Individualism

• Perhaps the biggest cultural difference between the American colonies and their European mother countries is the sense of individualism. In Europe, people were lumped into groups, ethnic, religious or regional. No matter where a person went, they were branded as being a part of that group. Many Europeans escaped to the American Colonies to flee persecution. The colonists took the view that a man should be judged by his actions, rather than his origins. Unfortunately this freedom was not extended to African slaves.
  
  

Religious Tolerance

• For the time, the American Colonies were religiously tolerant. Protestants and Catholics mixed together and even intermarried. The Jewish population was not subject to discriminatory laws. This tolerance may not seem like much, but in Europe at the time, a person's faith could restrict where they worked or even lived. However this tolerance did not extend to the Native Americans, whom the settlers tried to convert constantly.
  
  

Protestant Work Ethic

• The majority of settlers in Colonial America were Protestant and they believed in the Protestant work ethic. Basically, Protestants believed that they honored God by working hard and improving their lives. They did not believe in merely praying for relief. To the Protestants, America was a gift from God, an untapped wilderness there for the taking. Even the non-Protestants embodied this belief in America because hard work was the only way to get ahead in the colonies.
  
  

Slavery

• Unfortunately, Colonial America accepted the institution of slavery. There were abolitionists but economic realities kept them sidelined. Many early colonists had come to America as indentured servants. Indentured service was a form of slavery to pay for the settler's passage to America. Additionally, the southern colonies could not do without slavery because of the large labor demands of the plantation farms.