The Virginia Colony’s economy relied heavily on the mass production of tobacco. Tobacco changed their way of life forever. Before the incredible introduction of tobacco, Virginia was mostly a series of small farms and communities packed together like sardines. After tobacco was introduced in 1612, Virginia quickly grew into a sprawling colony with huge farms and enormous plantations. Growing tobacco worked so well, in fact, that many traditional farmers switched and joined the upheaval of people who realized that tobacco was the future of Virginia. What many people did not realize was how labor intensive growing tobacco is. Most, if not all, people who grew tobacco relied on slaves for help. The slave market was not very big in Virginia, and slave traders were not prepared for the sudden demand in slaves. The traders received more requests for slaves than they had available, which created a brief crisis in the labor market. Virginia never settled down again because tobacco could only grow in one spot for three years before the soil ran out of nutrients. Even though the colony kept growing and changing, one thing was for certain: Virginia was never be the same again.
The main reason settlers came to the Virginia colony was for economic opportunities. In the colony's first settlement, Jamestown, the first real way of making money was farming tobacco. Although rural Virginian tobacco was of very poor quality a later colonist brought Spanish tobacco which grew like weeds in the Virginian soil. The demand for tobacco spread like wildfire and it soon became Virginia's main export. As the colony began to expand, economic growth was hampered by conflict with Algonquin native Americans. The colonist sustained horrible and bloody massacres at the hands of the natives but finally emerged victorious. As the colony had more room to grow, wealthy colonists established large plantations which could produce much more and were far more profitable than small farms. Slaves were crucial to these plantations and most had from 20 to 100 slaves. The colonies’ imports included manufactured goods from England, such as molasses and sugar cane, and they came from the West Indies. Also, all slaves came from Africa. Their exports included rum, guns, gunpowder, cloth, and most importantly tobacco. Virginia's Economy was so successful that it prompted the English government to set up other colonies in America.
The Successes of Reconstruction. President Lincoln's original goal in the Civil War was to hold the nation together. And in this, the war and Reconstruction were a success. The Confederacy was destroyed for good, and every state that had seceded was readmitted to the Union.
