Refionalism Case
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During the early years of American history, the national regions developed differently, largely due to the different systems of economic organization. These developmental patterns developed early, and were largely influenced by the topography of the regions, as well as differences in work ethic and the religious orientation of settlers. Combined, these characteristics of land and human society molded the regional attitudes of Americans.
In the American South, the topography allowed white settlers to accumulate large amounts of land. This was conducive to an elitist social system of headright, in which a few influential families gained control of the best farming land. The system allowed these powerful families to generate wealth through the cultivation of large amounts of acreage, through the labor of indentured servants. Indentured servants were white individuals, usually of English or Scots-Irish extraction, who traveled to the New World for free in exchange for agreeing to work for several years as servants in the New World. For the headright families, the more laborers that could be brought in to work large amounts of acreage, the more wealth and influence could be gained. The Southern states did not operate under the strict Puritan ethic that was common further north. The Puritan ethic emphasized personal initiative, individual effort, and strict self-discipline and self-control. Church attendance in the South was lower than in the Northern states.
The headright system gave rise to a white southern planter class, which built a new commercial economy that was almost solely based on growing cotton (Brinkley 290). A subclass of the South was the backcountry “hill people.” These were non-slaveowning whites, who were isolated from commercial planter economy, and did not participate in the wealth that was generated by the while southern planter class. They lived in poverty, and survived through subsistence agriculture, which produced some food but never a surplus of a size that could generate wealth.
In the Northern states, the topography of the land was not conducive to the accumulation of land by the headright system. In the Northern states, the township system of government allowed every adult male who owned land of any amount to participate in town meetings. This fostered democracy within the townships In addition, the Puritan ethic of the Northern settlers emphasized personal initiative and effort, not the accumulation of wealth from land that was worked through slave labor. Commerce was the way that the Northerners generated wealth, through maritime industries such as fishing, shipping, and shipbuilding . The Northern economy did benefit from slave labor and the slave trade, however, in the form of the “Triangle trade.”
Through the triangle, sugar that was grown on slave-based plantations in the Caribbean was shipped to New England, where it was