Differences Between the Main Regions of the Thirteen Colonies

Read the sections a-j about the differences between the 13 Colonies. Answer the question.

What differences existed between the main regions of the thirteen colonies?

Different patterns of life developed in three regions of the colonies, based on differences in geography, climate, settler origins, and economic activities.

In New England, a short growing season, cooler climates, rocky soil, and an influx of Puritan settlers encouraged the development of small farms and the growth of fishing, shipping, and handicraft trades.

In the Southern Colonies, a long growing season and warmer climate, as well as the arrival of mainly Anglican settlers seeking to make their fortune, encouraged the development of larger farms that often grew cash crops for sale to England. Along main water routes, large plantations developed.

Part of the Southern Colonies' economy was based on slave labor. Slaves grew cotton, tobacco, rice and indigo. They were taken by force from Africa and faced a horrific "Middle Passage" journey across the Atlantic. Most Southerners, however, did not own slaves.

The Middle Atlantic Colonies had greater ethnic and religious diversity than either New England or the Southern Colonies. Some of these colonies had once been under Dutch rule and were conquered by the English in 1664. The Middle Atlantic Colonies had fertile soil and grew food crops.

The colonists benefited from traditions of political liberty and representative government inherited from England. English subjects gained important rights in Magna Carta (1215), England's Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and the English Bill of Rights (1689). To these rights, the colonists added their own institutions of representative government in the Virginia House of Burgesses (1619), the Mayflower Compact (1620), New England town meetings, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639). In the mid-1700s, each colony had its own assembly elected by male property owners in the colony, and a governor appointed by the royal government in London.

Religion played an important role in colonial life. Pilgrims and Puritans first came for religious reasons. Other colonies were also established as homes for England's persecuted or unpopular religious groups - Quakers went to Pennsylvania and Catholics to Maryland.

Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson left Puritan Massachusetts and established the principle of religious toleration in Rhode Island. New York already had enjoyed religious toleration under Dutch rule. During the First Great Awakening, preachers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield addressed large crowds in open fields and stirred religious feelings. These preachers also supported religious toleration.

Mercantilism was the policy of using colonies to bring wealth to the "Mother Country." Mercantilists taught that the colonists should sell cash crops to the Mother Country and buy more expensive finished goods in return.

Colonists brought sugar from the West Indies, turned it into rum in the colonies, shipped the rum to England or Africa, and obtained manufactured goods from England and slaves from Africa. Historians refer to these exchanges across the Atlantic as the "Triangular Trades."