A History of the Great Migration in the American Colonization Period

England began colonizing America in the 1600s, when religious and political dissenters of the changes imposed by the Stuart monarchy launched one of the largest migrations in written history" The Great Migration " in search of a new life free from persecution and open to numerous employment opportunities. Each emigrant brought with him/her a blueprint in his mind of recreating the culture he left behind, yet, by 1700, the regions of New England and the Chesapeake region had evolved into two distinct societies. Whether their motive for emigration was to attain a second chance to mend failures, to seek an oasis that provided religious freedom, or perhaps to find a place to preserve the vanishing past of England, the settlers basically sought to find better conditions of daily life.

By 1700s, their lifestyles became distinguishable due to several key factors: the characteristics of the settlers, the land, and their goals in their new homes. Age played a significant role in fostering differences among the two settlements. By 1640, New England had come to include Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts. Settlers of New England were mainly families, with the male of the household being somewhere in his thirties or forties. The society. thus, was predominated by families, where quantity of people of both genders remained fairly balanced. According to Hawke, their age made them more determined to preserve a way of life known back home (Hawke, 16). Because the men were mostly middle-aged men, with a conservative mind, many came expecting to stay, and were called planters. They were determined and well equipped to start a farming life in the fertile lands in America. Settlers in the Chesapeake region, however, differed greatly from those in New England. Emigrants for Virginia were mostly young males in their teens or twenties. Most of the men were single and labeled as “eadventurers,†rather than the œeplanters†of New England. The single females, in their teens, were in search of husbands (Hawke, 1).

In a consensus conducted in 1624, only 244 females were reported, among a population of 1,292 (Hawke, 20). The differences in the population of the two societies greatly contributed to the development of each region. With a conservative mind, the New England settlers sought to live a peaceful life, familiar to their former lives back in England. Their hope was to preserve their old traditional lifestyles, rather than to innovate. Settlers of the Chesapeake region, however, being young and ambitious sought to accomplish something different. Because only first bom sons in England were capable of inheriting land, younger sons were eager to immigrate to Virginia, where they could own land (Luke, 28). With this piece of land, they intended to make great profits. Therefore, differences in ages of the groups of settlers contributed to the differences found between the two early settlements.

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Distinguishable factors evident between New England and Chesapeake regions include: attitudes toward social and religious aspects, what they made out of their land, their diets and their treatment toward others. Age distinctions led to other differences to exist in the ambitions of the settlers, which evidently, led to diverse societies to prevail. Being religiously exploited in England, settlers of New England immigrated to America in large groups of dissenting congregations who were bonded together by an eagerness to worship an uncorrupt, purified God (Hawke, 20). Their main concern was to pursue the Puritan faith and to find a refuge for religious persecution. As stated by John Winthrop, colonization in American was to be an experiment to measure the success of Puritanism.

New England was to be “a city upon a hill,†on which everyones eyes are laid upon. The ambitious and competitive young men of the Chesapeake area, on the contrary, cared little about religion. Very few of them planned to live out their life there; they came in hopes of gaining quick wealth because of the ambitions generated by the London Companys propaganda. Due to the Spaniards success at finding gold and silver, settlers of Virginia came from England to make money by trading gold they hoped o find with Europe (U.S. Department of Justice, 6). Myths of gold, according to Sinclair, inspired the English to the bogs of Virginia (Sinclair, 15). Upon the shrewd discovery of tobacco, they began to pursue their hopes of profits. As a result, contrasting ambitions led to the differences in the outcome of the two societies. The New Englanders, who cared little about gaining wealth, only sought religious freedom; the settlers of the Chesapeake region, however, sought wealth. In addition, the greatest difference between the two groups was their communal bond and unity. In New England, due to their common belief in God, the life of New England towns was corporate to a certain degree. All peoples of New England were knit together as one man, under the work of pursuing the Puritan experiment.

