Social Conflicts In The Southern Colonies

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the United States consisted of thirteen colonies ruled by British government. The northern colonies were founded by people who were religious and believed in strong work ethic whereas the southern colonies were Puritans who settled in New England to gain religious freedom from Britain while the first colonists of the southern colonies were Englishmen. The first settlers of the west were Scots-Irish people who settled in deep-soiled Pennsylvania when the English government placed restrictions on their productions of linens and woolens. In 1607, Englishmen of southern colonies started the first permanent settlement of the United States at Jamestown in order to find gold to become wealthy. The first colonists …show more content…
The south region consisted primarily of wealthy plantation owners, farmers and slaves whereas the north was made up of factory owners, merchants, laborers, servants, and immigrants. In contrast, the west had strong people who found solutions to their own problems and developed their own way of life. One of the most social conflicts during the formation of the United States was slavery. According to the textbook authors, “in 1700 they contained fewer than 300,000 souls, about 20,000 of whom were black. By 1775, 2.5 million people inhabited the thirteen colonies, of whom about half a million were black” (Kennedy & David M., 2010, p.78). South people believed in slavery because they were able to have workers and not pay them whereas the north was anti-slavery. In the South, the plantation economy relied heavily on slave labor and the social divisions were strictly maintained. In the North, there was a need for free labor and the different social classes had to learn to work together. Abolitionists of the north believed that slavery was morally wrong and wanted them transported back to their home countries. However, as slavery expanded out west, there were questions to whether states should be admitted as free or slave states. Eventually, the North and South agreed to compromise and five separate bills were constituted over the issue of slavery. The Compromise of 1850 attempted to settle the …show more content…
Economically, the southern region was focused on agriculture with farming and slave labor as the priority, while the northern region focused on manufacturing with fur trade and cotton production as their main resources. Socially, the south consisted of wealthy plantation owners and the north consisted of factory owners and merchants. The west sustained self-sufficiently and created their own way of living. Slavery became the largest social conflict over time, which separated each region socially from one another. The freedom from British control and the establishment of the federal government played the role in political differences among the regions. The economic, social, and political differences matured the nation and united the north, south, and west regions as one. References
Cooper, C. J. (1993). ‘Independent of heaven itself ': Differing federalist and anti-federalist perspectives on the centralizing tendency of the federal judicary. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 16(1), 119. Retrieved April 14, 2016, from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=8&sid=e7efdc00-5f29-436a-9c8c-79d6bb9d75f6@sessionmgr102&hid=119&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ==#AN=9604120699&db=edb
Digital History. (2016). Retrieved April 14, 2016, from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2
Kennedy,