Instead of thirteen units, as we usually regard the thirteen colonies, there were three units differing in economic and political ideals. The coastal plains extending from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania constituted one, which was dominated by commercial interests. The second was the tidewater section from Maryland to Georgia, which was primarily agricultural and was dominated by the planters. The third unit or section was the frontier with extreme ideas about political democracy. The first unit was commercial and interested in trade and shipbuilding. Great mercantile families had grown up there accumulating their wealth largely through smuggling with the West Indies. To them the navigation laws were especially offensive. Their chief desire was to restore the commercial conditions before 1763, yet they bitterly opposed a withdrawal from the British Empire, for they wanted its protection. They dominated Boston, Newport, New York, and Philadelphia. They were Whig in opposing trade restrictions, but Tory in opposing separation. They had no sympathy with the political radicalism of Jefferson, Henry, and such leaders. The second region was the tidewater region of the South. It was dominated by the planters, many of whom were heavily in debt to British creditors. They secured the passage of lax bankruptcy laws detrimental to non-resident creditors. These laws, however, were vetoed by the king as were the laws providing for colonial bills of credit. These planters felt themselves aristocrats. Although they opposed British financial policy, they likewise objected to the democracy of Jefferson. The third section was the frontier. This section had often been discriminated against by the older sections in matters of representation in the colonial assemblies, administration of justice, and taxation. Its inhabitants were zealous for popular rights and had no economic interests to the contrary. In domestic politics they were out of harmony with the commercial and planter sections. Their zeal for imaginary "rights of man" gave great impetus to the movement for independence. Henry and Jefferson were the leaders of this section and their point of view prevailed when the Declaration of Independence was written, the ideas of which were shocking to the other sections. These three sections reacted differently to the various British Acts. In Georgia, the frontier people were pro-British because they were dependent upon Great Britain for subsidies and protection from the Indians. The frontier people of North Carolina were also Tory because they had a sharp difference with the eastern part of the state. Had the frontier of all the colonies had a similar sharp difference with the coastal plains they would no doubt have been Tory and defeated the Revolution. The frontier of Virginia got possession of the state and furnished such leaders as Henry and Jefferson.