The southern colonies were probably some of the most deceiving colonies of the original thirteen. They got people to do hard labor for them. The colonists I guess you can say were like “supervisors. ” They would sit under some shade sipping on ice cold water while they watched their slaves and servants sweat and maybe even bleed by doing things the owners were capable of doing but were just to lazy to. Deceiving because they say they will give you land and freedom which is true, but in the end they wouldn’t give you the exact same rights the colonists did.
The search for a viable labor source affected the southern colonies in many ways. Without forced labor the southern colonies wouldn’t have been able to keep their economy up the way they did. The southern colonies developed with a focus on agriculture as the primary economic activity. Unfortunately the technology to decrease the labor demands such as the cotton gin or spinning jenny weren’t invented during the colonial times. Without that technology the southerners instead took advantage of the immigration and came up with the indentured servants.
The indentured servants were I guess you can say happy for having the opportunity for acquiring their own land and freedom for a few years of labor. Even though most of the servants were young and healthy men, most of them died before completing their seven years of labor. The introduction of African American slavery played a pretty big role in the early colonial settlements. The main role for African American slavery was to help with financial wealth for white owners. Without this work force there would have been a limit on success for early colonial settlements.
For example, once the regular indentured servants started to fail at the work they were doing the colonists realized they needed a stronger type of slave. North Carolina used large numbers of slaves because they had heavy industry in the form of naval stores production. Timbers for ships and pitch for waterproofing were hard industries and required much labor. They also started using African American slaves because they were immune to smallpox and they had more knowledge on how to plant and take care of rice. Without the African Americans the colonists wouldn’t have succeeded they way that they did.
Georgia initially resisted slavery because it was a colony inhabited by small farmers who could not afford them and they didn’t need them. Religion made some difference. Early Methodists were opposed to slavery on moral grounds and would not live near or with slave owners. This reversal of development threw the South backwards in terms of development. Farming operations tended to grow to support the relatively enormous cost of ownership of slaves. Larger farms stymied the development of town and any industry these towns might have brought with them.
The small Southern farmers is very poor because he can’t compete against his larger slave owning neighbor and must find alternative crops, of which there are few if any. The southern colonies had a good idea of what they were doing. They got people to do most of the work for them. If they hadn’t resorted to slaves than they would’ve ran their economy into the ground. In the colonists eyes it seemed as if everybody had won. Meaning that you do the work and I reward you with land and your freedom afterwards. It might have seemed far at first, but in the long run the colonists came out with the bigger straw.
