A Brief History of the United States. John Bach McMaster
Delaware had come out as governor under a new charter granted to the London Company in 1609. This is of interest because it gave to the colony an immense domain of which we shall hear more after Virginia became a state. This domain extended from Point Comfort, two hundred miles up and two hundred miles down the coast, and then "up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest."
After the meeting between the departing settlers and the newcomers under Delaware, the whole band returned to Jamestown and began once more the struggle for existence.
PROSPERITY BEGINS.—Delaware, who soon went back to England, left Sir Thomas Dale in command, and under him the colony began to prosper. Hitherto the colonists had lived as communists. The company owned all the land, and whatever food was raised was put into the public granary to be divided among the settlers, share and share alike. Dale changed this system, and the old planters were given land to cultivate for themselves. The effect was magical. Men who were lazy when toiling as servants of the company, become industrious when laboring for themselves, and prosperity began in earnest.
More settlers soon arrived with a number of cows, goats, and oxen, and the little colony began to expand. When Dale's term as acting governor ended in 1616, Virginia contained six little settlements besides Jamestown. The next governor, Yeardley, introduced the cultivation of tobacco, which was now much used in Europe and commanded a high price.
[Illustration: VIRGINIA (from 1609 to 1624).]
THE FIRST REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY.—Yeardley was succeeded (1617) by Argall, who for two years ruled Virginia with a rod of iron. So harsh was his rule that the company was forced to recall him and send back Yeardley. Yeardley came with instructions to summon a general assembly, and in July, 1619, the first legislative body in America met in the little church at Jamestown; eleven boroughs were represented. Each sent two burgesses, as they were called, and these twenty-two men made the first House of Burgesses, and had power to enact laws for the colony. [6]
SLAVERY INTRODUCED.—Another event which makes 1619 a memorable year in our history was the arrival at Jamestown of a Dutch ship with a cargo of African negroes for sale. Twenty were bought, and the institution of negro slavery was planted in Virginia. This seemed quite proper, for there were then in the colony many white slaves, or bond servants—men bound to service for a term of years. The difference between one of these and an African negro slave was that the white man served for a short time, and the negro during his life. [7]
A CARGO OF MAIDS.—Yet another event which makes 1619 a notable year in Virginian history was the arrival of a ship with ninety young women sent out by the company to become wives of the settlers. The early comers to Virginia had been "adventurers," that is, men seeking to better their fortunes, not intending to live and die in Virginia, but hoping to return to England in a few years rich, or at least prosperous. That the colony with such a shifting population could not prosper was certain. Virginia needed homes. The mass of the settlers were unmarried, and the company very wisely determined to supply them with wives. The ninety young women sent over in 1619, and others sent later, were free to choose their own husbands: but each man, on marrying one of them, had to pay one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco for her passage to Virginia.
[Illustration: THE MAIDS ARRIVE IN VIRGINIA.]
THE CHARTER TAKEN AWAY.—For Virginia the future now looked bright. Her tobacco found ready sale in England at a large profit. The right to make her own laws gave promise of good government. The founding of home ties could not fail to produce increased energy on the part of the settlers. But trouble was brewing for the London Company. The king was quarreling with a part of his people, and the company was in the hands of his opponents. Looking upon it as a "seminary of sedition," King James secured (1624) the destruction of the charter, and Virginia became a royal province. [8]
STATE OF THE COLONY IN 1624.—The colony of Virginia when deprived of its charter was a little community of some four thousand souls, scattered in plantations on and near the James River. Let us go back to those times and visit one of the plantations. The home of the planter is a wooden house with rough-hewn beams and unplaned boards, surrounded by a high stockade. Near by are the farm buildings and the cabins of his bond servants. His books, his furniture, his clothing and that of his family, have all come from England. So also have the farming implements and very likely the greater part of his cows and pigs. On his land are fields of wheat and barley and Indian corn; but the chief crop is tobacco. [9]
EFFECTS OF TOBACCO PLANTING.—As time passed and the Virginians found that the tobacco always brought a good price in England, they made it more and more the chief crop. This powerfully affected the whole character of the colony. It drew to Virginia a better class of settlers, who came over to grow rich as planters. It led the people to live almost exclusively on plantations, and prevented the growth of large towns. Tobacco became the currency of the colony, and salaries, wages, and debts were paid, and taxes levied, and wealth and income estimated, in pounds of tobacco.
FEW ROADS IN VIRGINIA.—As there were few towns, [10] so there were few roads. The great plantations lay along the river banks. It was easy, therefore, for a planter to go on visits of business or pleasure in a sailboat or in a barge rowed by his servants. The fine rivers and the location of the plantations along their banks enabled each planter to have his own wharf, to which came ships from England laden with tables, chairs, cutlery, tools, rich silks, and cloth, everything the planter needed for his house, his family, his servants, and his plantation, all to be paid for with casks of tobacco.
[Illustration: FOUNDATIONS AT JAMESTOWN.]
GOVERNOR BERKELEY.—Despite the change from rule by the company to rule by the king, Virginia grew and prospered. When Sir William Berkeley came over as governor (in 1642), her English population was nearly fifteen thousand and her slaves three hundred, and many of her planters were men of much wealth. Berkeley's first term as governor (1642–1652) covered the period of the Civil War in England.
CIVIL WAR IN ENGLAND.—When King James died (in 1625) he was succeeded by Charles I, under whom the old quarrel between the king and the people, which had caused the downfall of the London Company, was pushed into civil war. In 1642 Charles I took the field, raised the royal standard, and called all loyal subjects to its defense. The Parliament of England likewise raised an army, and after varying fortunes the king was defeated, captured, tried for high treason, found guilty, and beheaded (1649). England then became a republic, called the Commonwealth.
THE CAVALIERS.—While the Civil War was raging in England, Virginia (largely because of the influence of Governor Berkeley) remained loyal to the king. As the war went on and the defeats of the royal army were followed by the capture of the king, numbers of his friends, the Cavaliers, fled to Virginia. After Charles I was beheaded, more than three hundred of the nobility, gentry, and clergy of England came over in one year. No wonder, then, that the General Assembly recognized the dead king's son as King Charles II, and made it treason to doubt his right to the throne. Because of this support of the royal cause, Parliament punished Virginia by cutting off her trade, and ordered that steps be taken to reduce her to submission. A fleet was accordingly dispatched, reached Virginia early in 1652, and forced Berkeley to hand over the government to three Parliamentary commissioners. One of them was then elected governor, and Virginia had almost complete self-government till 1660, when England again became a kingdom, under Charles II.
MARYLAND, THE FIRST PROPRIETARY COLONY.—When Virginia became crown property (1624), the king could do with it what he pleased. King Charles I accordingly cut off a piece and gave it to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore. [11] This Lord Baltimore was a Catholic who had tried in vain to found a settlement in Newfoundland. He died before the patent, or deed, was drawn for the land cut off from Virginia, so (1632) it was issued to his son Cecilius, the second Lord Baltimore. The province lay north of the Potomac River and was called Maryland.
[Illustration: MARYLAND BY THE ORIGINAL PATENT.]
By the terms of the grant Lord Baltimore was to pay the king each year two arrowheads in token of homage, and as rent was to give the king one fifth of all the gold and silver mined. This done, he was proprietor of Maryland. He might coin money, grant titles, make war and peace, establish courts, appoint judges, and pardon criminals. But he was not allowed