.

5. Critical Thinking Question
Why do you think having a border between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland was so important to the people who ruled the colonies?

6. Virginia and Maryland (cont.)
James Berkeley, governor of Virginia, promised Native Americans that settlers would not go farther west into their lands.
Bacon’s Rebellion:
Nathaniel Bacon disagrees with Berkeley & leads attacks on Natives and Jamestown.
He dies just before victory.
Important in history because it showed that people wanted a government that would listen to their demands.

7. The Carolinas and Georgia
1663 – King Charles II creates Carolina, “Charles’s Land”.
New colony needed a constitution- a written plan of government.
Outlined jobs & powers of the colony’s government.
John Locke, English political thinker, writes constitution.
Colony splits into two separate colonies northern Carolina & southern Carolina.
Important crops in North Carolina included- tobacco, timber, and tar. Important crops in South Carolina included-Indigo and rice (demand for slave labor increased to grow rice)
1729- Carolina becomes two royal colonies- North Carolina and South Carolina.

8. The Carolinas and Georgia
1733 – Georgia becomes last British colony in America.
Created to give English debtors- person or country that owes money, a fresh start.
Forts were built to protect colonies from Spanish attack.
Colony doesn’t develop as planned.
Few debtors settle, mostly poor refugees
Settlers complain about ban on slavery.

9. Critical Thinking Question
Why do you think slave labor became so popular in the southern colonies? Why would settlers in Georgia be upset that it was banned?

10. Group Activity
Read the section titled “Rebellion in Virginia” on page 75 in the textbook. Create a graphic organizer to list the CAUSES and EFFECTS of Bacon’s Rebellion.