You are the inventor of the very first time machine. So, being the avid historian as well as scientist that you are (you must be a real hit with the opposite sex), you decide to set course for your first voyage to, without a doubt, one of the most interesting periods of history ? the settlement of the American Colonies. And so, you set the dial on that History Machine (not to be confused with the Mystery Machine; take that, Hanna-Barbera!) to 1607, hop in, and before you know it, you?re in 1607 ? unfortunately, you?ve landed in the ocean. You probably should have put a ?Location? dial on the machine, too. So, you try again ? where are you know, Constantinople or someplace? Well, you figu ...view middle of the document...
But, oh no! The fuel indicator on your time machine is almost on ?E? (you should have put more than five bucks in the tank) ? and so, you must travel back to your own time while you still can. Once you?ve returned, you reflect upon your experience. These two groups both originated in England, and they were both presumably heading for the same place ? America, as we know it today ? but it was obvious just by those few minutes you spent on each ship that these peoples were very different from each other. You frantically scour your history books (tsk, tsk, you?re a historian and you need to look back in books?), and find out that the difference you could see first-hand was only the beginning ? these two societies would go on to become very different from each other. In general, this difference can be attributed to several factors that differed between the Northern and Southern colonists: motives for the migration, composition of the people, and the forms of government they adopted.So, first of all, the colonists of the North and South had completely different motives and incentives altogether. The first English settlers, the Southerners, settled in Jamestown, or more generally, the Chesapeake Bay area. Why did they come to America? Money, money, money ? these people were capitalists, and brutal capitalists at that. Captain John Smith wrote that the cruelest colonial men were the gold-seekers, ?[who] ? made all men their slaves in hope of recompenses? (Document F). Furthermore, by 1676, nearly seventy years after the founding of Jamestown, a man by the name of Nathaniel Bacon, in his ?Manifesto?, called these capitalists ?sponges that have sucked up the public treasure? and ?juggling parasites? ? implying that these people were vicious money-seekers, willing to do whatever it took to make a pretty penny. The Northern colonists, in contrast, were hardcore Puritans. They had fled from England first to Holland, and then to Plymouth Rock in 1620. They believed that they were the ?Chosen People? of the big G-O-D; in England, they felt that the church was not pure enough; they lamented having to worship with the average ?dirty? folks. Legal documents drafted in the Northern colonies suggest that these people were in no way driven by money, or at least not nearly as much so as the Southerners. For example, the 1636 Articles of Agreement stated that the town to be founded (Springfield, Massachusetts) would be ?composed of forty families ? rich and poor?, that ?everyone shall have a share? for agricultural purpose, and more (Document D). Connecticut also enforced wage and price regulations to keep commerce fair for everybody. This evidence suggests that, unlike the capitalist Southerners, the Northern colonists were not so bent on money, but more-so concentrated on being good, fair people in the eyes of Christ. With that kind of difference, it is really no wonder the two societies contrasted so much.In addition, the peoples themselves differed in the No...
