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MODULE 2.3a The Regions of British Colonies 73

II, was exiled from England. Cromwell, who cemented his position of power as Lord Pro-
tector of the Commonwealth of England in 1653, was less accepting of Catholics than
These sample pages are distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
the king had been.
Thus, the Act of Religious Toleration was repealed in 1654, only five years after its
initial passage. With aid from Maryland’s Protestant colonists, new colonial governors
appointed by Cromwell’s Parliament then passed a new law prohibiting the open practice
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
of Catholicism. However, the tide began to turn against Cromwell’s rule as the decade
wore on, and Calvert negotiated a return to his position as governor of Maryland. In
1657, the Act of Religious Toleration was again passed by the colonial assembly.
Strictly for use with its products. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION.
Over the course of the next sixty years, however, the act would be contested multi-
ple times, and Catholics were eventually barred from voting in 1718. Despite the many
challenges to its legitimacy, the Act of Religious Toleration set an important early prece-
dent of religious freedom on the North American continent.

REVIEW

■ How did religious conflict in Europe shape Maryland’s shifting policies
on religious tolerance?

Tobacco Economies, Class Rebellion,
and the Emergence of Slavery

Throughout the seventeenth century, cash crops shaped the economies and societies of the
southern colonies. When the English monarchy was restored to Charles II (reigned 1660–
1685) in 1660, he established eight English noblemen as the leaders of a Carolina colony,
a colony to the south of Virginia along the Atlantic coast. The northern region of the Car-
olina colony, in present-day North Carolina, came to rely on plantations focused mainly on
producing tobacco. Thus, the new colony functioned in much the same way as the Ches-
apeake colonies. Although the political leaders of Carolina hoped to recreate a system of
feudal manors in North America, they faced a labor shortage, as few migrants wished to
brave the risks merely to remain peasants working the lands of different lords. The farmers
and laborers who did migrate to northern Carolina would eventually rise up and force the
ruling class to offer land at reasonable prices and a semblance of self-government.
Before 1650, neither the Chesapeake colonies nor northern Carolina had yet devel-
oped a legal code of slavery, but from that point on, legal matters began to change.
Improved economic conditions in England meant fewer people were willing to gamble on
a better life in North America, and as fewer people were arrested for crimes and vagrancy,
the population of convicts who could be bought from English prisons dwindled.
To compensate for the shortage of white indentured servants, landowners in the
Chesapeake and northern Carolina colonies increasingly came to rely on the labor of
enslaved Africans to continue to produce the tobacco that generated wealth and fueled
colonial growth. Thus, even though the number of enslaved African laborers remained slave code
small until late in the century, colonial leaders already began to take steps to increase A law restricting enslaved
their control over the African population. In 1660, the House of Burgesses passed an persons’ rights, largely due
act that allowed Black laborers to be enslaved and, in 1662, defined slavery as an inher- to slaveholders’ fears of
ited status passed from mothers to children. In 1664, Maryland followed suit. In 1695, rebellion. Slave codes also
the Carolina colony, not yet divided into North and South Carolina, adopted a formal defined slavery as a distinct
slave code that was based on Virginia’s laws. status based on racial
identity, which passed that
While enslaved Africans became, in time, a crucial component of the tobacco labor status on through future
force, indentured servants still continued to make up the majority of bound workers generations.

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