Us History Online

https://www.scseagrant.org/carolinas-gold-coast-the-culture-of-rice-and-slavery/ This article talks about the Southern States and how they wanted to  established a feudal society in their land grant. It talks about how t hey kept huge landed estates for themselves, and, with the assistance of the English philosopher John Locke, drew up a plan, known as the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which would have given them the power of feudal lords. The scheme called for a three-tiered hereditary nobility consisting of proprietors, land graves, and caciques who would own forty percent of the colony's land and serve as a Council of Lords and recommend all laws to a parliament elected by small landowners. But like other feudal visions, this one failed. South Carolina's settlers rejected virtually all of this plan and immigrants refused to move to the region until it was replaced by a more democratic system of government.  Emigrants from Barbados played a decisive role in Sou...

This reading talks about when the English people begin to colonize in North America and what they did once they got here.  During the early and mid-sixteenth century, the English tended to conceive of North America as a base for piracy and harassment of the Spanish. But by the end of the century, the English began to think more seriously about North America as a place to colonize: as a market for English goods and a source of raw materials and commodities such as furs. English promoters claimed that New World colonization offered England many advantages. Not only would it serve as a bulwark against Catholic Spain, it would supply England with raw materials and provide a market for finished products. America would also provide a place to send the English poor and ensure that they would contribute to the nation's wealth.  During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the English poor increased rapidly in number. As a result of the enclosure of traditional common lan...