Ap United States History Focus Essay for Unit 1

In terms of culture the New England colonies and Chesapeake colonies had many differences. The New England colonies were populated entirely by white or English families, Quakers, puritans, and Catholics and had an assortment of different ages and genders in it's populations. While the Chesapeake colonies were comprised of a majority of African slaves who worked on plantations producing mainly tobacco, the tobacco was then sold to other colonies and countries. In the 1700's there was a boom in tobacco sales and it became one of the leading trades in the Chesapeake colonies, other than slave trade. Other than slaves the rest of the Chesapeake population were White plantation owners and servants.

Yet another difference was the economy of the two. As mentioned previously, the Chesapeake economy revolved around the tobacco industry, which paved the way for other industries as well. Slave trade relied fully on the tobacco plantation owners as a market to sell the slaves to. In addition, the tobacco raised enough to finance the importation of indentured servants, who would then go to work the tobacco, increasing the production further. It became a cycle, with the result being the ever-increasing production and sale of the tobacco. New England did not "have all of it's eggs in one basket" quite like the Chesapeake. The economy was based on fishing, shipbuilding, and farming. The farming in New England was done on a much smaller scale, however. Because the religion (and society) was so family-oriented, farms were usually just large enough to feed one's family, with a small surplus. It was no where near the size of the vast plantations in the Chesapeake. This was simply because New England's focus was not on economic gain. The religion of the two areas differed greatly as well. Because New Englanders came to escape religious persecution, one would think that it would become a land of complete tolerance. This was not the case, though. The New Englanders were very