New England vs. Chesapeake Regions

The New England and the Chesapeake region were mainly populated by colonists of English origin. By the end of the 1600’s each area had developed its own differences in their development. Throughout the colonization of New England and the Chesapeake region, the motives and incentives of the English settlers, the composition of the regional groups; and the forms of governing suggest key distinctions in the development of these areas.

            The prime motive for the founding of the New England colonies was religious freedom. The first settlement in New England was the arrival of the Separatists Pilgrims in 1620; these groups of people sought out a lack of religious restrictions and complete detachment from the Church of England. Later on with a hostile Charles I, large harassment by the Church of England, and economic problems led the Non-Separatists to settle in North America. These motives led Puritan merchants to buy the withering Virginia Company of Plymouth’s charter in 1628. They received royal permission to found a colony in the Massachusetts area north of Plymouth Plantation. These people, as said by John Winthrop, an elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, had a vision that their city was to be a “city upon a hill” that was “knit together” by “brotherly affection.

Types of emigrants to New England created a society with stable families and a clear mission. During the Great Migration in 1630, thousands of Puritans were arriving at the New England areas of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Immigrants to these areas in 1635 included Puritan men, women, and children, where men and women were almost matched in numbers, 21 versus 22. These Puritans had traveled in important cohesive middle class families. Among the list of emigrants bound for New England, these unified families had traces of skilled craftsmen and farmers, ultimately leading to a prosperous growing population and well organized families with a clear task.

After the long journeys to the New World, New Englander’s almost overnight had created a way to govern the community with fairness and the accompaniment of God.  In the Articles of Agreement in Springfield Massachusetts the New Englanders explain that their way to keep the order is to provide and enforce a sense of community. Written in the same year of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1636 those articles spell out that the New Englanders “intended by God’s grace” to minister the inhabitants “to join in church covenant to walk in all the ways of Christ”. “That every inhabitant” have a “convenient proportion for a house lot… for everyone’s quality and estate”. Along with enforcing a sense of community; wage and price regulations in Connecticut enabled them “to serve God and their neighbors with their arts and trades comfortably”. In town meetings, two fifths of puritans could vote on civic matters. New Englanders endorse and enforce a strong sense of community with personal access to property and fair wages and prices. These goals and missions were all regulated by a simple civil compact in 1636 and the support and dependence of God.