James L. Roark ● Michael P. Johnson
Patricia Cline Cohen ● Sarah Stage
Susan M. Hartmann
The American Promise
A History of the United States
Fifth Edition
CHAPTER 3
The Southern Colonies in the
Seventeenth Century,
1601-1700
Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin's
I. An English Colony on Chesapeake Bay
A. The Fragile Jamestown Settlement
1. Virginia Company
•
•
he issued a land grant to the Virginia Company, a joint stock company
the London investors of the Virginia Company hoped to strengthen
England overseas and at home, as colonists could both consume and
produce goods.
2. Jamestown- 144 colonists arrived at Chesapeake Bay on April 26, 1607.
3. Powhatan and the Algonquian Indians
•
•
•
Algonquian Indians attacked the colonists their first night there, which
demonstrated to the colonists the need to protect themselves from
Indians and the Spanish; also faced threats of disease and starvation
fifty colonists died by September
Algonquian chief Powhatan rescued the colonists by bringing corn to the
colony for barter
B. Cooperation and Conflict between Natives and Newcomers
1. Mutual distrust
•
•
Powhatan was suspicious of the English, as they did not hesitate to use violence to
enforce English notions of proper Indian behavior;
Indians did not organize an all-out assault against the English because they needed
allies.
2. Trade relationship between English and Indians
•
•
•
English traded European goods for corn
Indians preferred English iron and steel knives, axes, and pots
the English had difficulty feeding themselves, as very few farmers came to the New
World; most settlers were gentlemen and their servants.
3. Difficulties for Powhatan’s chiefdom
4. Opechancanough
•
Powhatan’s brother; he succeeded Powhatan as supreme chief in 1618; launched an
all-out assault against the English in 1622; killed 347 colonists; the attack did not
dislodge the English, but it did increase English violence toward Indians; most
colonists from that point on considered the Indians their perpetual enemies.
I. An English Colony on Chesapeake Bay
C. From Private Company to Royal Government
1. Revocation of Virginia Company charter
• Royal official investigated the colony after Opechcancanough’s assault
• determined that the death of the colonists resulted less from Indian raids
and more from disease and mismanagement
• the king revoked the charter of the Virginia Company and made it a royal
colony, subject to the direction of the royal government rather than the
company’s investors.
2. A royal colony
• King now appointed a royal governor; most other features of
local government remained intact
• colonists still voted for members of the House of Burgesses,
even though its laws had to be approved by royal
bureaucrats
• marked the end of the first phase of English colonization.
II. A Tobacco Society
A. Tobacco Agriculture
1. Tobacco
•
John Rolfe planted West Indian tobacco seeds in 1612, and the colonists grew enough to
send back to England by 1917; tobacco transformed Virginia from a colony of aimless
adventurers into a society of planters; tobacco was a demanding crop that required close
attention and year-round labor; the colonists had only primitive tools, making the labor
particularly taxing.
2. Abundance in Virginia
•
men could earn two to three times more in Virginia tobacco fields than in England;
abundant land made it extremely cheap as well; new settlers who paid their own way
also received a headright—fifty acres of free land.
•
B. A Servant Labor System
1. Indentured servitude
•
•
•
•
•
•
80 percent of immigrants came as indentured servants
poor immigrants agreed to a contract called an indenture, which was a form of credit; an
immigrant borrowed the cost of transportation from a merchant or sea captain, and, to
repay the loan, the indentured person promised to work as a servant in America for four
to seven years, after which time the servant would be free
merchant or ship captain sold the right to an immigrant’s labor to a tobacco farmer
planters reaped immediate benefits, as it typically took only one year for a servant to
grow enough tobacco to match the cost of his indenture; labor during the remaining
three to six years of the indenture promised a handsome profit for the planter.
2. Gender imbalance
three out of four servants were unskilled men between the ages of fifteen and twentyfive
women were rare, which created a gender imbalance; planters believed men were better
at field work, which perpetuated the imbalance.
II. A Tobacco Society
C. The Rigors of Servitude
1. Racial intermingling
2. Harsh realities of servitude
3. Restrictions placed on female servants
• Women servants were prohibited from marrying, as the law
assumed a servant woman could not serve two masters at the
same time—the one who owned her labor and her husband
• gender imbalance pressured women to engage in sex; about onethird of immigrant women were pregnant when they married
• women servants who gave birth had to serve two extra years and
pay a fine; sometimes the father of the unborn child purchased the
mother and freed and married her.
D. Cultivating Land and Faith
1. Demands of tobacco upon the land
• featured small tobacco farms surrounded by wilderness; farmers
could only tend about an acre at a time, but they constantly
needed new land because tobacco exhausted the fertility of the
soil; tobacco planters sought land that fronted a navigable river to
minimize the work of transporting the heavy crop.
2. Prosperity overshadows religion
• Most Chesapeake colonists were Protestants required to attend
Sunday services and follow the doctrine of the Church of England
• Lord Baltimore founded Maryland in 1632 as a refuge for Catholics,
but most settlers there were Protestant workers; tobacco was the
true faith of the Chesapeake.
