breeding students and welcome to another edition of mr. Sollers social studies podcast now today we have the third part in our series on the original 13 English colonies in the New World and the third installment focuses on the southern colonies so what I'm going to do is give you a very brief introduction to the stories of four of these colonies and what I'm going to ask you to do is determine who is the founder of each of these colonies and why was that colony founded already all right let's get started now our story today actually begins with a line of latitude a very famous line of latitude in American history called the mason-dixon line the mason-dixon line was surveyed by two english mathematicians named charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon now the mason-dixon line is actually very important in American history but its importance shows up much later on in time for our purposes though the reason that I bring the mason-dixon line to your attention is because it shows the demarcation between the northern colonies and the southern colonies which we'll be talking about today in the southern colonies we see a very different way of life developing to illustrate this let's talk about our first colony which is the colony of Virginia now you are likely already familiar with the story of the very first settlement in Virginia which is also England's first permanent settlement in the New World I'm talking of course about Jamestown and the story of Jamestown has to do with a man named John Smith now John Smith arrived in Jamestown there was not actually a great deal of certainty that Jamestown was going to be successful the colony was full of people who wanted to spend their time searching for gold and not spend their time doing things like building shelters or finding food and so John Smith instituted a policy called no work no in other words if you are not contributing to the success of the colony then you weren't going to eat it was that policy that really helped turn jamestown around and send it in the right direction but it wasn't until they started farming tobacco that the economic success of jamestown was assured and once they started farming tobacco we see many more colonists arriving in Virginia and pushing further and further into the interior of the colony the problem with that is that it brought them into conflict with Native Americans who were living there now both European colonists and Native Americans believed that they were entitled to that land my question to you is why why is it that European colonists believed that they were entitled to that land and Native Americans believed that they were entitled to that land why don't you pause the video for a second and consider the answer to those two questions then when you're ready unpause the video and we'll talk about the answers all right let's see what you came up with as far as why European colonists believed that they were entitled to the land you might have come up with a number of different answers you might have said something like they thought they had a right to it for example they had a charter they had an official document from the king that gave them permission to settle there they also might have said well it appears like the Native Americans aren't using this land just because there wasn't a permanent settlement there doesn't necessarily mean that the Native Americans weren't using that land for hunting or trapping or some other purpose but to the European colonists they might have figured because they hadn't built a permanent shelter or or a permanent farm that that land was up for grabs so to speak another argument that the European colonists might have believed was they might have just said well we're more powerful they might have used sort of a bullies logic and said because we have more advanced weapons we are entitled to take whatever land we want but meanwhile the Native Americans also believed that they were entitled to that land what did you come up with for the reasons why the Native Americans believe they were entitled to the land you probably said something like well they were there first they were living on this land for generations long before the European colonists showed up either way both of these groups believed that they were entitled to this land and that's obviously going to create a great deal of conflict why don't you pause the video for a second while you record all these answers and then unpause the video when you're ready to move on all right now more colonists are arriving in Virginia during this time period here and what happens is the original colonists the wealthier planters they are taking up all the best land that's located along the coast but as more and more people arrive or as more and more indentured servants are given their freedom dues they are pushing deeper and deeper into the colony and ultimately that's going to bring them into conflict with Native Americans so after one particularly bloody conflict but called us who are living deep along the frontier appealed to the governor of Virginia to help protect them from the Native Americans the problem is though the governor of Virginia had a conflict of interest he was making lots of money off the fur trade with Native Americans and so he refused to help the frontier columns and as a result you had a man named Nathaniel bacon who decided he was going to take matters into his own hands he organized a group of angry farmers and frontiersmen and they began raiding Native American villages but it didn't stop there he eventually turned his attention on the capital in Jamestown attacked the capital and tried to burn it to the ground now this rebellion became known as Bacon's Rebellion and it lasted for only a short period of time because eventually Nathaniel bacon dies suddenly and the whole rebellion the whole movement crumbles as a result of this but this is particularly important because it shows that conflict between Native Americans and colonists is not going to go away anytime soon now that's true in Virginia it's also true in other colonies as well let's go ahead and turn our attention to the colony of Maryland now the story of Maryland is one of rich natural resources religion and a man named Lord Baltimore now Lord Baltimore was an English Noble and if we were going to chart the political career of Lord Baltimore it would be one of great promise that is until Lord Baltimore announces that he is a Catholic at that point his political