May 19, 2012

Unit 9 – Maryland & Carolinas

Unit Nine – Settling Maryland and the Carolinas

Virginia had formerly included all that the English claimed in America, but in order to form more colonies this land was cut down to just four hundred miles. Part of the four hundred miles was occupied by the Dutch in New Jersey and Delaware. New England

Additionally, the territory of Virginia was, at length, further cut down by the taking of another part of it to form Maryland for Lord Baltimore.

Lord Baltimore was a Secretary of State to James I. In 1621 he planted a colony in Newfoundland, which he called Avalon. In 1627 he went to his colony in Newfoundland, but the climate was so cold that in 1629 he went to Virginia.

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Unit 19 - Spirit of Liberty

Unit 18 - Governments

Unit 17 - Canada Falls

Unit 16 - France & Spain

Before going to Virginia he wrote to the king, begging for territory to plant a colony there. Lord Baltimore had become a Catholic at a time when there were severe laws in England against Catholics. Even in the colonies Catholics were not allowed; and the Virginians took advantage of the orders given them from England, and insisted that he must take an oath declaring that the king was the head of the Church.

As a Catholic, he could not do this, and the Virginians forced him to leave the colony. Lord Baltimore returned to England and got King Charles I to give him a slice of Virginia north of the Potomac. This country King Charles named Maryland, in honor of the queen, his wife. For this Baltimore was to pay to the king two Indian arrows every year.

Just before Lord Baltimore could send out a colony, he died and so the territory was then granted to Lord Baltimore's son (also called Lord Baltimore) and he was given all the powers of a monarch.

The first settlers were sent out in 1633, and reached Maryland in 1634. This company was composed of twenty “gentlemen” and three hundred “working” men. The first governor was the second Lord Baltimore's brother, Leonard Calvert.

Roman Catholic priests were with them, and at their landing they set up a cross. But there were also a good many Protestants in the party and Lord Baltimore had resolved from the beginning that there should be no persecution of any Christians on account of religion in his new province.

In almost every other country in the world at that time had an established religion that was enforced by law. The people who did not worship the sanctioned religion were often punished, tortured, or worse.

The colonists came in two ships called the Ark and the Dove and they settled first on the St. Mary’s River, not very far from the Potomac River.

They “bought” an Indian village and their stores of corn so that they could survive the rest of that season and lived with those Indians for a time. The colony had many troubles and several little civil wars in its first years. These mostly grew out of the religious differences of the people. But after a while Maryland prospered and grew rich by raising tobacco.

After the settlement of New England by Puritans, and Maryland by Catholics, there was a period of about thirty years in which no new colonies were planted.

In this period occurred the Great Rebellion in England, in which Charles I was beheaded, and his son Charles II was kept out of England by the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell. Charles II was brought back to the throne of England after Cromwell’s death and this period became know as the Restoration of 1660.

After the Restoration there was a new interest in colonies and so New York was taken from the Dutch and new colonies were planned. King Charles II was a very thoughtless, self-indulgent monarch, who freely granted great tracts of land in America to several of his favorites. In 1663 he gave some of his friends a large territory cut off from Virginia on the south, which had been known before this time as Carolana, but was now called Carolina, from Latin form of King Charles's name.

This territory included what we today call North and South Carolina. The men who were granted this territory were called "The Lords Proprietors of Carolina" and there were eight of these proprietors.

In the northeastern corner of this territory, on the Chowan River, a settlement had been made by people from Virginia, under the lead of a minister named Roger Green, in 1653. This was ten years before the country was granted to these lords proprietors, and the land belonged to Virginia when they settled there.

A settlement was made at Port Royal, in South Carolina, in 1670, but the people afterward moved to where the city of Charleston now stands. The foundation of this city was laid in 1680. A large number of Huguenots (French Protestants) settled in South Carolina about this time.

The lords proprietors tried to force a constitution on this little settlement in the woods which provided for three orders of nobility, to be called palatines [pal-a-teens'], land- graves, and caciques [cas-seeks']. But this system of government worked so badly that it had to be abandoned.

The Carolina colonies grew slowly until after the introduction of rice culture, in 1696 when it suddenly became prosperous. The proprietors, living in England, conducted the government of the colonies in a selfish spirit, and the people disliked their management. In 1719 the South Carolina people rose in rebellion and ousted them from the government.

In 1729 the king bought out the interest of the proprietors, and after that the governors were appointed by the king. By this time the colonists had already set up an Assembly elected by the people to pass laws and were governing themselves.