The North and South, Essay Example

Northern and Southern Colonies

In the Unites States of America, Northern and Southern Colonies were economically, politically, and culturally very diverse from one another. The people of southern and northern colonies reached to the new world for number of different grounds and as the time passed on their distinctions would only grow. The diversity between these two colonies would ultimately end in the American Civil War that was started in the mid of 19^th century and almost ended destroyed, the country with which we are familiar today. For this reason, it is significant that we must know about how the southern and northern colonies emerged so differently from each other.

In the present world when we imagine about the early American southern colonies, we think about the slavery. It is a fact that slavery did turn out a main part of life of people in the southern colonies, but it was not started out that way. In the beginning, southern colonies were founded on the system of servant labor. Approximately, 80% of the workers in the Chesapeake were indentured servants and there were very few slaves. These servants of indentured type were typically poor English settlers searching for work. They generally had no education or skills so they had no choice except to endure servitude. Servitude was typically remaining the servants for four to seven years approximately and after the end of this period they would be given their freedom.

The labor itself was brutal and harsh. Numbers of servants ends their life before completing their servitude time and never getting pleasure by possessing their own land. With the passage of time, rules of slavery got too rigid and servants were required to spend extra time in servitude. This was because of the fact that it was very difficult for farm owners to acquire new people under slavery because majority of the people sought to work for themselves. The new world has so much possession of land even poor people purchases their own land with very low cost. For the reason that southern colonies were great fertile and flat land it was perfect for farming.

In the start of the 17^th century, there were majority of small agricultural estates in the southern area, but by the mid of 17^th century the things had been evolved and changed and large farms owners now hold most of the land. This most important shift in wealth introduced a gap between the poor and the rich. The poor majority who were without lands grew and felt more and more unhappiness in their lives. The government merely worked in the favor of the rich people and against the poor people and ultimately rebellion of Bacon erupted.

After the rebellion of Bacon, it turned out increasingly transparent to the white farms owners that how much more attracting slaves were. They could be hold and kept politically and in enduring servitude. The African Americans had been moved into slavery for number of years, but immediately numbers of the white colonists were moving the Carolinas. They carried there slaves with them. As a result, the culture of slavery developed and where a white servant could run away and be difficult to identify, but a black servant could not do so. His black color would be a label of their slavery.

On the other hand, the northern colonies in America were far diverse from the colonies of South America as the most of the colonists were Puritans who discovered New England. Different from the southern colonists who lived in big rural farms the New Englanders resided in towns of small level that were very near to one another. They lived very near to the ocean and did not move far inland. The society of Puritans was very committed, following the conforming and churches were very necessary to fit in. The Puritans had so much faith in education and majority children were capable to read things in very little age. This was a very clear difference to the people in southern colonies whose majority was uneducated.

The colonies of North America also differed considerably from the southern colonies economically. Northern colonies based much more on fishing and trade. The middle colonies focused on cultivating wheat instead of growing large crops for example tobacco cultivation in the southern area. Labor in Northern colonies was much more concerned with the family instead of slaves and indentured servants in the Southern colonies of America. The Northern colonies also gave the freedom to other religions and respect every religion particularly in the colonies that were in the middle for example New Jersey and New York.

The confidence and beliefs of Protestantism of the puritans gradually became lenient and permitted acceptance for more religious matters. These huge and explicit differences in the whole life eventually turned out the reasons why the civil war was fought. They had a firm believe that the country or any nation must be run much in a different way and were eager to manage and maintain their ways of life at any cost.