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Period: to
Colonial times
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Slavery Takes Root
The first Africans who reached Jamestown may have been treated as servants.But by the late 1600s,ships were bringing growing numbers of enslaved Africans.Why did slavert take root? One reason was the plantation system. The profits that could be made from tobacco and rice led planters to import thousands of enslaved Africans to work the fields -
Founding Jamestown
In 1607,a group of wealthy people made a new
attempt to establish anEnglish colony in North America.Eager to gain a share of the weath of the Americans,they found the Virginia Compony of London, Some of the founders hopedto discover gold or silver.Others expected the colonists to trade with the Indians for furs,which could then be sold in Europe at a profit.Lumber also could be cut from North America's vast forests.Farmers could plant vineyards to grow grapes or mulberry treesto produce silk. -
The Mayflower Compact
In September 1620 about 100 Pilgrims sailed for Virginia abored a ship called the Mayflower.After a long voyage,they arrived safely in North America.However,storms had blown them off course,and they landed far to the North in what today is Massachusetts.They called their new home Plymouth,after a port city in England. -
The First Thanksgiving
The Pilgrims had a very difficult first winter in Plymouth.They had arrived too late to plant crops and did not have enough food.During the winterof 1620-1621,half the colonists died from hunger or disease. Conditions improved in the spring of 1621.As hadhappended at Jamestown,help from local Native Americans sustained the Pilgrims.named Squanto,brought the Pilgrims seeds of Native American beans,and pumpkins and showed them how to plant them.He taught the settlers how to catch eels from rivers. -
Virginia Grows
Virginia's population grew gradually during the 1600s.New settlers arriving from Europe made up for the fact that disease and difficult living conditions kept the death rate high.After 1650,the death rate fell,and th population increased more quickly.In 1640,about 10,000 settlers lived in Virginia.by 1670,the number had reached 40,000.The makeup of Virginia's population also changed.By the 1670s,therre were more children because fewer were dying at a young age. -
William Penn fimds the colony of Pennsylvania
By the 1600"s, there was thousands of Quakers in Engalnd.Many of them refused to pay taxes to support the chruch of England.One Quaker leader was William Penn,a wealthy man who personally knew King Charles the seconded.Penn wanted to find a place for Quakers to live where they would be safe.In 1681,he received an area almost as large as England itself,manily in what is now Pennsylvania. -
Penn's "Holy Experikment"
Penn considered his colony to be a "Holy Experiment".His goal was to create a colony in which people from different religious back_grounds could live pecefully.Between settlers and Native Americans in Pennsylvania were far from perfect.However,during Penn"s lifetime they were much better in Pennsylvania than in other colonies. -
Triangular Trade
By the 1700 ,slave traders in the British colonies had devoloped a regular routine,known as the triangular trade.The triangular trade was a three-way trade between the colonies,the islands of the Caribbean, and Afriac.On the first leg of the three -leg voyage,ships from New England carried fish,lumber,and other goods to the carib-bean islands,or West Indies.There,Yankee traders bought sugar,and molasses,adark syrup made from sugar cane. -
The Great Awakening
from the start,religion plyed a key role in the 13 English colonies.Inplymouth and Massachusetts Bay,religious leaders set extensive rules on moral and religious matters.Even in colonies that were founded primarily for economic reasons,such as Jamestown,early laws required colonists to attend church regularly.By the 1700s,rules on religion had become less strict in many of the colonies. -
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin was perhaps the best loved writer at age 17,Ben moved from Boston to Philadlphia and started a newspaper,the Pennsylvania Gazette. It became the most widley read newspaper in the colonies. Franklin's most popular work was Poor Richard's Almanack,published every year from 1733 to 1753. The almanack was full of pithy sayings that usually had a moral. These included "Eat to live, not live to eat"and "God helps them who help themselves."Franklin also published a vivid autobigraph -
The Boston Tea Party
the Boston Tea Party was about a group of colonists called the Sons of Liberty soon organized port cities to stop the East India Compony tea from being unloded.Thomas Hutchinson decided to make sure that thetea would be unloded. He refused to give the arriving ships papers that would allow them to return to England. So when the first tea ships from Britain arrived Hutchinson ordered the cargo to be unloded. -
Common Sense
Common Sense is a 50 page pamphlet writing by Thomas Paine and it was published in Philadelphia The pamphlet was inspired by people in all of the colonies. 500,000 copies of the pamphlet were sold between January and July. -
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration was divided into three parts the Natural Rights,The List of Grievances,and the Dissolving the Bonds.The Declaration was singed on August 2 1776. -
Shay's Rebellion
In the mid 1780s,a severe economic depression hit the United States, An economic depression is a period when business activity slows,prices and wages drop,and unemployment rises. As the depression deepened, there was widespread despair and anger.The depression hit farmers in Massachusetts especially hard. As crop prises declined, many were unable to pay their taxes. The state government then began seizing some farmers and selling them in order to get back to taxes. -
Impact of the Revolution
The immediate effect of the American Revolution was to create a new nation of 13 independent states, linked by ties of custom and history. The term effects are still being felt today. The Declaration of Independence cemented ideas like equality and liberty in the Amercan mind. Over time, those concepts have gained broder meanings The impact of American independence reached beyond the borders of the infant nation. In 1789, French citizens rebelled.
