history midterm

Chesapeake: Virginia and Maryland

New England: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire

Carolina: South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia

Middle: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware

RELIGION

SOCIAL

POLITICAL

ECONOMIC

GEOGRAPHICAL

New England Colonies

central governments, which were representative and responsive to the needs of the majority, and consisted of a governor and bicameral legislature. Officials were annually elected by white, freemen who were church members and had sought salvation.

Middle Colonies

Political groups began as small groups with narrowly focused goals. These coalitions eventually grew into a diverse and large political organizations, especially during the French and Indian War.

The middle colonies were generally run by Royal or Proprietary Governors and elected Colonial Assemblies. Many Middle Colony constitutions guaranteed freedom of religion and forbade taxation without representation. Royal governors were arrested or overthrown on more than one occasion, most notably when New Jersey arrested its governor and during Jacob Leisler's Rebellion in New York. Growing unrest in the Middle Colonies eventually led the region to become the meeting place of the Continental Congreess, and a center for reveolution. However, there were numerous pockets of neutrals and Loyalists.

Chesapeake Colonies

The Chesapeake Colonies government structure resembled that of England' county courts and contrasted with the theocratic government of Massachusetts Bay. Sir William Berkley, the royal governor, dominated the politics of the colony. The Virginia Houses of Burgesses was established as a first representative assembly. The governor of Virignia was appointed by England and voting requirements were landowning men. Elite, wealthy planters dominated politics and in turn would make laws that would favor them.

Carolina Colonies

8 proprietors were awarded joint title to rule the Carolinas with almost kingly powers. These proprietors guaranteed religious freedom to all Christians. They also created a representative assembly. Anthony Cooper (Earl of Shaftesbury) and Anthony Locke (his assistant) developed the Fundamental Constitution for Carolina that divided the colony into counties of equal size and divided each county into equal parcels. It also established a social hierarchy with the proprietors themselves at the top, a local aristocracy below, and then ordinary settlers, poor whites at the bottom.

New England Colonies

The first settlers of New England were Pilgrims. They wanted to separate from the Churches in England and they were happy they could practice their own form of Christianity without bothering anyone else. A few years later, strict, religious Puritans arrived. They felt it was their duty to spread Christianity on a global scale. Led by John Withrop, they would create their own religious utopia.

Middle Colonies

There was an assortment of religions in the middle colonies. William Penn, a Quaker, gave full religious freedom in Pennsylvania. This religious freedom encouraged congregations to follow religious tolerance. Such wider toleration for religious differences led to a freedom of expression of both religious and nonreligious beliefs and practices.

Chesapeake Colonies

The Church of England was the established church in Virginia, which meant taxpayers paid for the support of the church whether or not they were Anglicans. But church membership ultimately mattered little, since a lack of clergymen and few churches kept many Virginians from attending church. Religion thus was of secondary importance in the Virginia colony. Maryland to serve as a haven for English Catholics who suffered political and religious discrimination in England, but few Catholics actually settled in the colony. Protestants were attracted by the inexpensive land that Baltimore offered to help him pay his debts. At first, relations between Maryland's Catholics and Protestants seemed amicable. For a time they even shared the same chapel. In 1649, under Baltimore's urging, the colonial assembly passed the Act of Religious Toleration, the first law in the colonies granting freedom of worship, albeit only for Christians. By 1654, however, with Maryland's Protestants in the majority, the act was repealed. A near civil war broke out and order was not restored until 1658, when Lord Baltimore was returned to power. Religious squabbles continued for years in the Maryland colony.

Carolina Colonies

The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the Engish colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens. Carolina was settled primarily by Protestants. By the end of the Lords Proprietors' rule in 1729, for the most part, religious toleration had been embraced in the colony. As can be expected, this was a turbulent process.