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New England and Southern Colonies Essay example

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Both the New England colonies and the Southern colonies seemed as though they might be the same. They both started out with the majority of people being from England, they were both in the New World, and they were both ruled by England but, as time went on this theory was proven wrong. The New England colonies and the Southern colonies had many common characteristics but these two regions were very different geographically, politically, and socially. Geographically the New England colonies were the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire; the Southern colonies were Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. These two regions were on opposite sides of America so naturally, they had …show more content…

In New England, however, because of the lack of need for labor there were very few black slaves and everyone was relatively equal. A large difference between New England and the Southern colonies is that when people moved to the New England regions many of them came in communities and families. In the South because of the many individuals, there was a shortage of women and therefore population did not grow as quickly. This expansion of cities in the New England colonies led to the founding of primary and secondary schools for education. Harvard College in Massachusetts was founded eighty-six years before the first college in Virginia. In the South, the few and spread out cities led to a slow development of schools and many children had tutors instead of attending school. These two very different social structures developed the character of the regions. As these colonies began to grow there became a need for a government and the two regions approached this in different ways. The Southern colonies prohibited taxes unless they were enforced by the grand assembly while New Englanders kept the right to tax locally whenever the need came. Also, the New England colonies placed much of their emphasis on town meetings. These meeting were attended by white males and they demonstrated the democracy that is seen in today's United States. In the Southern colonies the people were less enthusiastic about democracy and many of them were ruled by colonial

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