III. Hierarchy and Inequality in the Chesapeake
A. Social and Economic Polarization
1. Era of the yeoman
•
•
•
•
•
owned a small plot of land to support a family; the land was tilled largely
by servants and a few family members; there were only a small number
of elite planters during the first few decades in the Chesapeake
2. Formation of planter elite
planter elite developed for three main reasons
first, the oversupply of tobacco depressed prices in Europe, which
reduced profits and made saving to become landowners more difficult for
freed servants;
second, the mortality rate declined, meaning more servants survived
indentures, which created a class of discontented, landless freemen
third, the declining mortality rate also allowed long-time farmers to
compound their success, buy slaves, serve as merchants, and lend credit
B. Government Policies and Political Conflict
1. Government reinforced social distinctions
•
•
•
until 1670, all freemen could vote, and they typically elected prosperous
planters to the legislature; no former servant served in the governor’s
council or the House of Burgesses after 1640; voting by poor men was
outlawed in 1670
2. Royal government tightens control
Navigation Acts required the colonists to trade exclusively with England.
3. Mercantilism
what was good for England should determine colonial policy
III. Hierarchy and Inequality in the Chesapeake
C. Bacon’s Rebellion
1. Virginia’s Indian policy
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1644, colonists and Algonquians agreed to a treaty to end fighting; Indians relinquished
all claims to land already settled by the English; wilderness land beyond the English
settlement was reserved for Indian use
2. Bacon’s laws
Nathaniel Bacon led frontier settlers who resented that the government did not allow
them to settle where they wished
he charged that grandees, or elite planters, operated the government for their private
gain;
Governor Berkeley threatened to punish Bacon for treason and called for a new election
of burgesses, but his plan to reinforce his power failed when local leaders, including
Bacon, won the elections;
new legislature passed reform measures known as Bacon’s Laws, which gave local
settlers a voice in setting taxes, forbade officers from demanding bribes, and restored
the vote to all freemen.
3. Bacon’s Rebellion
Berkeley at first pardoned Bacon, but elite planters again convinced him that Bacon
was dangerous and called him a traitor
for the next 3 months, Bacon’s forces fought Indians and attacked grandees’
plantations and Jamestown, but Bacon died, and Berkeley and his men crushed the
rebellion
the King replaced Berkeley with a governor more attentive to the interests of the
crown.
4. Aftermath
ruling elite concluded it was safer to allow colonists to fight with Indians than to
fight each other, so they made little effort to restrict colonists from encroaching on
Indian land; also reduced taxes.
IV. Toward a Slave Labor System
A. Religion and Revolt in the Spanish Borderland
1. Stagnant growth in New Mexico and Florida
2. Spanish missionaries convert Indians to Christianity
• missionaries supervised the building of scores of Catholic churches, but they forced
the Indians to do the construction and to pay tribute in the form of food, blankets,
and other goods.
3. Indians retaliate against Spanish exploitation
• 1680, Popé organized the Pueblo Revolt, where Indians desecrated churches, killed
two-thirds of Spanish missionaries, and drove the Spaniards out of New Mexico
• Florida Indians never mounted a unified attack against Spanish rule, but they
organized sporadic uprisings and resisted conversion.
B. The West Indies: Sugar and Slavery
1. Barbados
• planters began growing sugarcane there in the 1640s; sugar commanded high
prices in England
2. Sugar and slave labor
• Rich sugar grandees turned to slave labor;
• African slaves planted, cultivated, and harvested sugarcane;
• during the 1650s when blacks made up only 3 percent of the Chesapeake
population, they had become the majority in Barbados; brutal, unremitting labor,
high mortality rates, and mostly male slaves caused the slave population to grow
by importation rather than natural increase.
IV. Toward a Slave Labor System
C. Carolina: A West Indian Frontier
1. Settlers from Barbados arrive in Carolina
2. Slave labor
•
by 1700, slaves made up about half the population of Carolina; the
settlers launched failed experiments with tobacco, cotton, indigo, and
olives; eventually took advantage of the knowledge of rice cultivation
among their African slaves to build rice plantations.
D. Slave Labor Emerges in the Chesapeake
1. Black population grows five-fold between 1670 and 1700
•
•
•
•
•
by 1700, one out of eight people in the region was a black person from
Africa; only relatively prosperous planters could afford to buy slaves.
2. Advantages of slaves over servants
3. Slave labor system polarizes Chesapeake society
all slaves were black, and nearly all blacks were slaves; almost all free
people were white, and all whites were free or only temporarily bound in
indentured servitude
poor whites maintained the status of freedom and could do things slaves
could not, such as owning property, getting married, serving on juries,
and moving as they pleased
racial polarization replaced the divide between poor folk and grandees
unlike Barbados, Chesapeake had a white majority, and slaves had
frequent and close contact with white people; slaves often did run away,
but insurrection never occurred.