Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0387/03874.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 21KB | 358 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03874}
$Pretitle{444}
$Title{United States of America
Chapter 1B.   Agriculture Rules the South}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{United States Information Service}
$Affiliation{United States Government}
$Subject{new
colonies
government
virginia
colony
colonists
england
first
company
own}
$Date{1991}
$Log{}
Country:     United States of America
Book:        An Outline of American History
Author:      United States Information Service
Affiliation: United States Government
Date:        1991

Chapter 1B.   Agriculture Rules the South

     In contrast to New England and the middle colonies were the predominantly
rural southern settlements, Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia.
Jamestown, in Virginia, was the first English colony to survive in the New
World. Late in December 1606, a group of about a hundred men, sponsored by a
London colonizing company, had set out in search of great adventure. They
dreamed of finding gold; homes in the wilderness were not their goal. Among
them, Captain John Smith emerged as the dominant figure, and despite quarrels,
starvation, and Indian attacks, his will held the little colony together
through the first years.

     In the earliest days, the promoting company, eager for quick returns,
required the colonists to concentrate on producing lumber and other products
for sale in the London market, instead of permitting them to plant crops for
their own subsistence. After a few disastrous years the company eased its
requirements and distributed land to the colonists.

     In 1612, a development occurred that revolutionized the economy of
Virginia. This was the discovery of a method of curing Virginia tobacco to
make it palatable to the European taste. The first shipment of this tobacco
reached London in 1614, and within a decade it had become Virginia's chief
source of revenue.

     The cultivation of tobacco exhausted the soil after several crops.
Breaking new ground, planters scattered up and down the numerous waterways. No
towns dotted the region, and even Jamestown, the capital, had only a few
houses.

     Though most settlers had come to Virginia to improve their economic
position, in Maryland, the neighboring colony, religious as well as economic
motives led to settlement. While seeking to establish a refuge for Catholics
there, the Calvert family was also interested in creating estates that would
bring profits. To that end, and to avoid trouble with the British government,
the Calverts encouraged Protestant as well as Catholic immigration.

     In social structure and in government the Calverts tried to make Maryland
an aristocratic land in the ancient tradition, which they aspired to rule with
all the prerogatives of kings. But the spirit of independence ran strong in
this frontier society. In Maryland, as in the other colonies, the authorities
could not circumvent the settlers' stubborn insistence on the guarantees of
personal liberty established by English common law and the natural rights of
subjects to participate in government through representative assemblies.

     Maryland developed an economy very similar to that of Virginia. Devoted
to agriculture with a dominant tidewater class of great planters, both
colonies had a back country into which yeomen farmers steadily filtered. Both
suffered the handicaps of a one-crop system. And before the midpoint of the
18th century, both were profoundly affected by black slavery.

     In these two colonies the wealthy planters took their social
responsibilities seriously, serving as justices of the peace, colonels of the
militia, and members of the legislative assemblies. But yeomen farmers also
sat in popular assemblies and found their way into political office. Their
outspoken independence was a constant warning to the oligarchy of planters not
to encroach too far upon the rights of free men.

     By the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the social structure in
Maryland and Virginia had taken on the qualities it would retain until the
Civil War. Supported by slave labor, the planters held most of the political
power and the best land, built great houses, adopted an aristocratic way of
life, and kept in touch with the world of culture overseas. Next in the
socioeconomic scale were the farmers, placing their hope for prosperity in
the fresh soil of the back country. Least prosperous were the small farmers,
struggling for existence in competition with slave-owning planters. In neither
Virginia nor Maryland did a large trading class develop, for the planters
themselves traded directly with London.

     It was reserved for the Carolinas, with Charleston as the leading port,
to develop into the trading center of the south. There the settlers quickly
learned to combine agriculture and commerce, and the marketplace became a
major source of prosperity. Dense forests also brought revenue; lumber, tar,
and resin from the long-leaf pine provided some of the best shipbuilding
materials in the world. Not bound to a single crop as was Virginia, the
Carolinas also produced and exported rice and indigo. By 1750, more than
100,000 people lived in the two colonies of North and South Carolina.

     In the south, as everywhere else in the colonies, the growth of the
back country had special significance. Men seeking greater freedom than
could be found in the original tidewater settlements pushed inland. Those
who could not secure fertile land along the coast, or who had exhausted the
lands they held, found the hills farther west a bountiful refuge. Soon the
interior was dotted with thriving farms. Humble farmers were not the only
ones who found the hinterland attractive. Peter Jefferson, for example, an
enterprising surveyor-father of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the
United States-settled in the hill country by acquiring 160 hectares of land
for a bowl of punch.

     Living on the edge of the Indian country, making their cabins their
fortresses, and relying on their own sharp eyes and trusty muskets,
frontiersmen became, of necessity, a sturdy, self-reliant people. They cleared
tracts in the wilderness, burned the brush, and cultivated maize and wheat
among the stumps. The men wore buckskin, the women garments of cloth they
had spun at home. Their food was venison, wild turkey, and fish. They
had their own amusements-great barbecues, housewarmings for newly married
couples, shooting matches, and contests where quilted blankets were made.

Schooling and Culture Flourish

     Already lines of cleavage were discernible between the settled regions
of the Atlantic seaboard and the inland regions. Men from the back country
made their voices heard in political debate, combatting the inertia of custom
and convention. A powerful force deterring authorities in the older
communities from obstructing progress and change was the fact that anyone in
an established colony could easily find a new home on the frontier. Thus,
time after time, dominant tidewater figures were obliged, by the threat of a
mass exodus to the frontier, to liberalize political policies, land-grant
requirements, and religious practices. Complacency could have small place in
the vigorous society generated by an expanding country. The movement into the
foothills was of tremendous import for the future of America.

     Of equal significance for the future were the foundations of American
education and culture established in the colonial period. Harvard College was
founded in 1636 in Massachusetts. Near the end of the century, the College of
William and Mary was established in Virginia. A few years later, the
Collegiate School of Connecticut (later to become Yale College) was chartered.
But even more noteworthy was the growth of a school system maintained by
governmental authority. In 1647 the Massachusetts Bay Colony, followed shortly
by all the other New England colonies except Rhode Island, provided for
compulsory elementary education.

     In the south, the farms and plantations were so widely separated that
community schools like those in the