Thus most American white men eventually owned their own land and headed their own households. As populations grew and as colonial economies developed, however, that independence based on property ownership was endangered. Good farmland in the south came to be dominated by a class of planters, while growing numbers of poor whites became tenants. The pressure of a growing population on the supply of farmland made tenancy even more common in New Jersey and Pennsylvania , while in New England more and more fathers found themselves unable to provide for their sons. On the eve of the American Revolution , American white men prided themselves on a widespread liberty that was based in economic independence. Meanwhile, the land ownership that upheld that independence was being undermined. 18th Century Slavery In the first half of the 18th century, the mainland colonies grew dramatically but in very different ways. The Chesapeake and the Carolinas grew plantation staples for world markets-tobacco in the Chesapeake and North Carolina, rice and indigo in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia-and they were committed to African slave labor. Fully 70 percent of South Carolina's population was black, nearly all Africans were imported directly to the colony in the 18th century.
The numbers were so huge and the malarial wetlands they worked on were so unhealthy that masters encouraged slaves to organize their own labor and to work unsupervised. Because so many slaves lived and worked relatively unsupervised in this area, African cultures-language, handicrafts, religious experience and belief, and more-survived most fully among American slaves in South Carolina. Rice planters of South Carolina permitted this cultural independence because it was easier and because the slaves made them lots of money. South Carolina's lowland planters were the wealthiest group in the mainland colonies. Further north, the tobacco colonies of Virginia and Maryland were equally committed to slave labor, but slaves led somewhat different lives here than in the deep South. The African population in these colonies began to replace itself through reproduction as early as 1720 . Still, Chesapeake planters continued to import new slaves from Africa; about 70,000 went to Virginia in the 18th century and about 25,000 to Maryland. Slaves in these colonies tended to live and work in smaller, more closely supervised groups than slaves further south, and their cultural memory of Africa, though often strong, was less pervasive than that of Carolina slaves. In addition, white Virginians and Marylanders were turning to wheat as a secondary crop, a development that required mills and towns, and thus slave labor in construction, road building, and some of the skilled crafts. Northern Agriculture Around the middle of the 18th century, a heavily populated and increasingly urbanized Europe lost the capacity to feed itself, providing an important market for North American farmers.
individuals amounts army company crockery empire farmland home militia opinion representatives revenue matchmakers