A Comparison Of The New England And The Chesapeake Bay Colonies

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AP US History A Comparison of the New England and Chesapeake Bay Regions During the 1700's, people in the American colonies lived in very distinctive societies. While some colonists led hard lives, others were healthy and prosperous. The two groups who showed these differences were the colonists of the New England and Chesapeake Bay areas. The differentiating characteristics among the Chesapeake and New England colonies developed due to economy, religion, and motives for colonial expansion. The colonists of the New England area possessed a very happy and healthy life. This high way of living was due in part to better farming, a healthier environment, and a high rate of production because of more factories. The colonists of the Chesapeake Bay region, on the other hand, led harder lives compared to that of the colonists of New England. The Chesapeake Bay had an unhealthy environment, bad eating diets, and intolerable labor. The colonists had different reasons for settling in these two distinct regions. The New England region was a more religiously strict yet diverse area compared to that of the Chesapeake Bay. The development of religion in the two regions came from separate roots. After Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic Church broke away from each other, a new group of English reformers was created called the Puritans. The Puritans came from protestant backgrounds, after being influenced by Calvinistic ideas. When their reforms were thwarted by King James I of England, they fled to the New World in what is now known as the "Great Migration". The Puritans were then joined by Quakers, Protestants, and Catholics in the religiously diverse New England area. These diverse religious factions were allowed to live freely but under the laws of New England. It was due to this religious freedom that these people came to escape religious persecution back home. The New Englanders had a religion-based society and religion was based on family. As the Bible highly regarded family, it condemned adultery. Adultery was considered a punishable crime. Adulterers were marked as impure by a letter "A" stitched on their clothing, as in the book "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. As religion was a very high priority in New England, it was very much less severe in the Chesapeake Bay region. The one established church in the region, the Anglican Church of Jesus Christ, was only then established in 1692, more than 70 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

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