career is definitely going to take a downturn because if you recall it was not very popular to be a Catholic in England during this time period the Anglican Church was the official Church of the country so it was sort of political suicide to announce that you were in fact a Catholic instead but Lord Baltimore decides he's going to summon up whatever political clout he has left and push forth an idea that he has which is to create a colony in the new world that would provide religious freedom for Catholics now does this sound familiar to you because we heard a very similar story about William Penn this is the same idea that William Penn has that leads to the founding of Pennsylvania but instead here we're talking about providing religious freedom not to Quakers but providing religious freedom for Catholics instead now there is one more downturn that Lord Baltimore's political career is going to suffer and that is the moment when she dies but there is still some good news and that is that he has a son different Lord Baltimore but the son of the Lord Baltimore that we've been speaking up and he decides he's going to pick up the father's mantle and he's going to do what he can to see that there is a still a colony created where Catholics can practice their religion freely without fearing religious persecution and as a result you see a number of settlers who are moving to Maryland to take advantage not only of the abundant natural resources but also of the freedom that is provided by the act of toleration the act of toleration was the document that promised to provide religious freedom not only for Catholics but for Protestants as well now let's take our focus away from Maryland for a moment and look at the Carolinas in the Carolinas we have a little bit of a two-for-one colony here because even though it begins as just one colony eventually it will form the colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina now Carolina begins with a charter that is given to a group of eight Nobles who refer to as the Lord proprietors but in that colony we see two very different populations who are moving into different parts of that colony the northern part of the colony is primarily made up of farmers with very small farms who are grown tobacco these are colonists who are moving down south from the colony of Virginia located just north of the Carolinas in the southern part of the colony though we see very different colonists moving in we see very large plantations similar to what we would have seen in the Caribbean during that time period and eventually what happens is it's determined that because you have two very different populations living in two different parts of the colony that they would be split apart each one would have their own individual charter and they would create two separate colonies but one more thing that we need to talk about that comes out of the Carolinas and that is that as we see especially these large plantations down and what will become South Carolina as these plantation owners are moving in they need a very large work force for crops that they're planting like rice for example and because of this need for a large workforce that increasingly causes them to look towards slaves as a source of that labor all right one more Colony for us to talk about is the colony of Georgia now the story of Georgia involves a man named James Oh thorpe and James Oglethorpe saw a very particular problem and he believed that he could solve it that particular problem that he was looking at was the English debt law now the English debt law says that people who owed money to anyone even including private citizens could be put in jail until that debt was repaid by what you stop and think about that for a second so that says that you would be in jail because you can't pay your debts but if you're in jail that makes it awfully difficult for you to earn money to pay off your debts which means that you're stuck in jail because you can't pay off your debts but while you're in there you're not able to earn any money and do you see how we end up moving around and around and around in this very vicious circle and so what James Oglethorpe decides is what we should do is create an alternative to throwing these people in jail which give them a chance to work off their debt and he creates a new colony called Georgia and in Georgia colonists would have an opportunity to come across the Atlantic live in this new colony and repay the debts that they had accrued back in England oh by the way there is one more benefit of the colony of Georgia and that is that just south of Georgia was a colony owned by the Spanish so we have Spanish Florida bordering our thirteen colonies well if the Spanish had decided to attack the 13 colonies they would have had to go through Georgia so in other words Georgia is not only formed as an opportunity for people in debt to make a fresh start it also forms a defensive buffer zone between the Spanish Florida colony and the rest of the English 13 colonies all right well that's the last of our southern colonies and so let's see how many of these answers you were able to come up with why don't you go ahead and pause the video and see how much of this chart you'd be able to fill in and then when you're ready go ahead and unpause the video and we'll talk about the answers all right let's see what you got when we start with the colony of Virginia we know that the first great leader of the colony of Virginia was John Smith but the reason that Virginia was founded was to provide economic opportunities then we moved on and we talked about Maryland the founder of Maryland was Lord Baltimore and Maryland was founded to provide religious and political freedom for Catholics and then we have the Carolinas now the Carolinas were founded originally by that group of eight nobles and eventually we know the Carolinas are going to split into two different colonies North Carolina and South Carolina but they were both formed for the same reason which was to provide economic opportunities for the people who were living there and then finally our last colony was Georgia and Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe and the reason that Georgia was founded was now this is twofold it's to provide economic opportunities for debtors in other words people in debt and also to serve as a defensive buffer against Spanish Florida all right well that's it for our podcast today I hope you've enjoyed it and keep studying the social studies