Differences Between New England And The Southern Colonies
Class,
If I had to go back in time to the time period of colonial America, I would personally choose to live in New England, especially for its family relations and mortality rates. Being very close to my family, I couldn't imagine living without one of my parents or even my grandparents for that matter. According to The American Pageant, families in the southern colonies had problems with spouses, especially men, dying young and rarely surviving to be in their twenties, children not making it to adulthood, and girls getting pregnant before they are married; men also had trouble finding a woman to form a family with since men greatly outnumbered women (Kennedy 60) . When you look at family relations in New England, families were much more …show more content…
New England had very rocky soil, mountains in close proximity, and roaring rivers, which all may not have been the best for farming, but even at that, New England was well established economically when it came to the industries of shipbuilding, commerce, and fishing for codfish (Kennedy 74-75). The southern colonies, on the other hand, had fertile soil, which helped the southern colonies become well-known for farming crops such as tobacco, but as time went on, growing tobacco made the soil less fertile (Kennedy 61). Because the southern colonies were part of a farming economy, they had many large plantations that needed help maintaining, thus causing the south to be more likely to hire indentured servants and slaves, and this need for help caused the head-right system and the slave trade to grow (Kennedy 61); at one point, the number of indentured servants began to decrease because they were being replaced with slaves (Kennedy 70). Because I am against the use and the poor treatment of slaves, I would like to think that I would live in New England, which had a much lower number of slaves than the southern colonies
If I had to go back in time to the time period of colonial America, I would personally choose to live in New England, especially for its family relations and mortality rates. Being very close to my family, I couldn't imagine living without one of my parents or even my grandparents for that matter. According to The American Pageant, families in the southern colonies had problems with spouses, especially men, dying young and rarely surviving to be in their twenties, children not making it to adulthood, and girls getting pregnant before they are married; men also had trouble finding a woman to form a family with since men greatly outnumbered women (Kennedy 60) . When you look at family relations in New England, families were much more …show more content…
New England had very rocky soil, mountains in close proximity, and roaring rivers, which all may not have been the best for farming, but even at that, New England was well established economically when it came to the industries of shipbuilding, commerce, and fishing for codfish (Kennedy 74-75). The southern colonies, on the other hand, had fertile soil, which helped the southern colonies become well-known for farming crops such as tobacco, but as time went on, growing tobacco made the soil less fertile (Kennedy 61). Because the southern colonies were part of a farming economy, they had many large plantations that needed help maintaining, thus causing the south to be more likely to hire indentured servants and slaves, and this need for help caused the head-right system and the slave trade to grow (Kennedy 61); at one point, the number of indentured servants began to decrease because they were being replaced with slaves (Kennedy 70). Because I am against the use and the poor treatment of slaves, I would like to think that I would live in New England, which had a much lower number of slaves than the southern colonies