Southern Colonies

1. The Southern Colonies
Why was Maryland important to Roman Catholics?
• 1632—Sir George Calvert became a Roman Catholic. He asked King Charles I for a
colony in the Americas for Catholics. Calvert died. His son, Lord Baltimore, took
over.
• 1634—Settlers arrived in Maryland. Lord Baltimore appointed a governor and
council of advisers, but he let colonists elect an assembly.
• 1649—Lord Baltimore asked the assembly to pass an Act of Toleration, a law that
provided religious freedom for all Christians.
How were the Carolinas and Georgia founded?
Carolinas Carolinas Georgia
North: South: • James Oglethorpe
• poor tobacco • eight English nobles
• debtors, or people who
farmers from • Charles Town
Virginia • settlers from the Caribbean owed money and could not
• small farms • rice and indigo, a plant used pay
to make blue dye
• enslaved Africans
What two ways of life developed in the Southern Colonies?
Tidewater Plantations Backcountry
Land coastal plain, many rivers rolling hills, thick forests
Farms large plantations Small farms
Crops tobacco, rice, indigo tobacco, garden crops
Slavery Enslaved Africans tended Few enslaved Africans worked backcountry farms
Tidewater plantations
Why did the slave trade grow in the 1700s?
1619 First enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia
1600 Some Africans remained enslaved, some were servants, a few were free
Early 1700’s Carolina plantations needed large numbers of workers.
The planters came to rely on slave labor.
1700’s Slave ships carried millions of enslaved Africans west across the Atlantic.
Colonists enacted slave codes.
Many colonists displayed racism, though a few spoke out against slavery