Southern Colonies of the Early United States

Southern Colonies of the Early United States

Virginia Company

•In 1606 King James I created the Virginia Company from two groups of merchants who wanted to found colonies.

•Two groups, the Virginia company of London and the Virginia company of Plymouth were granted settlement rights in North America. The London group’s charter permitted the settlement of a colony in Virginia where it was thought precious metals such as gold could be found.

•The London Company sent out 3 ships, after being driven back by the Native Americans on their first attempt to land in Virginia they tried to find a more secure place to settle.

•They landed on a peninsula 60 miles up the James river and there in 1607 they founded Jamestown.

← This charter for the Virginia Company of London, written

in 1606, allowed the company to send people to North

America and start the colony of Jamestown

Virginia Company of London Seal

Jamestown• Captain John Smith led Jamestown through some of it’s most trying times, including an

outbreak of disease in the swampy and unhealthy settlement site, attacks and starvation.

• Mixing friendship, force, bluff, and bargaining he saved the starving colony by trading things such as beads, knives, pots and fishhooks for corn, vegetables, turkeys, and venison from Native Americans.

• The London Companies poor management caused many of the difficulties for Jamestown.

• They really needed houses and buildings but the company had sent only 4 carpenters. They had sent many Jewelers and goldsmiths to search for gold as this was a business venture for the company and meant to earn money for the shareholders.

• As a result of all this most of the 500 Colonists who came in the first few years dies. Better leadership may have prevented this as the colony had been without a governor for 2 years.

The End of The London Company• The London Company eventually lost it’s charter. By 1616 the shareholders had

made no real profits.

• The company’s reform program of 1618 expanded land sales, extended English law and rights to colonists, and allowed settlers to elect a representative assembly.

• Even an additional 4000 settlers could not end Virginias problems. King James I

ended the company and took control of the colony in 1624.

The House of Burgesses• In 1619 the London Company gave the settlers a say in the government by allowing

the first representative assembly in America, the House of Burgesses.

• A council selected by the governor and these burgesses together create the laws.

• When King James I took control of Virginia making it a royal colony he chose the governor but allowed the House of Burgesses to continue.

• Over time the House of Burgesses gained more power and eventually gained control over the taxes that paid the governor's and other official salaries.

Assembly of the house of Burgesses

The House of Burgesses, the first legislative assembly in the American colonies, held its first meeting in the choir at

Jamestown Church in the summer of 1619. Its first order of business: setting a minimum price for the sale of tobacco.

Capitol building in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is the building in which the House of Burgesses, the Virginia

colonial legislature, met during the years that led up to the Revolutionary War.

•James Oglethorpe was Georgia’s proprietor who wanted Georgia to be both a refuge for debtors and a military outpost against the Spaniards in Florida

•The first settlement was founded in Savannah in 1733

•In the beginning of Georgia’s governing, Oglethorpe was very strict, forbidding slavery and rum and controlling land sales which limited Georgia’s growth

•In 1740 the restrictions on rum and slavery were lifted, letting colonists elect an assembly that would only be given back to the King to prosper in 1752

Georgia

•In 1632 King Charles gave George Calvert 10 million acres of land north of Virginia which he named Maryland

•Calvert became proprietor of Maryland Colony, meaning that he had authority over it’s government

•In 1634, Calvert’s son Cecil sent the first 200 settlers in hope to make Maryland a refuge for Catholics

• Despite these actions there were more protestants then Catholics •To avoid persecution of the Catholics, Cecil offered religious freedom to all Christian settlers

• This freedom was later affirmed by the legislative making the Toleration Act of 1649 the first kind in America

Maryland

•The first colonists of London Company were men, women did not arrive till several years later, and even still the population remained mostly male for 2 decades

•The ratio was 15 men to every 1 woman. The London Company decided that they would send the first ‘bride ship’ to America

• Nearly 100 young, beautiful, educated maids were shipped over. These maidens were sold for about 120 pounds of tobacco or around 20 dollars

• Shortly after news came out that the maidens were marrying two men at the same time The London Company would stop sending these maidens over

• Travel brochures were made boasting the advantages of living in America to draw people to the new colonies

Bride Ships

-Settlers learned how to grow various crops including ones of corn, squash, beans, and tobacco

•Tobacco became the most profitable grown item

•The use of tobacco became popular in England, so not only did settlers sell tobacco to each other in the New Land; they were able to sell large amounts to England

•After John Rolfe secured and planted “West Indies” tobacco seeds, exports of tobacco from Virginia increased immensely

Farming and Tobacco Production

Farming and Tobacco Production

•Tobacco production was hard work and took a lot of people to make producing the goods possible

•Promise of free farmland and jobs producing tobacco attracted more English folk to settle in North America

•Convicts, laid-off farmers, poor people and homeless children from London streets were also sent to become apprentices to farmers and other trades people (such as black smiths) to provide a bigger workforce

Over Supply of Tobacco

•During the 1660s, tobacco prices were forced to be brought down due to oversupply

•Only largest tobacco producers were able to stay in business

•Former indentured servants rented farmland or moved into western regions of North America. •Depressed economic conditions resulted in an increase in number of homeless people

•In June 1676, Nathaniel Bacon gathered settlers who were annoyed with Virginia’s government. Later, in September, the group burned parts of Jamestown. Bacon died in October, causing the group to die down without a leader

Slavery•In 1619 a Dutch warship brought 20 enslaved Africans to Jamestown.

•Virginians needed laborers for their tobacco fields.

•Slavery was recognized in Virginia in law in 1661.

•Slavery was past down to children and so it became a permanent, inherited condition.

•From 1600 to 1850, Europeans brought 15 million enslaved west Africans to the Americans.

Indentured Servants

•Indentured servants were individuals who agreed to work for an employer in colonial America for a specified time in exchange to a passage to America.

•They worked four to seven years to pay off for being shipped across the Atlantic.

•Once they were finished their term, they were free to start their own farms.

The Carolinas•Northern Carolina was an area for subsistence farming.

•Subsistence farming was where farmers grew only enough to live on.

•Northern Carolina’s principal exports became naval stores.

•Naval stores were tar, pitch, and turpentine, products of its pine forests that are used in ship building.

•Southern Carolina offered a better harbor and attracted more settlers.

•Some of the settlers used slave labor in their sugar plantations.

•Eliza Lucas, a settler from the West Indies, introduced the growing of Indigo.

•Indigo was a plant that produced blue dye.

•By 1746 Indigo had become an important cash crop.