Why did plantations develop instead of towns

The northeastern and mid-Atlantic states, including Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, had legally permitted slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even though slavery was permitted, northern states characteristically had far smaller slave populations than the South. Few slave ships arrived in New York, Philadelphia, or Boston, which instead became trade centers for manufactured goods.

Slaves that lived in the North were often domestic servants or bondsmen to small farmers and rural ironworks. Unlike in the South, northern farms were not large-scale enterprises that focused on producing a single cash crop; instead they were often smaller, more agriculturally diversified enterprises that required fewer laborers.

Hence, the need for enslaved bondsmen gradually dwindled—especially as rapid soil depletion and the growth of industry in northern cities attracted many rural northerners to wage labor. The first U. The states created from this region—Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota—were generally settled by New England farmers and American Revolutionary War veterans who were granted land in this area.

This territory was entirely slave-free from its inception and separated by the Ohio River from the South, which was pushing for an expansion of legal slavery into the West. After the Northwest Ordinance, Massachusetts abolished slavery in its state constitution, and several other northern states followed suit by drafting statutes that provided for gradual emancipation.

In , New Jersey became the last northern state to abolish slavery. Even though slavery was not a prevalent institution in the North, the commercial urban centers that sprang up in these colonies meant that most northerners had a vested stake in ensuring that American slavery flourished in the South.

This is particularly true after the advent of the cotton gin, which supplied the North with the surplus of raw cotton necessary to produce finished goods for export. Northern industry and commerce relied on southern cash crop production; therefore, while slavery was actively abolished in the North, most northerners were content to allow slavery to flourish in the southern states.

The Northwest Ordinance was also a free territory, though it was not yet incorporated as a state. The rise of large-scale plantations in the South led to the widespread use of slavery to support the colonial economy. However, it was in the large agricultural plantations in the South where slavery took hold the strongest. Early on, enslaved people in the South worked primarily in agriculture —on farms and plantations growing indigo, rice, and tobacco. Cotton did not become a major crop until after the American Revolution.

The invention of the cotton gin in enabled the cultivation of short-staple cotton in a wide variety of areas, leading to the development of large areas of the Deep South as cotton country in the 19th century. Tobacco was very labor-intensive, as was rice cultivation.

The Chesapeake region and North Carolina thrived on tobacco production, while South Carolina and Georgia thrived on rice and indigo. The rapid expansion of large-scale plantations and single-crop agriculture in the Deep South greatly increased demand for slave labor, and slavery became the backbone of the British colonies. While the southern part of Carolina produced thriving economies on rice and indigo a plant that yields a dark blue dye used by English royalty throughout the 18th century, the northern part of Carolina—later established as the separate colony of North Carolina—turned more toward tobacco production, like its neighbor Virginia.

North Carolina continued to produce items for ships, especially turpentine and tar, and its population increased as Virginians moved there to expand their tobacco holdings. Tobacco was the primary export of both Virginia and North Carolina, which increasingly came to rely on slave labor from Africa. In the s, Enlightenment principles prompted the founding of a new colony: Georgia. However, colonists who relocated from other colonies, especially South Carolina, disregarded this prohibition and brought with them their slaves.

Unlike the southern colonies around him, Oglethorpe originally envisioned Georgia to be a slave-free society. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Expansion of the Colonies: — Search for:. Slavery in the Colonies.

Slavery and Empire Slave labor and the African slave trade formed the backbone of the American colonial economy. Learning Objectives Discuss the historical trend of slavery, the increasing demand for slave labor in the New World, and the various groups that resisted slavery. Key Takeaways Key Points The idea that military victors had the right to enslave defeated opponents was commonly held in ancient Greece and Rome. The increasing demand for imported labor in the American colonies turned the slave trade into a large-scale and highly lucrative business.

Only a small fraction of the enslaved Africans brought to the New World ended up in British North America, with the vast majority of slaves sent to the Caribbean sugar colonies. In the North American colonies, the importation of African slaves was directed mainly southward, where extensive tobacco, rice, and cotton plantation economies demanded extensive labor forces for cultivation; this created the Southern slave institution in the United States.

Poor working conditions, disease, and malnutrition contributed to the high mortality rate among slaves in the Americas.

Forms of slave resistance ranged from slow labor paces to violent rebellion. Key Terms bondage : The state of being enslaved or the practice of slavery.

