The Similarities And Differences Between The New England And The Chesapeake Region

New England and Chesapeake were both regions where the Englishmen had settled, they had many similarities, but also differences. Due to their differences it caused both New England and Chesapeake to become two different societies. Some of their differences were their religion, economy,government, and many more. These were the main reasons why they decided to become two distinct regions.

Religious freedom was greatly desired by Puritans and one of the main reasons for immigration. Puritans believed that the church should only accept “visible saints” and because King Charles I accepted all of his subjects, they left England for Massachusetts. John Winthrop wrote: “We must be knit together in this work as one man…We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us…if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us,” in A Model of Christian Charity. Winthrop believed that his followers should stay together in unity and to always remember their religion and to follow it well. Puritans entered the Massachusetts area, ready to pursue religious freedom from the Church. On the other hand, the Chesapeake region consisted of Protestants who followed the Church of England. However, following religion did not become as important to the Protestants until the 1700s. In History of Virginia by Captain John Smith, he mentioned that Smith had to kill one of the captains to stop the settlers from going back to England as

By the eighteenth century, New England and the Chesapeake region were drastically different. The colonies in both areas lacked similarities because of the separate reasons for colonization and values the colonists had. The people who settled in New England went there for religious reasons, and because they were predominantly Puritan the colonies were founded on Puritan values. In contrast, the southern colonies were created for profit. These allowed for economic, demographic, and societal differences.

In the early 17th century, England colonized the new world. These colonies became famously known as the Chesapeake and the New England Colonies. They were incredibly valuable to New England as they provided an abundance of wealth through trading and the supplying of raw materials. Both areas had the goal of economic prosperity. Despite both the New England and Chesapeake colonies being settled by the same country, the two sets of colonies had many differences, as well as some similarities in their social patterns and political characteristics.

Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many origins of people arrived in the new world. Whether it had been for religious, economic, or other various reasons, the groups of people all ended up in the same region. The New England Colonies and the Southern Colonies were the two distinct societies that were set up in the new world. The New England and Southern Colonies had many differences and similarities centered on reasons for arrival, slavery, forms of government and economy.

The differences between these colonies also arose due to different opinion on functioning of the government and ideologies. New England, being majorly settled by the Puritans, was intolerant to all other religions. The one exception to this was the colony of Rhode Island. Because it was settled by a dissenter from the Massachusetts Bay colony, it was the only New England colony to have complete religious freedom. Most of the New England based groups wanted to reform the Anglican Church from inside. The Chesapeake region was completely tied to the Anglican Church and did not care about reforming it in any way. The New England colonies also had a large central government which allowed for their administrations to be more organized and uniform throughout the region. This idea came from the Mayflower Compact signed at Plymouth by the Pilgrims. The American Pageant describes it as, “ It was simple agreement to form a crude government and submit to the will of the majority under the regulations agreed upon” (Bailey 47 ). According to Document A,

Throughout the early 1600s and late 1700s, many left their home countries in Europe to colonize the New World. Most notably were English pilgrims who sailed the Atlantic in large numbers and settled two major regions along the Eastern coast of North America. These regions soon became known as New England and the Chesapeake Bay areas. Though both were established predominantly by the English, both regions had their own and unique identities. These identities were established through regional economic motives, population differences and religious intensities.

In the beginning of the 17th Century, when other European countries like Spain had already established well developed colonies in the Americas, Britain was just starting its exploration activities, having dealt with multiple problems in the country. The two main regions of English settlement were the New England Colonies, and the Chesapeake Bay colonies, both of which developed differently, owing to the different terrain, climate, resources, demographics and intents. While the earlier Chesapeake colonies were started with the intent of spreading Christianity, they soon turned into commercial enterprises, maximizing profits through cash crops like tobacco. On the other hand, the Northern colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, etc. were

The Americas were colonized rapidly upon their discovery in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. England seized territory along the eastern coast of North America, land soon to be referred to as the New England and Chesapeake colonies. Settlers to the New England and Chesapeake colonies were of the same country but motivated to travel to North America for vastly different social and economic reasons.

Those who settled in the Chesapeake region were fortunate to have been near a peninsula along the James River. They were expecting to find numerous valuables things such as gold, silver, to make profit, and paths to other New Worlds, cures for illness, and other miscellaneous valuables they could profit from. In the Chesapeake region they were governed by London, they had an economy that largely benefited from monocrop plantations. The people who settled in the Chesapeake area consisted of “adventurers, sojourners, and single men”. The political elites were wealthy planters, and culturally were ethnically heterogeneous, and less religious.

Following initial contact with Columbus a century previous, the eastern colonies would soon be filled with waves of immigrants from every walk of life. Not all would be so idyllic however, as with such immigration would come an assortment of problems and experiences that would forever splinter and differentiate the colonies, leading to distinct personalities, purposes, and people in both the New England and the Chesapeake Bay areas. First set in place by the at-times vastly different groups of original settlers and their motivations, the unique identities and differences of the two colonial areas would soon come to fruition by the 1700s.

During the seventeenth century, the Europeans were the first to cross the Atlantic. Many groups from England, were sent out to North America to two regions. Those two regions were New England, and The Chesapeake.

The Chesapeake and New England were some of the first areas to be colonized by the English in America. The Chesapeake is what we now know as Maryland and Virginia, named so in reference to the Chesapeake Bay. New England, now divided into four states, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, was named in homage to the mother country England, as a promise to be a “New” England where the Puritan settlers could worship as they pleased.[1] Though the two bear many similar characteristics—they were both English colonies, facing the obstacle of the Native Americans, attempting to settle and create new societies—there are many more differences which set the colonies apart, economically, socially, and geographically.

For the New England colonies like Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, they had the Mayflower Compact. Their political and government structure had a interrelation between politics and religion. It dictated the economic, political, and social lives of colonists. Each town had meetings, elected legislatures, debated, and issued laws. Voting was allowed to white men who went to church. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, or the Middle Colonies, elected representatives to assemblies. The assemblies would then elect government officials which passed laws and did the decision makings. The Middle Colonies had religious tolerance that was founded by William Penn and practiced by the Quakers and it played a minor role in politics and economy. For the Chesapeake colonies, the House of Burgesses was founded in Jamestown where

By the 1700s the east coast was settled into distinct civilizations. New England was a society based on religious freedom, colonial ideals and an early democratic system. Chesapeake however, was founded in hopes of economic prosperity based on autocracy ethics.