The Dis-unity of the Colonists | Julie Silverbrook | BRI’s Constitutional Conversations

0:00 well hello everyone welcome to our Constitution day live programming I’m here with Julie silver Brooke Julie why don’t you introduce yourself hi I’m Julie silver Brooke I am the executive director of the constitutional sources project or con source for short why you tell us a little bit about con source what does consortium con source is a nonpartisan nonprofit educational

0:20 organization that connects citizens of all ages and people around the world of all ages with the history of the US Constitution we do this through our digital library of historical documents tracing the creation ratification and Amendment of the US Constitution and by creating educational programs and resources for students and teachers

0:41 lawyers and judges the press and the general public can we talk a little bit about the colonists and their kind of so the colonists were not a uniform body what do you know about the particular terms of their economic social and educational differences so it’s really interesting because I think a lot of

1:03 people when they think about the colonists they think about them as sort of being united against the British during the Revolution which of course they eventually become something of a United force but each of the colonies is founded first of all in different regions and for different purposes so the southern colonies for example were

1:26 primarily founded initially as financial ventures I so the goal was to exploit natural resources to make money for themselves and for mainly companies in the mother country which was England and they end up exploiting the land to grow

1:47 cash crops like rice indigo and tobacco I their economic structure is based on indentured servants which are paid to come over and of course slavery is a huge part of the economic system in the South the economy because of the way

2:08 that the south develops with larger plantations I it tends to be more geographically spread out so people aren’t communicating the same way they do in Boston towns for example and so the social structure is much more diffuse its rural again it’s sort of

2:28 economically motivated I the social structures are within individual plantations I rather than sort of across the plantation although there is some trading and interaction that happens across the plantations the New England colonies were founded primarily for

2:49 religious purposes so these are you know sort of what you think about when you think about New England as you think about the Puritans coming over and settling for religious reasons because of that I they tend to be more community oriented the economy of the New England colonies are is less plantation focused

3:13 and is more based on shipping there’s a big harbour up there so that facilitates that shipbuilding and then eventually because of the climate in the region they end up producing mills which leads to manufacturing the middle colonies are more of a mix i they are founded for a number of reasons so you have like the

3:34 Quakers in Pennsylvania that are there for religious reasons but you also have just like fishermen and merchants that are settling in the middle colonies the middle colonies and New England I are from just sort of a societal structure and educational perspective more similar

3:54 in that they tend to be more densely populated and therefore you see communities interacting more and because of that you see the development of common schools this starts in New England New England is the first region to require compulsory elementary education and to provide public

4:15 schooling for the young people in those colonies you see similar things happening in the middle colonies more in Pennsylvania again where that large Quaker population then in places like New York which were much more sort of commercially focused and then in the south again because the tracts of land

4:36 that people farm on are much larger they have these large plantations most of the schooling is happening within the plantations themselves or they’re sending their children to England and and in some cases if you don’t have a lot of money of a small farm you’re doing some really rudimentary education on your own so they’re quite distinct regions during the early colonial period

4:58 but things there are common things that happen across the colonies which I’m happy to talk more about that starts to make these colonies seem more similar