Colonies of Maryland, the Carolinas, & New Mexico
United States | The Continued Rebellion of Colonial North America
By the late seventeenth century, the English mainland colonies no longer resembled one another. The Chesapeake had been shaped by tobacco, labor scarcity, racial hardening, and frontier violence. But farther south — and farther west — different pressures produced different outcomes. The architecture of sectional America began long before the word “sectionalism” existed.
In 1663, Charles II chartered England’s final mainland slave society. The Carolina grant was awarded to eight wealthy proprietors and encompassed what would become North and South Carolina. Its purpose was both strategic and economic — to serve as a buffer between Spanish Florida and Virginia.
In 1670, settlers established Charles Town. Many of its leading planters had migrated from Barbados, bringing enslaved Africans and plantation discipline with them. The land was converted into rice and indigo plantations — rice cultivated with knowledge carried by Africans familiar with its demands, and indigo valued as a vegetable dye profitable through mercantilist subsidies.
Carolina society became tri-racial: enslaved Africans formed the majority, followed by whites and Native Americans. Planters attempted to enslave defeated Indians but ultimately relied primarily on African labor to cultivate the hot, humid rice fields.
In 1712, a statute declared slavery essentially permanent: “All negros, mulattoes, mestizos, or Indians, which at any time heretofore have been sold… and their children, are hereby made and declared slaves.” Rice plantations depended almost exclusively on an all-male workforce.
Conditions in Carolina resembled those in Barbados — harsh, humid, regimented. Language barriers, close supervision, repression, and enforced subservience limited rebellion, though resistance did occur. In some districts, enslaved Africans outnumbered whites nine to one.
By the eighteenth century, Charles Town emerged as the cultural center of the southern mainland — commercially vibrant, socially elaborate, hosting balls and cotillions with paid symphony orchestras.
Yet violence lurked beneath refinement.
On Good Friday, April 15, 1715, the Yamasee War began when trade officials were murdered in the Yamasee town of Pocotaligo. The killings shocked colonists, for the Yamasee had been considered close allies. The murdered traders had traveled to arrange talks with the Ochese Muskogeans — later known as the Creeks — amid rumors of unrest.
Within days, Yamasee attacks swept plantations near Port Royal, killing over one hundred colonists and forcing others to flee. Reports soon revealed that English traders throughout the southeastern interior had been killed or expelled.
Abuse by traders, mounting debts, fear of enslavement, encroachment on treaty-protected lands, and diplomatic breakdown fueled the uprising. Though household ownership of Indian slaves in South Carolina had stood at twenty-six percent in 1714, it declined to two percent by 1730.
North Carolina differed markedly from its southern neighbor. In 1729, the Carolinas fractured into two separate colonies. The northern region was economically and geographically isolated. It developed more slowly, with small farming communities often at odds with South Carolina’s plantation aristocracy. North Carolina’s economy was centered on tobacco and absorbed cultural influence from Pennsylvania. German immigrants sought land to farm and markets for wood, leather, and iron handicrafts. Scots-Irish frontiersmen, restless and often unwelcome in more established societies, pushed into the Appalachian foothills.
While the Carolinas developed along divergent lines, Maryland charted a distinct path.
George Calvert received a grant from Charles I despite converting to Catholicism in 1625. Though he had previously attempted to establish a colony in Newfoundland unsuccessfully, his personal standing with the king remained strong. Upon his death in 1632, his son Cecilius Calvert inherited a vast proprietary grant stretching from the Potomac River to the Atlantic Ocean.
Unlike Virginia, Maryland did not operate under a joint stock company. Calvert ruled as rex in absentia — king in absence — so long as he remained within English law. In 1634, roughly 300 settlers established St. Mary’s. Many remained long-term, and fewer were adventurers.
Catholics had endured severe persecution in England. The Toleration Act of 1649 permitted any Christian faith in Maryland. Lord Baltimore anticipated an influx of Catholics. They did not come in large numbers. Instead, Maryland attracted a mix of Protestants and persecuted Puritans. Jesuit missionaries worked to convert settlers, antagonizing the Protestant majority. Religious toleration did not eliminate conflict; it often intensified it.
