From the moment the first European settlers set foot on the North American continent, they endeavored to find the optimum balance between the real and the ideal, the present and the timeless. They strived for property and implemented a tradition of
settlement that was both urban and military. However, there were two cultural streams that shaped the nature of the towns and the character of the people. The first flowered through the Northern part of the vast area on the Eastern seaboard granted to the Virginia Company. The first east crop was tobacco. Its cultivation required a great deal of labor and thus the planters turned to Negro slaves who arrived from Africa, accelerating the trend toward large-scale plantations. Each year the planters brought their crops to "posts", small settlements at the heads of the numerous creeks, inlets and bays that formed natural harbors along the coastline.
The early society of Virginia was often considered primitive and lawless for the lack of fixed settlement. The plantations were self-sufficient economic units, with their own stores the smaller farmers formed a loose society of neighbors, who lived far from one another yet close enough for practicing some specialized trade. Law was dispensed at country courthouses located centrally in the countryside and standing in isolation.
In contrast, the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the North boasted more than one hundred towns by the year 1717. The answer to such drastic differences may be found in the usual determinants of geography and economics as well as in the background of the colonists. The Pilgrims and Puritans had been subjected to state persecution, which turned them into tight little bands of believers. They regarded town and congregation as coterminous. Godly people, they believed, must live under the constant surveillance of their neighbors if they were to stay godly. The town meetings became the basis for the politics. They were truly independent even though the colonial legislatures at least nominally answered to a British governor. The significance of town meetings would become clear by the mid 1770s when they were filled with voices of rebellion and the first seeds of democracy started to grow.
The process of town founding by a congregation was institutionalized in colony law. A group of people could establish a town by drawing up a convent, applying for a land grant and settling on it. The land was divided with the largest tracks given to the biggest or richest families. As in England, each new village was a paralleled row of houses along a single street with long narrow fields extending out behind them. In ideal it was a peaceful and orderly place. However, the reality was less robust. Living in such close proximity to one's neighbors and subjected to their censorious reports, many villages caused tensions and spites. Theological disputes frequently broke out that divided the congregation into opposing groups, or a faction might form in protest against the minister's interpretation of scripture. Another source of quarrels was land, which in a few generations was divided in smaller and smaller strips. This created population pressure and the inevitable result was that the younger generation moved away. Thus, contrary to the Puritan ideal of small compact villages in which a succession of generation lined their lives, individuals and families moved away, often in groups.
Looking at American urbanization from the territorial point of view, one can notice that the first two centuries were dominated by the process of frontier urbanization. The End colonies produced staples for international trade and the small towns and Atlantic ports grew as agents for that trade.