The Southern Colonies

Geography of the Southern States

• During the 1760’s, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were hired to settle a boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland, using state of the art technology for the era, they established the dividing line between the “North” and the “South” in America

• 5 colonies are below the Mason-Dixon Line: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia

• They all share a swampy, low level, coastal region named the “tidewater” and then as you move across the colony a hilly to mountainous region known as the “piedmont”

• The climate of these colonies are warm and humid, hot summers provide a long growing season perfect for tobacco, corn and rice

Virginia Grows• Virginia’s population grew gradually during

the 1600’s, but exploded in the 1700’s• As time went on, changes in sanitation and

medicine in the new colony allowed for children and women to live longer lives

• As Virginia’s white population grew, so did the number of conflicts with natives, in 1607 there were about 8,000 natives in Virginia by 1675 only about 2,000 were alive

• Bacon’s Rebellion occurred in 1675, when backcountry farmers were tired of being treated as 2nd class citizens by Virginia’s elite, as tensions grew between rich and poor whites, so did tensions between poor whites and natives, Virginia’s governor attempted to keep Bacon’s followers from taking native lands, but desperate for a place to live and the ability to earn a living Bacon’s followers burned Jamestown to the ground, Bacon died and 23 of his soldiers were executed

Religious TolerationIn Maryland

• In 1632, King Charles I granted a charter for a new colony to George Calvert with the intention that Catholics in England would leave the country and move to the new colony

• Calvert died and passed on control of the colony to his son Cecil Calvert also known as Lord Baltimore

• Soon after it’s creation fights began between Catholics and protestants, Lord Baltimore passed an act of tolerance but continued to encourage the colony only to accept Catholics from England into the land

North and South Carolina

• By the 1660’s, King Charles II granted a new charter south of Virginia for a new farming colony to be created

• The northern part of the colony developed very slowly, it lacked harbors, settler’s lived on very small farms

• The southern part of the colony grew more quickly, sugar grew well and with the use of slavery other crops soon thrived in SC, Charlestown became the largest city in all of the southern colonies

• The colony was governed by 8 friends of the king, called the lord’s proprietors, after years of rebellions and failure to pay taxes properly the king of England separated the colony into 2 separate places each run by 4 lord’s proprietors

Changes in the Southern Colonies

• During the 1700’s, southerners in the tidewater regions relied heavily on the use of slavery to operate their large farms called plantations, farmers in the backcountry were typically cut off from the rest of civilization and rarely received help from colonial governors

• In the backcountry, citizens rarely cared about social standing and relied heavily on all members of the family to have equal standing and equal responsibility in working

• As production of rice, sugar, cotton and tobacco grew in the tidewater regions, trade relations with Europe strengthened and grew to depend almost entirely on the use of slaves to work on the plantations