Alpha Book

The social distinctions were equally marked. The northern
colonists were middle-class traders and small farmers, with democratic
town governments, and with an intense pride in education. In the South,
gentlemen of good old English families lived like feudal lords among
their slaves and cultivated manners quite as assiduously as morals. Of
forms of the Christian religion, the Atlantic coast presented a bizarre
mixture. In the main, New England was emphatically Calvinistic and
sternly Puritanical; Virginia, proudly Episcopalian (Anglican); and
Maryland, partly Roman Catholic. Plain-spoken Quakers in Pennsylvania,
Presbyterians and Baptists in New Jersey, and German Lutherans in
Carolina added to the confusion.
Between colonies so radically different in religion, manners, and
industries, there could be at the outset little harmony or cooperation.
It would be hard to arouse them to concerted action, and even harder to
conduct a war. Financial cooperation was impeded by the fact that the
paper money issued by any one colony was not worth much in the others.


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