New England Colonies And The Chesapeake Colonies example essay topic

Colonial America There are many myths about early America and the original thirteen colonies. Some people may think that all the colonies were the same. This is not true by any means. People of different cultures populated certain areas, and therefore practiced different religions, knew how to grow different crops, etc. The climate was far different between the New England colonies and the Chesapeake colonies. This also had an impact on the types of crops they grew.

There are multitudes of differences between the New England colonies and the Chesapeake colonies. The cultures of the people in the New England colonies and the Chesapeake colonies were the same, English. So this did not happen to be a difference. But as time went on they acted less and less like their predecessors. The belief in slavery had a huge impact on the type of society that was forming for both the North and the South. "As slavery spread, the gaps in the South's social structure widened" (American Life in the Seventeenth century, Chapter 4).

Slavery was becoming very popular and becoming a way of life. The few extremely large plantation owners headed the South's social structure. The few families that monopolized the vast areas of land in the South were families such as the Fitzhugh's, Lees, and Washingtons. Gangs of slaves maintained these vast areas of land. Compare this to the New England colonies, which had almost no huge plantations; and people that did have slaves had only 1 or 2.

Don't get the wrong impression, the owners of the vast land in the South were hardworking people, but they had lots of cheap labor helping them. When it comes to power, the owners of the plantations were some of the most powerful people in the South. On the other end of the scale were former indentured servants that could barely support themselves on their land, whites with no land at all, "people still serving out their term of indenture" and the blacks. There were very few cities in the South and thus finances and lawyers were scarce for a long time.

The only reliable transportation was the waterways because the roads were so bad when the weather was bad. Families spread apart and the South did not become a family oriented area, respectively. The New England colonies, on the other hand, were very family oriented. When they migrated they went in families as opposed to the people who migrated in the south alone. The family was the center of New England life. The population grew because the people of New England had such large families.

The mothers usually had a baby once every 2 years until menopause. By then they usually had about 8 surviving children. This was not true in the Chesapeake colonies because of a lot of factors including the disease in the south. Premarital pregnancy was frowned upon in the New England colonies while it was much more common in the Chesapeake colonies. One difference in the colonies, the family fragility of the southern colonies, actually helped women's rights in the south.

Since the husbands often die young, women were allowed to take over their land. This was not true in the New England colonies because they thought that this would create a dispute between the widow and her new husband. The life expectancy of a New Englander was about 70 years, this could be due to the cleanliness of the water and air in New England. One New Englander said, "A sip of New England's air is better than a whole draft of old England's ale". The New England colonies expanded in an orderly fashion. They charted their towns legally and when there were more than 50 families in a town, they provided education.

The first college in America was established in 1636, 8 years after the colony's founding. Compare this to the Chesapeake colonies that spread out randomly, had no set public education, and their first college was established in 1693, 86 years after the colony's founding. New England villagers had regular town meetings where they voted on things like school board members and road repairs. Even the crops and ways of life differed between the New England colonies and the Chesapeake colonies. The New England colonies focused on trade, fishing, lumber, and shipbuilding.

The Chesapeake colonies focused on tobacco, indigo, and rice. These vary so much because of the climate and location. There are huge amounts of differences between the New England colonies and the Chesapeake colonies. They include, but are not confined to, the crops and family life. It's amazing that 2 areas of the same [soon to be] country could be so different. 31 a.