The Triangular Trade Triangular Trade was a system in which slaves, crops, and manufactured goods were traded between Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Key Takeaways Key Points An estimated 9. The First Atlantic System refers to the 16th-century period in which Portuguese merchants dominated the West African slave trade—supplying Spanish and Portuguese New World colonies with imported African labor. The Second Atlantic System characterizes the 17th and 18th centuries, when British, Dutch, and French merchants replaced the Portuguese as the major slave traders in the Atlantic.

In the Triangular Trade, enslaved Africans were imported from Africa to the American colonies as the labor force needed to produce cash crops, which were exported to Europe in exchange for manufactured goods. European goods were then used to trade with Africans for slaves, who were exported to the American colonies, where the cycle of the trade started again.

The mortality rate on slave ships was very high, and an estimated 2 million enslaved passengers died en route from disease, violence, abuse, lack of food or water, or suicide.

Key Terms triangular trade : A system of exchange of slaves, cash crops, and manufactured goods between West Africa, Caribbean or American colonies, and Europe from the late 16th to early 19th centuries. Chesapeake Slavery The economy of the Chesapeake region revolved around tobacco and relied heavily on slave labor.

Learning Objectives Discuss how planters in the Chesapeake region increasingly invested in the Atlantic slave trade to support their rural tobacco-based economy. Key Takeaways Key Points The Chesapeake colonies developed similar agricultural systems based on tobacco, which later diversified to include cotton and indigo.

Tobacco required intensive labor for cultivation, and the declining availability of white indentured servants —as well as fear of uprisings from wealthy whites—made Chesapeake planters turn toward African slave labor.

The introduction of large-scale cheap labor via slavery allowed for an increase in tobacco exports, which generated significant wealth for whites in the region.

The presence of slaves created an economic gap between wealthy and poor Chesapeake farmers, with the wealthy elites dominating the social and political life. Slavery in the Rice Kingdom South Carolina was the first colony founded deliberately on slave labor to support its growing rice economy. Learning Objectives Explain why South Carolina was deliberately founded on slave labor. Key Takeaways Key Points The colony of South Carolina was one of the first colonies founded with the intention of basing an economy on slave labor.

Many of the early planters in South Carolina were wealthy immigrants from Barbados, who brought their African slaves. The principle crop of South Carolinian plantations was rice, which was introduced to South Carolina in and brought unprecedented prosperity to the region.

Slavery was integral to rice cultivation because of its labor intensiveness and because slaves from the rice-producing regions of Africa provided colonial plantation owners with crucial technical knowledge about rice cultivation.

Rice production ceased to be profitable after the abolition of slavery because planters could no longer rely on free labor.

Rice Kingdom : An epithet for South Carolina, so named for its principle cash crop harvested by slaves in the early 18th century.

Slavery in the North While Northern states had fewer slaves and eventually outlawed slavery entirely, they were still economically dependent on the institution. Learning Objectives Explain why the colonial North characteristically had smaller slave populations than the South. The student creation will be graded on a four-point formative rubric scale. Hyde, Sir Thomas. A Plan of the town of Boston.

Washington, D. Habermann, Franz Xaver. Vue de Boston. Augsbourg: Image of New England fishermen from a late 19th-century history book. Shows evidence of fishing industry and ruggedness of the environment.

Tisdale, Elkanah. Town Meeting. Carwitham, J. Etching hand colored. Hill, John. New York City. Peale, Charles Willson. The Accident in Lombard Street. Muchley, Robert. Hall, John. Kennerly, Samuel, Jr. Hermitage 26 Acres of Land. Staunton Spectator: The Old Plantation, c. Stearns, Junius Brutus. Life of George Washington—The farmer. Lemercier, Paris: c.

Washington, George. A plan of my farm on Little Huntg. Library of Congress American Memory Collection. National Geographic Society. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service.

If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer.

If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. Slavery was a deeply rooted institution in North America that remained legal in the United States until It took the abolition movement, a civil war, and the ratification of the 13th amendment to end slavery.

Though it did not end racism and descendants of these people are still struggling with discrimination today. Use these resources to teach more about significant figures in the abolition movement, the causes of the Civil War, and how slavery sustained the agricultural economy in the United States for centuries. While Africans in colonial America held very little social or political power, their contributions supported the Southern colonies and led to their eventual prosperity.

Although slavery ended earlier in the North than in the South which would keep its slave culture alive and thriving through the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War , colonial New England played an undeniable role in the long and grim history of American slavery. From the s until the start of the U. Civil War, abolitionists called on the federal government to prohibit the ownership of people in the Southern states.

Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students. Skip to content. Image Sugar Cane Plantation Illustration of slaves cutting sugar cane on a southern plantation.