Out of the nine Colonial Colleges, eight were located in the Northern United States. William & Mary was founded in 1693, and despite being the second-oldest in America after Harvard, was the only college in the South for nearly a century, with no other institutions being founded until the 1780s. In the North, however, after the founding of Princeton in 1746, a new college would show up every few years or so. What led to this massive difference between the North and South? Why did it take so long for another college to appear in the South? Did the North just care more about education?
I don’t think it’s fair to say the north cared more about education, the answer is in population density and makeup. During the colonial era, cities grew more in the north as the south developed as an agricultural and slave based economy... it had lots of land but a significantly smaller population of people more likely to attend college. As per the National Humanities Center, the population of British colonies doubled every twenty-five years. In 1700 the population of British colonies was only 260,000 but by 1770 it had grown 2,150,000. That’s a lot of growth! So we have to look at where populations were between those times.
The governor of New York ordered a census in 1698 and it shows the population of New York City as 4,237 whites (I use white population here because they are the likely college students at this time). By 1771 it was 18,726. In Boston, the 1700 population was estimated 6,700 and in 1780 it had grown to an estimated 16,000.
After William & Mary, the next southern university/college formed was in Charleston in 1770. The first British colonists arrived in “Charles Town” in 1670, but the city wasn’t even incorporated until 1781. According to the Charleston County Public Library, “For the entire colonial era, Charles Town was nothing more than an unincorporated market town with no independent system of municipal government... the settlers established courts in Charles Town only and spent the rest of their energies developing rural plantations in the pursuit of personal profit.” The development of an institute of higher learning would be unlikely, in my opinion, to be worth it given the relatively small, spread out white population. It was the fifth largest city in North American just 10 years after original British settlement, but its economy was heavily based on slave trade. The city’s wealth was mainly in plantation land, slaves, cand the slave traders themselves. In 1770 the population was 11,000 but half of that was slaves. The wealthy, white, male, college eligible population would have been significantly smaller.
This is not to say that southern plantation owners and their families were not college educated. For example, Drayton Hall near Charleston was owned by Charles Drayton. His son was educated at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He took over the running of the plantation in 1784. In 1788 the son of Elizabeth and Zekediah Stone, David, graduated from what is now Princeton. The family owned Hope Plantation in North Carolina. Young men looking for a college education went away to college- as many young people today do.
So to sum up: the northern colonies had more white people and a greater population density in cities, and the southern colonies became British later (remember Spanish Florida) with population more spread out over plantations and a majority black, slave population who obviously did not need a college education.
Sources: Population History of New York by Ira Rosenwaike
Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston Since 1630 by Lawrence W Kennedy
SCIWAY.net (South Carolina Information Highway)
CCPL.org
Draytonhall.org
Hopeplantation.org