This unit follows English North America from the shaky start at Jamestown in 1607 to the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. By the end, you should be able to compare the three colonial regions, explain how slavery became central to plantation labor in the South, and trace how 1763 changed the relationship between Britain and its colonies.
Read the overview first for the big picture, then work through each topic note and answer its checkpoint question before moving on.
Colonial America was never one uniform place. New England, the Middle Colonies and the South had different founders, economies and social structures. This unit explains why those differences developed and what pulled the colonies closer together by the 1760s.
Honors US History Unit 2 covers colonial America from about 1607 to 1763. You'll study why England founded colonies and how Jamestown, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Pennsylvania and the others got started. You'll also compare the economies and societies of New England, the Middle Colonies and the South, and see how enslaved African labor grew in the South alongside a decline in reliance on indentured servants. The unit then covers the French and Indian War (1754-1763) and its results, including the Treaty of Paris and the Proclamation of 1763, plus two movements that changed colonial thinking, the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment.
Rocky soil and Puritan religion made New England a place of towns, fishing and trade. The Middle Colonies grew wheat and attracted a mixed population of Quakers, Germans, Dutch and Scots-Irish. The South's long growing season made tobacco and rice plantations profitable, which created a huge demand for labor.
Early Virginia depended on European servants who worked several years for their passage. After Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, some planters saw landless former servants as a threat. Planters increasingly relied on enslaved Africans for several reasons, including access to the Atlantic slave trade and a declining supply of English servants. Colonial laws increasingly defined slavery as lifelong and hereditary.
The Treaty of Paris (1763) transferred most French territory in mainland North America to Britain and Spain. It also left Britain deeply in debt and responsible for a huge territory. Britain's attempts to limit western settlement and raise money from the colonies after 1763 angered colonists who were used to running their own affairs.
Elected assemblies like the House of Burgesses and New England town meetings gave some colonists experience in local government, even as Britain retained imperial authority. Revivalists and Enlightenment writers taught them to judge authority for themselves. When Britain tried to take firmer control after 1763, colonists already had the institutions and the ideas to push back.
England used joint-stock companies, including the Virginia Company, to finance some early colonies.
Colonial society was ranked.
The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was the North American part of a global conflict Europeans called the Seven Years' War.
Two very different movements spread through the colonies in the mid-1700s, and both taught colonists to question authority.
Open this guide for a closer review of the topic.
England used joint-stock companies, including the Virginia Company, to finance some early colonies. Investors hoped for profit, but Jamestown, founded in 1607, faced food shortages, disease and conflict with the Powhatan. The colony nearly collapsed during the Starving Time of 1609-1610.
Tobacco saved Virginia. After John Rolfe planted a sweeter strain in 1612, the colony had a cash crop, and the hunger for land pushed settlers onto Powhatan territory. In 1619 Virginia convened a General Assembly that included elected representatives called burgesses. It was the first representative assembly in English America. The first recorded Africans arrived the same year.
New England started differently. The Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact in 1620 before landing at Plymouth, and Puritans founded Massachusetts Bay in 1630 hoping to build a "city upon a hill." They wanted freedom for their own faith, not for everyone, so dissenters like Roger Williams were banished and founded Rhode Island in 1636.
Later colonies show other motives. Maryland (1634) was a refuge for Catholics, Pennsylvania (1681) was William Penn's Quaker "holy experiment" with wide religious tolerance, and Georgia received a charter in 1732 and was settled in 1733, partly to serve as a buffer against Spanish Florida. New York began as Dutch New Netherland until England took it in 1664.
Check yourself: If the Puritans came to Massachusetts for religious freedom, why were Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson forced out? (Answer: The Puritans wanted freedom to practice their own faith and enforced it on everyone in the colony, so people who challenged Puritan teaching were banished.)
| Region | Colonies | Economy | Society and labor |
|---|---|---|---|
| New England | Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire | Fishing, shipbuilding, trade, small family farms | Compact towns, town meetings, Puritan churches, high literacy |
| Middle | New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware | Wheat and other grains (the "breadbasket"), trade through Philadelphia and New York City | Most diverse population, wide religious tolerance, family farms with some servants and enslaved people |
| Southern | Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia | Tobacco, rice and indigo grown on plantations for export | Wealthy planter elite and small farmers, with indentured servants and a growing enslaved labor force |
Colonial society was ranked. Wealthy gentry sat at the top, small farmers and artisans in the middle, and servants and enslaved people at the bottom. Voting usually required owning property, so the gentry controlled the assemblies.
The biggest change in this era was the South's labor system. Early Virginia relied on indentured servants, mostly young English men who worked 4-7 years in exchange for passage. The headright system gave 50 acres to whoever paid a migrant's way. Freed servants wanted land of their own, and in 1676 Bacon's Rebellion saw frontier farmers and former servants burn Jamestown. Planters increasingly relied on enslaved Africans for several reasons, including access to the Atlantic slave trade and a declining supply of English servants. Virginia law made slavery lifelong and followed the mother's status, so children born to enslaved women were also enslaved. Laws like Virginia's 1705 slave code reinforced race-based slavery.
Enslaved people resisted by slowing work, running away to Spanish Florida and rebelling. The Stono Rebellion (1739) in South Carolina involved about 100 people and led to even harsher codes.
Women lived under coverture, meaning a married woman's legal identity merged with her husband's. Some still shaped the economy, like Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who developed indigo as a South Carolina cash crop in the 1740s.
The Navigation Acts regulated colonial shipping and trade under mercantilism. For example, certain colonial goods had to be shipped to England or its colonies, and most European imports to the colonies had to pass through England. Enforcement varied and was often loose, a pattern later called salutary neglect.
