Southern Colonies: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, & Georgia
The southern colonies almost flopped for a second time when settlement of Jamestown turned to cannibalism to survive the winter of 1609. But with the discovery of tobacco, the colonists were willing to forget the whole starvation and eating corpses and get down to the business of establishing plantations.
Climate and geography had a huge impact on how the culture of the southern colonies. The hot and wet summers and mild winters combined with rich fertile soil created agricultural magic. Just a few years before, the Virginia colonists had been cannibalizing one another to stay alive. But once people back in England realized that Virginia was flush with “brown gold” you couldn’t stop the flood of colonists from coming.
In its golden years, the tobacco boom lured young men looking to own land. But tobacco is a demanding plant and wears out the soil so quickly that farmers were forced to move on to the next spot every five to seven years. (You could of course keep the soil healthy through fertilizers but tobacco that tasted like cow manure didn’t tend to sell too well back in Europe). Tobacco farming caused the colonists of Virginia to keep on the move and spread out.
Thousands of armed young men constantly on the move doesn’t make for much a community. In contrast to the New England colonies which had more of a small town family vibe, the Virginia colonies took on a loner mentality. The governors who ran 17th Century Virginia complained about the lack of morals and breakdown of religion. Young men who work all day toiling in their fields are more likely to spend the Sabbath day drinking and gambling rather than canoeing 10 miles to church and back. The Southern colonies tried to pass laws to enforce church attendance and create a sense of community, but most people tended to ignore them and do their own thing. This isolation led to one of many ways that the southern colonists became so different from their northern counterparts. The agricultural economy of the south led to many small isolated farms that pretty much what they darn-well felt like doing.
The poor moved inland and had to battle the Indians for their land. These farmers had large families to help with the task of running a farm. Many farmers also learned to do most of the odd jobs themselves such as making their own clothing, butter, and tools. The subsistence farms grew corn, wheat, raised cattle and pigs, and if they had a little extra, planted tobacco to sell. The ultimate dream of these farmers was to own a few slaves and maybe make it big and become a plantation owner. It was rare but not unheard of.
Byrd Plantation . James River, Virginia
Along the rivers wealthy plantation owners set up their huge estates dedicated to providing everything the plantation family needed. In fact, they were like the large estates back in the Old Country. A plantation ranged from a small 100 acre operation to thousands of acres. The main house would be about 2,500-3,000 square feet (a middle class home by today's standards) with all of the finest furniture imported from Europe. The plantation owners tried to re-create themselves as the aristocratic class that existed back home. On the grounds would be a warehouse for drying tobacco, a kitchen, slave quarters, a blacksmith, a chapel, and a winery.
The lifestyle of the colonial planter class became the ideal for the southern colonies. They owned most of the land, dominated the government and lived in large mansions. Back in England they would have been small fish in a big pond but in Virginia and Carolina they became the new aristocracy. And to the southern planter nothing mattered more than showing off your social status. They dressed in the latest European fashions. Imported fancy furntiture from European manufacturers. Their kids were educated in elite boarding schools in Europe. These southern fat cats might have made up less than 5% of the population but their way of life loomed larger than life.
"Don't forget your musket, dear. It's family portrait day!"
But stop and consider what all of this means. Up until the American Civil War the southern colonies were actually recreating the European feudal system right here in the good ol’ U.S of A. The vast majority of white people were tenant farmers or backwoodsmen whose lives were defined by miserable poverty.
Nearly all blacks were held against their will to be bought and sold like animals in order to enrich the lives of barely 2% of the population. For the next two hundred and fifty years the planter aristocrats will dominate the south and southern culture so much that movies like Gone With the Wind turn their pampered lifestyle into the southern ideal.
Within a few decades the southern colonies had put all of their chips in the plantation basket. The economy of the Southern states were built around supporting a few rich families who owned vast fields dedicated to a single cash crop. Such an agricultural economy is very time consuming and backbreaking. Not the sort of work you’d catch an English gentlemen doing. Each decade tens of thousands of new laborers were brought to the southern colonies, either by choice or by force. At first the English used indentured servants to work the fields. Indentured servitude is not much different from slavery except that those desperate enough to sign an indentured contract could be beaten and abused but they still had rights as Englishmen and had to be given their freedom after seven years when their contract expired.
Slaves on the other hand were a reliable source of cheap labor. The most expensive part of owning a slave was at the auction block but after that minimal food and housing became the rule. In 1619, a Dutch ship dropped off the first cargo of slaves from West Africa. Now the story is a bit fuzzy on the legal status of these unlucky individuals.
Slaves working a tobacco plantation. c. 1700
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