Today we discussed the economies and industry relied upon by the New England, Middle and Southern colonies. For instance, there was agriculture in all 13 colonies. But because New England and the Middle colonies had shorter growing seasons due to longer winters, they relied on subsistence farming and had to diversify their economies. Whereas the Southern colonies, with warmer weather and four very in demand cash crops: cotton, rice, tobacco and indigo relied almost completely on agriculture to support and propel their economies. Colonies further north had to diversify with things sch as ship building, grain & iron mills, lumber, crafts made and sold for trade, and fishing. NY, Philadelphia and Boston are growing into, successful and populous port cities. We then turned to the European reliance on triangular trade: a route that formed a geographic triangular trade route between Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and N. America. The items traded in this route were: sugar & molasses from the Caribbean to the colonies. These items were made into rum. The rum and other goods were then shipped to Africa and tragically traded in exchange for human beings who became enslaved, taken from their homes into a life of inhumane slavery throughout the Caribbean and throughout the 13 colonies. We discussed the horrors of how these human beings voyaged to their enslaved destinations, packed like cargo into slave ships, a vast % of these captives died en route to their destinations on this horrific journey history has come to call the Middle Passage. Life was harshest for enslaved people in the southern colonies in the cultivation of huge cash crops: Tobacco, rice, cotton and indigo. Slaves lived in quarters on large southern plantations and suffered greatly at the hands of brutal plantation overseers. The Southern colonies enforced slave codes that made it illegal for slaves to leave the plantations, to be taught to read & write. Slaves also suffered unspeakable physical violence and murder at the hands of their captors. And yet, slaves maintained strong family ties - although many families were torn apart. They held strong to their African traditions and homelands. The majority of white Southerners were not slaveholders, but slavery played a key role in the economic success of the Southern colonies. But that success was built on the idea that one human being could hold another. Although slavery was initially practiced in all 13 colonies, Puritans and Quakers refused to enslave people.