Chesapeake

Examples of Chesapeake in the following topics:

• Chesapeake Slavery

  • The economy of the Chesapeake region revolved around tobacco and relied heavily on slave labor.
  • The Chesapeake region was composed of Virginia—with Jamestown, its first successful settlement established in 1607—and Maryland.
  • As a result, many Chesapeake farmers turned toward imported African slaves to fulfill their desire for cheap labor.
  • As the demand for Chesapeake cash crops continued to grow, planters began to increasingly invest in the Atlantic slave trade.
  • However, small farmers composed the largest social class in the Chesapeake.

• The War in the Chesapeake

  • The strategic location of the Chesapeake Bay near the U.S. capital made it a prime target for the British.
  • The strategic location of the Chesapeake Bay near America's capital made it a prime target for the British during the War of 1812.
  • On July 4, 1813, Joshua Barney, a Revolutionary War naval hero, convinced the Navy Department to build the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, a squadron of twenty barges to defend the Chesapeake Bay.

• Harassment by Britain

  • The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair was a naval engagement that occurred off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, on June 22, 1807, between the British warship HMS Leopard and the American frigate USS Chesapeake.
  • The USS Chesapeake was caught unprepared, and after a short battle involving broadsides from the HMS Leopard, Commander James Barron surrendered his vessel to the British after firing only one shot.
  • The Chesapeake-Leopard Affair created an uproar among Americans and strident calls for war with Great Britain, but these quickly subsided.
  • However, when British envoys showed no contrition for the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair and delivered proclamations reaffirming impressment, the U.S.
  • The festering crisis of impressment and the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair contributed to the eventual outbreak of the War of 1812 and triggered serious diplomatic tensions that helped turn American public opinion against Britain.

• Settling the Colonial South and the Chesapeake

  • The Chesapeake Bay area included Maryland, first settled in 1634, and Virginia, with Jamestown established in 1607.
  • Prior to colonization, the Native American tribes of the Algonquin, Siouan, Iroquoian linguistic groups inhabited the Chesapeake Bay area .
  • Though indigo and rice were also grown, agriculture in the Chesapeake and Southern Colonies focused on the demand for tobacco.
  • The ease with which it grew turned tobacco into the largest cash crop for the Chesapeake and Southern Colonies.
  • The largest social class in the south and Chesapeake regions was the merchants, vendors, and small farmers of the colonies.

• Early American Slavery

  • During the Revolutionary era, more than half of all African Americans lived in the Chesapeake region (Virginia and Maryland), where they made up more than 50% of the population.
  • In the Chesapeake region, the average slave owner owned one slave.
  • Therefore, slaves in the Chesapeake were often leased to other families and worked in fields or homes of their temporary masters.
  • There was very little commercial farming in the Chesapeake due primarily to the limited growing season.
  • Farms tended to be larger in the lower South than in the Chesapeake, and farmers worked a variety of crops (such as rice, indigo, and tobacco) staggered over the year.

• Origins of the War of 1812

  • The issue came to a head in 1807 when the HMS Leopard, a British warship, fired on a U.S. naval ship, the Chesapeake, off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia.
  • After the Leopard-Chesapeake affair, Jefferson chose what he thought was the best of his limited options and responded to the crisis through economic means.
  • The Leopard-Chesapeake Affair of 1807 heightened British-American tensions when the HMS Leopard fired on and boarded the American warship, USS Chesapeake.

• English Colonies

  • The first successful English colony was Jamestown, established in 1607 near Chesapeake Bay.
  • Unlike most of the Chesapeake or southern colonies, which were established to make a profit, New England colonies tended to be established for religious reasons.The Pilgrims were a small Protestant sect based in England and the Netherlands.
  • Unlike the cash crop-oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region, the Puritan economy was based on the efforts of self-supporting farmsteads who traded only for goods they could not produce themselves.
  • There was a generally higher economic standing and standard of living in New England than in the Chesapeake.
  • The colonial South included the plantation colonies of the Chesapeake region and the lower South.

• Slavery in the Rice Kingdom

  • These backcountry farmers, like their counterparts in the Chesapeake, seldom owned slaves.
  • Rice plantations were larger than their tobacco counterparts in the Chesapeake, and planters expected slaves to cultivate up to five acres of rice a year, in addition to growing their own vegetables to feed themselves and their families.

• Surrender at Yorktown

  • De Grasse sailed from the West Indies and arrived in the Chesapeake Bay in late August 1781.
  • In early September, the British were defeated by de Grasse in the Battle of the Chesapeake and forced to fall back to New York.
  • On September 26, transports with artillery, siege tools, and French infantry and assault troops arrived from the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay, giving Washington command of an army of 7,800 Frenchmen, 3,100 militia, and 8,000 Continentals.

• Poverty in the Colonies

  • For example, in the Chesapeake Bay alone, some 100,000 indentured servants arrived in the 1600s looking for work; most were poor young men in their early twenties.
  • The change in the status of Africans in the Chesapeake to that of slaves occurred in the last decades of the 17h century.
  • Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 helped to catalyze the creation of a system of racial slavery in the Chesapeake colonies.