Like Virginia, Maryland faced labor shortages. Planters initially relied on indentured servants and gradually turned toward African slavery by the late seventeenth century. Large estates emerged. Over time, Maryland came to resemble Virginia in social and economic terms.
Farther north, a different pattern unfolded.
In 1603, French colonization advanced through private trading companies. Traders established Port Royal in Acadia and sent expeditions as far south as Cape Cod. The fur trade dictated French priorities. Founded in 1608 under Samuel de Champlain, Quebec anchored New France. French traders valued cooperation with Native peoples over dense settlement. Few French migrants arrived permanently. When France criminalized Protestantism in 1685, Huguenots sought emigration, but non-Catholics were barred from New France.
Spanish efforts in the Southwest predated both French and English permanence.
From 1595 to 1613, Juan de Oñate sought wealth in New Mexico and the Great Plains. On June 23, 1601, pursuing the myth of Quivira, he followed the Canadian River across the Texas Panhandle into Kansas. The settlements proved disappointing. Meanwhile, conditions in New Mexico deteriorated — poor land, Indian resistance, absence of silver. The colony was largely abandoned except by Oñate’s most devoted followers.
In 1606, King Philip III ordered Oñate to Mexico City pending investigation of allegations against him. Unaware of the summons, Oñate resigned in 1607 due to financial difficulties and the colony’s struggles. He remained long enough to see Santa Fe established. In 1613, he faced charges of excessive force during the Acoma rebellion — accused of hanging two Indians, executing mutineers and deserters, and adultery. He was fined and banished from New Mexico permanently, and from Mexico City for four years. Eventually, he traveled to Spain, received an appointment as mining inspector, and died around June 3, 1626.
Spanish colonization in New Mexico ushered in what later would be called the “Golden Age” of the Missions. In 1598, Spaniards arrived at the Tewa settlement of Ohkay and quickly constructed churches. Franciscan friars expanded missions throughout the seventeenth century.
Yet beneath mission walls, resentment grew.
Revolts such as the Acoma uprising of 1599 reflected frustration with Spanish rule — destruction of native traditions, forced labor, dismantling of kivas, and sexual abuse. Many planned uprisings were discovered and brutally suppressed.
By the 1670s, drought and famine intensified anxiety. Apache raids weakened communities. In 1675, forty-seven Pueblo religious leaders were convicted of sorcery and plotting rebellion. Four were hanged. The others were whipped and released. Among them was Popay — also known as Popé — of San Juan Pueblo.
Popay organized a coordinated uprising.
In 1680, the Pueblo Revolt erupted. The Spanish, numbering no more than 3,000 across scattered settlements, were driven from much of New Mexico. Missions were destroyed. For a time, indigenous resistance succeeded where earlier revolts had failed.
Across the mainland, patterns diverged.
The South hardened around plantation slavery and export agriculture. The Chesapeake evolved from fluid servitude into racial slavery codified by law. The Carolinas institutionalized a slave majority. Maryland experimented with toleration before converging with Virginia. The Southwest oscillated between missionary aspiration and violent suppression. The French prioritized trade alliances over settlement density.
These differences were not incidental. They were structural. Land, labor, religion, imperial rivalry, Native diplomacy, climate, crop choice — each shaped a distinct colonial society. Long before independence, long before sectional crisis, the mainland colonies were becoming something more than English outposts.
They were becoming regions. And regions, once formed, do not easily forget how they were made.
Bibliography | Notes
Foner, Eric, and John A. Garraty, eds. The Reader’s Companion to American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1991.
Founding of Port Royal (1603) and Quebec (1608).
Locke, Joseph L., and Ben Wright, eds. The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook. Vol. 1, To 1877. January 2019.
Oñate proceedings, 1606–1613.
Ramsey, Survey of South Carolina wills, 2001.
Records of the Pueblo Revolt, 1680.
Roark, James L., Michael P. Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, and Susan M. Hartmann. The American Promise, Value Edition, Volume 1: To 1877. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014.
Schweikart, Larry, and Michael Allen. A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror. New York: Sentinel, 2004.
South Carolina Statute, 1712.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.Charter of Carolina, 1663.