The 1760s: historical events and significance

Geography determined some of the differences between the various colonies. Ecological considerations made some richer in fishing and furs, versus others in food and cash crops. However, the colonists themselves hailed from different cultural backgrounds. Some were from England, others were Dutch, and African slaves populated large portions of the colonies and especially in the South where their labor was harnessed and exploited for economic gain. The motives behind settlement, relocation, and emigration differed from person to person or family to family but in general followed predictable patterns. Settlers with religious lifestyles formed conservative Christian communities. Those with more mercenary interests created colonies based on trade and expediency instead of romanticism. The differences between the colonies manifested in distinct political zones. Those zones would demarcate the first states of the union after Independence. Therefore, the political, economic, and cultural differences among the colonies would determine the political, economic, and cultural differences between the states.

The political differences that emerged between the colonies were rooted in different settlement patterns. Governance was mainly a local matter in colonial America. Towns were formed based on Old World, old country alliances. Families who traveled to the New World together generally tended to settle in the same colonial outposts and generations later became the forefathers and foremothers of the first states in the union. The New England states, which comprised the northeastern colonies and what are now the northeastern states, developed a system of local governance that depended on town hall meetings and strong communal interaction. The middle and southern colonies tended toward looser community connections and weaker central governments. Their settlers espoused the same theoretical freedoms touted by the New England colonists but politics were voiced differently in the southern colonies.

Economic differences between the colonies depended to a large degree on geography. In fact, almost all of the economic and industrial variations among colonial regions can be traced to geographic matters of chance. The New England colonists found their forests rich with fur-bearing animals, and their seas teaming with fish. Wildlife was abundant throughout the colonies, but the fur trade was especially lucrative to settlers in the northern colonies who established regular trades with the French and Indian populations outside their political borders. Middle and Southern colonies enjoyed warmer climates and different micro-terrains. The South became the agricultural hub of the colonies, built because of slavery, because of the rich soils and climate conducive to cash crops like cotton and tobacco. Cotton and tobacco became key commodities that offered the Southern colonies and many of the middle ones political leverage with the Old World, and geography would also play a major role in determining which states remained friendly toward the institution of slavery and which did not.