Rise and Fall of Old South

By the time the first English settlers established Jamestown, slavery was already a well-established mechanism of providing cheap labor. However, the image of slavery in the plantation sense was not how it first presented itself in the American South with the first British colonists. In the 1580’s there is a huge population boom in England, which becomes a drain on the crown and the land. In an attempt to repurpose the criminals and citizens who may have needed to work off debts, the Queen allows for some of the surplus population to travel to America and work as indentured servants. The need for these indentured servants became abundantly clear after so many of the initial settlers were dying off due to an inability or lack of willingness to work the lands in a way that would be useful to those trying to live and work in this new land. After the Indians started getting tired of sharing their food and knowledge with the English, the pitfalls of living in a land the settlers were not prepared to handle began to take a toll. From a military perspective the settlers had set themselves up in an ideal location, however, the land was not ideal for farming, the water was brackish at different times during the year, and the bugs and disease were rampant. “As at this time were most of our chiefest men either sick or discontented, the rest being in such despair, as they would rather starve and rot with idleness, then be persuaded to do anything for their own relief without constraint: our victuals being now within eighteen days spent, and the Indians trade decreasing.”1 By 1607 the best answer for making the colonies work in America was to attempt a new approach. So, a corporate colony approach was taken, where not one-person funds the whole venture, but a joint stock corporation takes the reigns. With this new approach came John Smith. “Much of what we know about early seventeenth-century Virginians, both Native Americans and Europeans, come from him.”2