The Colonization And Settlement Period

From the very beginning of American history to the current day United States, equal opportunity has evolved to further incorporate more and more groups of people. With every step in the right path, there also seemed to be a backstep and vice versa. Starting from the beginning, the first major era in the American past was the Colonization and Settlement Period, approximately 1607-1750. During which settlers broke away from Britain but became confined within their villages and towns. The next era during the Revolutionary Era (1750-1815) became a major turning point in American history. The cause of the war was because the rights and opportunities of the colonists were suppressed by Britain leading to them to revolt and rebel, but after the war …show more content…
The Revolutionary Era began due to the fact that the 13 colonies wanted to break away from the ‘mother country’, Great Britain. The first proposal may most likely came about after the Seven Year’s War, war between European imperials of Britain and France. Though defeating the opponent, the British too government felt the negative impacts severely. The war was on such a large scale and costly that it put the government into grave debt. The American Revolution resulted directly from attempts to reform the British Empire after the Seven Years’ War. Before the war, the colonies were very loosely governed by the British. There were acts passed that required goods and products going in and out of American ports need to pay a tax, but being 5,000 miles away from the authorities, many merchants were able to get away with smuggling. After the war, the British government was in immediate need of money, and they felt that they had let the colonies loose for too long. This was the beginning of rounds and rounds of unfair taxes enforced onto the American colonists. Some of the taxes emplaced include the Sugar, the Stamp, and the Tea Act. The Stamp Act was one of the most devastating acts as it was not seen to be passed to regulate commerce but only to raise money for the British (Locke, “The American Revolution”). This was troubling as it opened the doors for more extensive taxation in the …show more content…
As cotton became in high demand in the South, African Americans were enslaved to work complete the labor works for the white man. Cotton was the post-colonial version of the cash crop tobacco. During the Market Revolution, slavery flourished as its profit increased. The treatments of black slaves in the South was inhumane and cruel. Fanny Kemble, the wife of a wealthy slaveholder, recorded stories from enslaved women of their treatments. In her diary, she wrote, “Their hands were first tied together… and they were then drawn up to a tree or post...a man with a cowhide stand and stipes them” (Kemble 256). In the Constitution, the slave was merely mentioned property, and not considered human at all. The immorality of abuse was endured by slaves day in and day out. They had no opportunity to escape or create a better life for themselves. They had no control of their life as it was always in the hands of their masters. Slavery was one of the biggest issues that tore America apart. The North and South were at two extreme ends of the spectrum, one being completely abolition and the other wishing to continuously expand on slavery. As debates on the justification of slavery arose, tension between the North and South increased. As slavery was dying out in the North, the South was reluctant to let go of its old ways. The conflicts