Southern United States
European colonization

The arrival of European settlers caused a massive population decline in Native Americans, due to Europeans unknowingly spreading diseases that the natives had no immunities towards, numerous violent conflicts, and forcibly relocating them.

The predominant culture of the original Southern states was English. In the 17th century, most voluntary immigrants were of English origin and settled chiefly along the eastern coast but had pushed as far inland as the Appalachian Mountains by the 18th century. The majority of early English settlers were indentured servants, who gained freedom after working off their passage. The wealthier men, typically members of the English landed gentry, who paid their way received land grants known as headrights to encourage settlement.

The Spanish and French established settlements in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. The Spanish settled Florida in the 16th century, reaching a peak in the late 17th century, but the population was small because the Spaniards were relatively uninterested in agriculture, and Florida had no mineral resources.

There were regional differences in the Southern colonies, with the three main regions of Tidewater, the Deep South, and Appalachia. The first region to be settled was Tidewater, containing the low-lying plains of southeast Virginia, northeastern North Carolina, southern Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay. The next region to be settled was the Deep South, beginning in Province of Carolina and later the Province of Georgia. The last region to be settled was Appalachia, also settled by the Scotch-Irish.

King Charles II of England granted the Charter of Carolina in 1663 for land south of the British Colony of Virginia and north of Spanish Florida. He granted the land to eight lords proprietor. Charles granted the land in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660. The granted lands included all or part of the present-day U.S. states of North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.

In the British colonies, immigration began in 1607 and continued until the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775. Settlers cleared land, built houses and outbuildings, and on their own farms. The Southern rich owned large plantations that dominated export agriculture and used slaves. Many were involved in the labor-intensive cultivation of tobacco, the first cash crop of Virginia. Tobacco exhausted the soil quickly, requiring that farmers regularly clear new fields. They used old fields as pasture, and for crops such as corn wheat, or allowed them to grow into woodlots.

The Barbados Slave Code served as the basis for the slave codes adopted in the British American colonies, including Carolina, Georgia, and Antigua. In other colonies where the codes are not an exact copy, such as Virginia and Maryland, the influence of the Barbados Slave Code can be traced throughout various provisions.

In the mid-to-late-18th century, large groups of Ulster Scots (later called the Scotch-Irish) and people from the Anglo-Scottish border region immigrated and settled in the back country of Appalachia and the Piedmont. They were the largest group of non-English immigrants from the British Isles before the American Revolution. In the 1980 census, 34% of Southerners reported that they were of English ancestry; English was the largest reported European ancestry in every Southern state by a large margin.

The early colonists engaged in warfare, trade, and cultural exchanges. Those living in the backcountry were more likely to encounter Creek Indians, Cherokee, and Choctaws and other regional native groups.

The oldest university in the South, the College of William & Mary, was founded in 1693 in Virginia; it pioneered in the teaching of political economy and educated future U.S. Presidents Jefferson, Monroe and Tyler, all from Virginia. Indeed, the entire region dominated politics in the First Party System era: for example, four of the first five presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe – were from Virginia. The two oldest public universities are also in the South: the University of North Carolina (1789) and the University of Georgia (1785).
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