Contemporary Accounts.—W. Hening, Statutes; narratives enumerated in § 27, above. Reprints in American History told by Contemporaries, I. chs. ix., xiii.; publications of historical societies and commissions.
40. Land and People in the South.
Traits common to the Southern colonies.
Although of dissimilar origin, developed along somewhat different lines, and having striking individual characteristics, the Southern colonies possessed in common so many traits—climatic, geographical, social, and economic—that we may conveniently treat them as a distinct group.
Geography.
Virginia and Maryland, topographically similar, have numerous large and safe harbors, and the area of cultivation extends to the coast. In the Carolinas there are scarcely any good harbors; along the sea-shore are great sand-fields and pine-barrens, interspersed by swamps, but the country gradually slopes up to the Alleghany foot-hills, the soil improving with the rise in elevation. Throughout the Southern colonies the country is drained by broad rivers running down to the sea.
Population.
It is estimated that in 1688 there were but twenty-five thousand persons, white and black, in Maryland, sixty thousand in Virginia, and four thousand in the Carolinas. The English were dominant in all the colonies, but their supremacy was more strongly marked in Virginia and Maryland than in the Carolinas, where foreign elements (1700-1750) increased rapidly in numbers and variety. The North Carolina lumbering industry attracted many immigrants,—in the main French Huguenots, Moravians, and Germans, with some Swiss and Scotch-Irish interspersed. The Huguenots, a particularly desirable class, were stronger in South Carolina than in any other American colony. While Virginia and Maryland were chiefly settled by colonists direct from England, the Carolinas were largely peopled from the other English colonies in North America, the Bahamas, and the West Indies.
Unimportant character of the villages.
In the South the rich soil was widely distributed, the rivers served as convenient highways, and the climate was mild; except for protection from the Indians, there was no necessity in colonial times for the massing of the people. Villages were few, and the plantations were strung along the streams, often many miles apart and separated by dense forests. The legislatures of the Southern provinces from time to time endeavored to create trading and manufacturing towns by statute; but with few exceptions these remained, down to the Revolution, merely places of resort for elections and courts, with perhaps an inn, a jail, a court-house, and two or three dwellings. What trade there was at these cross-roads hamlets was of the most petty retail character, and the traders themselves were deemed of small consequence in the community. Jamestown remained the Virginia capital until late in the century, and during the sessions of the legislature and at gubernatorial inaugurations was a favorite resort for the wealthy and fashionable from all parts of the province; but it was a small, untidy village, with few of the characteristics of a modern town except for its public buildings. Williamsburg, its successor, was but little better. The original capital of Maryland, St. Mary's, was not worthy the name of town; but when, in the last decade of the century, Providence, rechristened Annapolis, became the seat of government, the new capital soon grew into an improvement on the old, several sightly public buildings were erected, and trade expanded with the increase of fashion. Charleston, the capital of South Carolina, was the most important town in the South; the wealthiest planters in the colony lived there, leaving their estates to the care of overseers; and trade, fashion, and politics centred in the village, which was well-built and handsome.