Check yourself: How did Bacon's Rebellion contribute to the growth of slavery in Virginia? (Answer: The rebellion showed some planters that landless former servants could threaten their power. It may have encouraged planters to rely more on enslaved labor, though other factors also mattered. Enslaved people were generally held for life, but some gained freedom.)
| Feature | Indentured servants | Enslaved Africans |
|---|---|---|
| Length of service | Usually 4-7 years | For life |
| How they arrived | Mostly chose to sign a contract, often poor Europeans | Kidnapped and forced across the Atlantic in the Middle Passage |
| Children | Generally born free when the mother was free | Born enslaved when the mother was enslaved |
| Legal status | Limited rights, could take a master to court | Treated as property under slave codes |
| Trend after 1676 | Declined in the South | Became the main plantation labor force |
The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was the North American part of a global conflict Europeans called the Seven Years' War. The prize was the Ohio River Valley, which linked the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. French traders had forts and Native alliances there, while Virginia land speculators wanted it for settlement.
Fighting began in 1754 when a young George Washington led Virginia militia against the French and then surrendered at Fort Necessity. That same year, delegates at the Albany Congress considered Benjamin Franklin's Albany Plan of Union. No colonial assembly approved the plan, and it was not submitted to every assembly for a vote. Its failure showed the difficulty of getting colonial governments to agree on a union.
France won early on, but after William Pitt took charge of the war effort in 1757, Britain poured in troops and money. General James Wolfe captured Quebec in 1759, and Montreal fell in 1760. The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave Britain Canada, most French land east of the Mississippi, and Florida from Spain. In a separate agreement, France had ceded western Louisiana and New Orleans to Spain.
Winning was expensive. Britain's national debt nearly doubled, to about 130 million pounds. Native nations lost the ability to play France against Britain, and Pontiac's Rebellion broke out in 1763. The Proclamation of 1763 then banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachians, angering colonists who felt they had earned that land. Britain's plan to tax the colonies to cover the debt sets up the next unit.
Check yourself: Britain issued the Proclamation of 1763 to keep peace with Native nations, so why did it make colonists angry? (Answer: Many colonists had fought for the Ohio Valley and expected to settle it, and they saw the ban as Britain blocking land they had earned.)
Two very different movements spread through the colonies in the mid-1700s, and both taught colonists to question authority.
The Great Awakening was a wave of Protestant revivals in the 1730s and 1740s. Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts minister, preached "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in 1741. English evangelist George Whitefield toured from Georgia to New England, and Benjamin Franklin estimated one Philadelphia crowd at 30,000. Revivalists taught that salvation came from a personal, emotional conversion, not from a minister's education. Churches split into New Lights, who backed the revivals, and Old Lights, who opposed them. Baptists and Presbyterians grew, and New Lights founded colleges like Princeton. Whitefield's tours and printed accounts of revivals helped spread religious ideas across colonial regions, although not everyone took part.
The Enlightenment came from Europe and stressed reason, science and natural law. John Locke argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property, and that government rests on the consent of the governed. Montesquieu argued for separating government into branches. Franklin, with his electricity experiments and Poor Richard's Almanack, was the colonies' best-known Enlightenment figure.
The two movements started from opposite places, one from faith and feeling and the other from reason. Even so, both told ordinary people they could judge for themselves, whether about salvation or about government. Colonists would later turn that habit against Parliament.
Check yourself: How could a religious revival and a movement based on reason both push colonists toward resisting Britain? (Answer: Both encouraged ordinary people to trust their own judgment over established authority, whether ministers or kings, and both created ideas and experiences that colonists across regions shared.)
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Joint-stock company | A company funded by many investors who shared the profits and risks of a colonial venture, such as the Virginia Company. |
| Headright system | A Virginia policy that granted 50 acres of land to anyone who paid for a migrant's passage, encouraging the import of servants. |
| Middle Passage | The brutal Atlantic crossing in which enslaved Africans were packed onto ships bound for the Americas, where many died. |
| Mercantilism | The belief that a nation grows rich by exporting more than it imports, with colonies supplying raw materials and buying its goods. |
| Salutary neglect | Britain's loose enforcement of trade laws before 1763, which let colonial assemblies grow used to governing themselves. |
| Stono Rebellion | A 1739 uprising of about 100 enslaved people in South Carolina, the largest in the mainland colonies before the Revolution. |
| Albany Plan of Union | Benjamin Franklin's 1754 proposal for a shared colonial council to coordinate defense and Native relations. No colonial assembly approved it. |
| Proclamation of 1763 | The British order banning colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains after the French and Indian War. |
| Great Awakening | A series of emotional Protestant revivals in the 1730s and 1740s that emphasized personal conversion and challenged established clergy. |
The phrase "came for religious freedom" makes it sound like the Puritans supported tolerance. They wanted freedom to practice their own faith and punished people who disagreed, which is why Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were banished. Tolerance shows up in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, not Massachusetts Bay.
Slavery was legal in all thirteen colonies. It was most central to the Southern plantation economy, but New York City had one of the largest enslaved populations in the colonies, and New England merchants profited from the slave trade. Describe the South as the region most dependent on slavery, not the only place it existed.
The name comes from the British colonial point of view. British colonists were fighting the French and the French's Native allies. Native nations fought on both sides. The Iroquois Confederacy's member nations took different positions, and some Iroquois later allied with Britain.
Some notes list these taxes alongside colonial-era laws, which scrambles cause and effect. The Navigation Acts date to the 1650s-1660s, but the Sugar Act (1764) and Stamp Act (1765) came after the war, as Britain tried to pay off its war debt. Remember the order: the war came first, then debt, then new taxes.