Virginia and Massachusetts a Survey

Virginia and Massachusetts

A Survey of How the Virginia and Massachusetts Colonies Shaped North and South

There were several differences and several similarities between the Massachusetts and Virginia colonies, which went on to shape the North and the South in the New World. This paper will compare and contrast the two colonies and show how each emerged as its own guiding light of its own universe, setting the stage for the hostilities that would lead to the Civil War in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

While the Virginia colony was founded in 1607 by the London Company and initially made up of a small group of men, led by "soldiers out of employment" like Captain John Smith and "desperate spendthrifts, ready to do anything to retrieve their fortunes" ("Colony of Virginia"), the Massachusetts colony was established in 1620 (after being to some extent already explored by Bartholomew Gosnold, Samuel Champlain, and John Smith) by a group of religious zealots (seeking the freedom to worship and keep their English ways), made up of men, women and children, whose Puritan religion set the stage for New England Protestantism and the "independent spirit" ("Massachusetts Colony"). Like the Virginia colony, the Massachusetts colony suffered from hardships -- yet its numbers grew more rapidly than Virginia's, which was decimated by fever and famine (and warred with the native tribes too).

The Virginia colony, however, managed to survive and grow thanks to, 1) the support of Pocahontas, and 2) thanks to the arrival of 1200 new colonists in 1617, "among whom were ninety respectable young women," which promised new growth ("Colony of Virginia"). The Massachusetts colony had less difficulty growing: for one, it made a treaty with the natives; secondly, the land was more forgiving and less likely to allow disease to fester; and thirdly, it was colonized by families that were intent on reproducing.

Both colonies, however, were fiercely independent in their own ways. The south, once it began to grow its staple crop, tobacco, formed large plantations, for which slaves bought from the Dutch were imported. The north had far fewer slaves, and its business was more diverse, what with the manufacturing of textiles, shipping, blacksmithing, and more. The spirit of the South, however, was already forming by the eighteenth century, with figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry and George Washington leading the nation to Independence from England in 1776. The north, on the other hand, was led by men like John Hancock and Samuel Adams, whose opinion on how the colonies should be united was not shared by all. Jefferson was in favor of states rights and a small central government, but the Federalist papers that would help establish the Union would be the voice of a system of federal government that would keep tyranny at bay through a system of checks and balances: this was New England idealism at best -- and the conflict at the heart of the Union would come to a head in the following century with the secession of the Southern states from the tyrannical Union.