Common_Identity_as_Americans

The colonization of the “New World” by the British rapidly spread along the Atlantic Ocean forming distinct Northern and Southern colonies. Although the colonists came from the same region, they travelled to American for varying reasons. Northern colonists, like the Puritans and the Baptists, founded the New England colonies based upon religious freedom while Southern colonists, like the Virginia Company, founded the Virginia/Chesapeake colonies hoping to gain quick profits. Each colony faces its own turmoil and conflicts, yet after the Seven Years War and the Great Awakening, the colonists in British North America began developing a common identity as “Americans.” In the late early seventieth century, the southern colonies began to form along the Chesapeake Bay by the Virginia Company with the King of England’s permission. The Virginia Company, a joint stock company, consisted of London based merchants journeying with the goal of acquiring goods, such as exotic crops or precious metals, opening new markets for English products, and reducing unemployment to strengthen England. They founded Jamestown in 1607 and starting having Indian conflicts right away. The unhappy settlers undertook nightmarish conditions and died rapidly because of disease, malnutrition, and starvation. The colonists faced mosquito-infested, unhealthy site without much luck until Virginia’s prosperity finally emerged due to John Rolfe’s perfected methods of growing tobacco. Tobacco, although a demanding plant to manage, allowed the colonist to make three times as much in the “New World” than in England. This profit attracted more people to venture across seas and start a new life. For those who could not afford the trip, the poor living in poverty, agreed to indentured servitude and had to work for four to seven years for Virginian farmers in order to pay back their debts from the journey. Once many indentured servants became free, they were frustrated by their broken hopes of gaining land and by their failure to find a single woman to marry. Class divisions threatened to destroy Chesapeake when colonial government refused to retaliate against brutal Indian attacks on frontier settlements. Bacon and his followers took matters into their own hands and murdered any Indian that came into their line of sight. The rebellion finally ended, but the tensions remained in Virginia. Similar to the Virginia colony, Non-separatist Puritans, obtained a royal charter from the King of England, started the Massachusetts Bay Company and founded the Massachusetts Bay colony. Unlike the south, the northern colony exists for religious freedom. The Puritans feared for their faith and wanted to separate from the impurities of the Church of England. In the 1630s, the Great Migration occurred with twenty thousand immigrants venturing into Massachusetts. This brought many prosperous, skilled workers to the colony. One of these people happened to be Winthrop, a wealthy, Puritan lawyer, who became Massachusetts first governor. The northern colony fared much better than the southern colonies. They may not have been the wealthiest colonies, but northerners were overall healthier, partly from the crop diversity, more populous, and lived longer lives. Starting in the same Massachusetts area, the Great Awakening emerged as a set of religious revivals. The awakening increased religious enthusiasm across British North America and promoted an egalitarian equality among the colonists. It broke down sectional boundaries as well as denominational lines and contributed to the growing sense that Americans were a single people, united by a common history and shared experiences. Soon after, the inevitable Seven Years War erupted between over land conflicts between the Virginians, the Pennsylvanians, the French Canadians, and the Indians. Even though the British and Americans won the fight, it worsened the tensions between them. The Americans were shocked by their treatment from the British and by the British’s harsh punishments. The British had mocked and made fun of the colonists, not treating them as equals. The war allowed the Americans to see the truth, they were not the same, they were not Englishman, but viewed as the poor cousins.