Section 2 Chapter 4 Summary
In the chapter, “Living In a State of Nature,” Richard Goobeer talks about sex, marriage, and
Southern Degenerates. Many migrants during the early 1600s, often abandoned their legal spouses and began entering adulterous relationships or bigamous marriages once settled in the
Carolina’s. Polygamy was becoming more and more evident and it was very common for both men and women to tease each other sexually by altering their clothes or doing anything provocative. Unmarried, serial, and bigamous relationships occurred in all of the North American colonies, but this was extremely evident in British America, due to a lack of obedience of white settlers towards the ministries. Many settlers at this time did not care about sexual or marital codes or protocol, and the lack of institutions, made it difficult for clerical reformers to fix the problem of adultery. In 1607, migrants came to Virginia and men began to outnumber women by a ratio of 6 to 1. Because of this, men were not able to find wives and this in turn, caused men to turn on each other for sex, and/or formed controversial relationships with women. An example of this comes from New Englander, Nicholas Sension. “[He] preyed upon young males in his employ, so southern men may well have sought to exploit their authority over male servants for purposes of sexual gratification” (138). This event caused much controversy because his punishment resulted in him being executed by hanging. Not all government officials tried to really solve this problem, as they were sometimes corrupt as well. The interweaving of sex “with cultural allegiance played, then, a crucial role in shaping perceptions of sexual and marital diversity within white communities” (168). This would later cause bedeviled interracial relations in British America.