Question

Compare the lifestyle, economic, and religious differences between different colonies. (New England, Southern, and Middle)

Answer 1

• The Southern Colonies were established as economic ventures and were seeking natural resources to provide material wealth to the mother country and themselves. In contrast, the early New England colonists were primarily religious reformers and separatists. They were seeking a new way of life to glorify God and for the greater good of their spiritual life. The Middle colonies welcomed people from various and diverse lifestyles. The social-political structure included all three varieties: villages, cities, and small farms.
• Another difference is clearly noted in the human resources. New England had skilled craftsmen in the industry of shipbuilding. The Mid-Atlantic presented a diverse workforce of farmers, fisherman, and merchants.
• The Southern Colonies were primarily agricultural with few cities and limited schools. As these regions developed highly specialized economies, each could not supply everything that was needed or at least not as effectively as an interdependent system – they relied on each other for certain items or skills.
• New England’s economy at first specialized in nautical or boating equipment, while later the region developed mills and factories. The environment is ideal for water-powered machinery (mills), which allowed for finished products to be crafted, such as woven cloth and metal tools. The middles colonies had rich farmland and a moderate climate.
• This made it a more suitable place to grow grain and livestock than New England. Their environment was ideal for small to large farms. The coastal lowland and bays provided harbors, thus the middle colonies were able to provide trading opportunities where the three regions meet in market towns and cities.
• The Southern colonies had fertile farmlands which contributed to the rise of cash crops such as rice, tobacco, and indigo. Plantations developed as nearly subsistent communities. Slavery allowed wealthy aristocrats and large landowners to cultivate huge tracts of land.
• When strictly examining the geography of New England compared to the South, it is plausible that the vast space of the Southern region influenced the way it remained rural and still today holds that as a sense of pride or shared experience/identity.
• For the people of the South, life emerged as rugged and rural while people of the North are heavily connected to the Church and village community. These cultural differences remained and shaped some of the confrontations that needed to be addressed during the Civil War.
• The Puritans founded the northern colonies of New England. Puritanism evolved from the Protestant Reformation in England after King Henry VIII outlawed the Catholic Church in order to control religion in his country. Not all New England colonists were Puritans, but the Puritan religion was a major influence in the seventeenth-century New England way of life.
• Quakers began to populate the middle colonies around 1700, after the English crown had seized the colony of New Netherland, renamed it New York, and encouraged the creation of a Quaker colony led by William Penn. In addition to the Quakers, many other religions began to settle in the middle colonies. Orthodox, Puritans, Baptists, and Lutherans all helped to settle and populate New Jersey.
• Religion in the southern colonies was not practiced with the enthusiasm that it was in New England. While most colonists of the south were Anglicans, their true faith lay in their tobacco plantations. The same was true for the Catholic founders of Maryland. As their population grew, Protestants began to outnumber Catholics, though the Catholics continued to hold the power and influence. Just as in the other southern colonies, religion eventually took a back seat to tobacco in Maryland.