Common Identity as Americans

The colonization of the “New World” by the British rapidly spread along the Atlantic Ocean forming distinct Northern and Southern colonies. Although the colonists came from the same region, they travelled to American for varying reasons. Northern colonists, like the Puritans and the Baptists, founded the New England colonies based upon religious freedom while Southern colonists, like the Virginia Company, founded the Virginia/Chesapeake colonies hoping to gain quick profits. Each colony faces its own turmoil and conflicts, yet after the Seven Years War and the Great Awakening, the colonists in British North America began developing a common identity as “Americans.”
In the late early seventieth century, the southern colonies began to form along the Chesapeake Bay by the Virginia Company with the King of England’s permission. The Virginia Company, a joint stock company, consisted of London based merchants journeying with the goal of acquiring goods, such as exotic crops or precious metals, opening new markets for English products, and reducing unemployment to strengthen England. They founded Jamestown in 1607 and starting having Indian conflicts right away. The unhappy settlers undertook nightmarish conditions and died rapidly because of disease, malnutrition, and starvation. The colonists faced mosquito-infested, unhealthy site without much luck until Virginia’s prosperity finally emerged due to John Rolfe’s perfected methods of growing tobacco. Tobacco, although a demanding plant to manage, allowed the colonist to make three times as much in the “New World” than in England. This profit attracted more people to venture across seas and start a new life. For those who could not afford the trip, the poor living in poverty, agreed to indentured servitude and had to work for four to seven years for Virginian farmers in order to pay back their debts from the journey. Once many indentured servants became free, they were frustrated by their broken hopes of gaining land...