They were frugal, in order to provide for those in need. According to John Demos, the citizens were indeed a body, each one integrated into part of the larger whole (Demos in Hawke, 19). They maintained old attitudes of social structure, yet economic barriers were slightly eliminated. In the Articles of Agreement, written in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1636, families of good and bad fortunes were accepted, and they were to share the lands, with which Gods providence had allotted to them. In contrast, the Chesapeake region was characterized by a self-centered society that lacked communal bonds and morals. As stated by Hawke, the ideal of the commonwealth, in which the interest of every part would be harmoniously subordinated to the larger interest of the whole society, never appeared (Hawke, 21). In other words, due to greed, no one sought to sacrifice for the general good of society.

John Smith describes his interpretation of Virginians. There were gold diggers that knew of nothing but gold and wealth and it is evident that the rich ruled the society because as stated, those who had money were welcomed. However, those less fortunate even had difficulty obtaining basic necessities. The land distinctions between the two societies were direct causes of the differences that resulted between the two groups by the 1700s. Indians in the New England towns were benign and were willing to accept the English. The English, meanwhile, tried to cooperate with the Indians, and thus, compensated for the losses that the Indians had to endure, as a result of losing their land. This benevolence was probably because the local tribes were too ravaged by smallpox to pose a threat (Luke, 34). Cooperation among the two parties made it easier for the New Englanders to succeed. In addition, the ample supply of land available to them enabled them to successfully develop a strong agriculturally based society. In the Chesapeake, however, because the settlers came to America with the attitudes of gaining wealth at the expense of others, Indians were more violent and led on many raids, killing thousands of settlers in the region. In addition, the Chesapeake was uniquely located along the Atlantic Coast.

Its locale was characterized by more than 150 rivers, lakes, creeks, and streams. This well-watered region hardly ever experienced droughts, yet faced problems wit floods and invasions. Governor Berkeley explains Virginias inability to defend itself. Because there were so many waterways, there were not enough people to be used to defend Virginia. In addition, due to the early success of the cash crop, tobacco, the land became infertile after the first several years. Because settlers of the Chesapeake region sought to accumulate quick wealth, they neglected to fertilize the land, which had been worn out by tobacco. This led to the dispersion of Chesapeake settlers; therefore, there were no permanent homes (Hawke, 43). In addition, because of their greed over the tobacco cash crop, they werenâ€TMt much concerned with their own diets. They failed to grow enough com to support their family, leading to frequent famines. Another visible difference that persisted between the people of New England and Chesapeake was the way they fenced their farms.

Determined to stay, the New Englanders built strong stone walls while the Chesapeake, due to the rapid and frequent dispersion built easy to construct and repair split-rail zigzag fences. The way they built the fences indicates their attitudes toward the community because the settlers in the Chesapeake region only looked forward to the products that the fields yield; therefore, they cared little about their surroundings. As a result, due to the characteristics of the lands, the Chesapeake and New England societies developed differently. Lastly, differences prevailed in the way the two societies were governed. In New England, the success was partially due to the active role of the governments. Oppression was avoided by a regulation of a standard of pay, set by the General Courts.

The wage and price regulations set in Connecticut in 1676 enforced rules to protect the impoverished peoples. Under God, the colonists were urged to be considerate towards the poor. In the Chesapeake, however, no price regulations were ever set. They lived in a savage, dispersed lifestyle, with no form of unity. Their standards or rectitude had disappeared. Therefore, due to different government structures developed by the different regions, behaviors of the people varied. By the end of the 17th century, distinctions between the two settlements" Chesapeake in the south and New England in the north" were evident. Being both of English origin, the two groups of people made use of their land in different ways, thus creating two distinct societies. Due to the type of settlers who settled in the selected regions, those in New England were destined to pursue the Puritan faith. Motivated by monetary success, the settlers in Chesapeake were unwilling to go through the trouble of building homes, planting croups, nor cutting down wood (U.S. Department of Justice, 6).

They wanted to search for gold to trade, instead. However, introduction of tobacco excited them and they began to produce as much tobacco as the land could possibly sustain. However, neither worried about the infertility of the land, nor the wellbeing of the whole, they failed to fertilize the land, nor grow crops edible to the settlers themselves. As a result, mortality rate ran as high as 80% in Chesapeake in the first half of the century. However, later on, realizing its faults, the settlers began to change their way of living and their lifestyles became “emore wholesome, healthy, and fruitful, yet still not as healthy as that of Englanda (Hawke, 73).

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