Indentured servant

Some colonists always had racial and cultural prejudices against blacks. Segments of the English population believed in negative stereotypes about Africans such as “black color is God’s punishment for sin”, and that blacks practice witchcraft, cannibalism and savagery. Prominent colonists, such as John Smith in Virginia, were extremely opinionated and made no bones about their view that African blacks were idle and had devil like characteristics. “The combination of color, language, dress and…

Christopher Columbus : On October 12, 1492, Captain Christopher Columbus claimed a tiny island in the Bahamas (less than 400 miles from North America mainland) for the king and queen of Spain. Columbus’s landing facilitated the mutual discovery by two peoples of one another. The moment of Columbus's landing, the Americas became the stage for a variety of encounters of Native American, European, and African peoples in the new Atlantic world. (pg 25) Atlantic world : The meeting of the Spaniards…

Slaves were seen as being inferior, subhuman, and destined for servitude. The slaves came together to plan slave rebellions. They would commit different types of acts to show rebellion. Those acts included destruction of property, arson, poisoning livestock, and laziness. Perhaps the most prevalent form of resistance was the simple act of running away. Running away was the worst way to hurt the slave owners. They needed and counted on the slaves to work the fields on their plantations. Butwhen…

In the late 1400s, when Christopher Columbus stumbled across North America, the world was altered. Many countries established colonies, but the only ones that stuck were the English colonies. Jamestown was first, and 12 others followed. Everyone had different reasons for migrating and the culture of these colonies showed that. Although New England and the Chesapeake region were both settled largely by people of English origin, their reasons for settling, their government structures, and their…

Daily life Daily life in the Middle Colonies have perfect days and hardships just like any other place. Mostly,everyone works long hours on the farms; as well as in the houses. Working with your family and friends on the farm is fun. The men in the house will be controlling the economics as well as doing most of the work on the farms. The young boys will learn by helping the men plant and harvest the crops. People will trade, sell and eat these crops. Women sewed, cared for their children…

Even though English settlers traveled across the Atlantic to the Chesapeake Bay area, the West Indies, and the area that became New England all around the same time, they formed very different kinds of society. This makes it obvious that the determining factor in the way colonial societies grow is dependent on more than just the lifestyle its settlers had in their homeland. In addition to the reasons for settlement in each area, one might also explore the obstacle settlers faced in…

Nathaniel Bacon of Jamestown, Virginia, a social elite of the time and a leader of a civil conflict in 1676 which dubbed it “Bacon Revolt,” a rebellion that led to uneasiness in the region with oppression towards the native Indians and the Governor of Virginia, William Berkeley. Many scholars have differing opinions relative to the characteristics of the people and the region where the rebellion took place, but there is a mutual understanding that “Bacon’s Rebellion was set of by a disagreement…

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees all Americans equal protection of the laws. Throughout the history of the United States there has been discrimination against specific groups of people. Americans have discriminated against Native Americans, African Americans, and Chinese Americans, and Japanese Americans in the past. There is not a time when a national emergency justifies creating laws and rules applicable only to people of a certain ethnic, racial or religious background. Hundreds of native…

About 1.8 million slaves arrived in the 17th century. Spaniards and Portuguese brought Africans to the Americas to replace Indian labor. Then, in the 1680s, planters in the Chesapeake region began switching from servants to slaves, because of the specific labor needed. In the British colonies, economic conditions led to the rapid growth of slavery in the South. Slaves suffered through a six to eight week long ocean voyage known as the middle passage. By 1750, most…

The merchants, bankers, and upper class were generally the men who made the decisions and their votes were the ones who counted. If slaves were allowed to have a whole vote instead of three fifths of one, the merchants would lose a significant amount of their power and votes could easily go against them. Merchants lived in the lap of luxury, smoking the finest tobacco farmed by southern slaves and trading other raw goods provided by slaves. Without slavery as a factor, merchants would not be…