Virginia; a history of the people

Front matter

iJcLjr u

B

s

Contents

I. THE PLANTATION.

PAGE

I. The Good Land 1

II. The Times

The Virginia " plantation," as the old writers called it, began at a remarkable period. The year 1600 may be taken as the dividing line between two eras — the point of departure of a new generation on the untried journey into the future.

Europe had just passed through the great convulsion of the Reformation, and this with the invention of printing had suddenly changed the face of the world. It is difficult to speak of this change without apparent exaggeration. The dissemination of the Bible in the vulgar tongue was followed by astonishing results. The unlearned could search the Scriptures for their rule of conduct without the intervention of a priesthood, and an upheaval of the human mind followed. A mysterious voice had awakened the sleepers, and they had started

THE TIMES. 9

tip, shaking off the old fetters. The lethargy of ages had disappeared. Thought, so long paralyzed by dogma, roved in every direction, moving nimbly and joyfully where it had groped and stumbled before in the thick darkness. The nations of Europe were like blind men who have suddenly been made to see. Daring aspirations took possession of them, and the new ideas of the new age crowded into every mind, hurrying and jostling each other. In our old and prosaic world it is difficult to realize the youth and enthusiasm of that time. Authority had lost its prestige, and serfdom to prejudices social or religious had disappeared. The priest muttering his prayers in Latin was no longer the keeper of men's consciences ; and the prerogative of the King and the privilege of the noble began to be regarded 1 as superstitions. That hitherto unknown quantity, the People, all at once revealed its existence, and those who for centuries had allowed others to think for them began to think for themselves.

All this had come with the new century which gummed up and inherited the results of that which had preceded it. Beginning at Wittenberg with the protest of Luther, the Reformation had swept through the Continent and extended to England and Scotland, where its fury was greatest and lasted longest. It ragec! there during the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth, and only died down at her death, when the \ong work was at last accomplished, and Protestantism was firmly established.

The free thought of the time in England, as everywhere, had resulted from reaction and the immense influence of printed books. But books were not all. Bacon, the author of the inductive philosophy, had published his " Advancement of Learning," and Spenser, the perfect flower of the Renaissance, his " Faery Queen ; " but volumes of abstruse thought and refined poesy were for the few. The people at large were compelled to look elsewhere, and to educate their minds by other appliances than costly folios which were beyond their reach. The acted drama precisely supplied this popular want, and became the educator of the people. The time had come for Shakespeare and his brother dramatists ; and suddenly the epoch flowered in the great names which have made the age of Elizabeth so illustrious. A race of giants appeared, whose works were the expression of the times. All the characteristics of the generation were summed up in these dramas

— the unreined fancy, the wild imagination, the revolt against the conventional, the daring thought which questioned all things and would sound the mysteries of this world and the world beyond. At the head of this great group stood Shakespeare. On the stage of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres this master dramatist of the age, and of all the ages, directly addressed the ardent crowds who flocked at his summons. Packed together in the dingy pit, under the smoking flambeaux, the rude audiences saw pass before them in long panorama the whole history of England with its bloody wars, the fierce scenes of the Roman forum, the loves of Romeo and Antony, hump-backed Richard, the laughing Falstaff, and the woeful figures of Lear and Hamlet.' What came from the heart of Shakespeare went to the human hearts listening to him. The crowd laughed with his comedy and cried with his tragedy. He was the great public teacher, as well as the joy of his age

— an age full of impulse, of hot aspiration and vague desire, which recognized its own portrait in his dramas.

THE TIMES. 11

Thus books, the acted drama, the thirst for knowledge, the ardent desire of the human mind to expand in all directions, made the last years of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth a new era in the history of the human race. Men longed for new experiences, to travel and discover new countries, to find some outlet for the boiling spirit of enterprise which had rushed into and overflowed the time. The adventurous sea voyages of the period were the direct outcome of this craving ; suddenly a passion for maritime exploration had developed itself. We have the record of what followed in the folios of Hakluyt and Purchas — " Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America," " Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries made by the English Nation," " Purchas, his Pilgrimage," and other works of the same character. Magellan circumnavigated the world, and Sir Francis Drake doubled Cape Horn, coasted northward to the present Alaska, attempted the northwest passage, and finding it impracticable, crossed the Pacific, traversed the Indian Ocean, and returned to England by the Cape of Good Hope. The English flag was thus carried into every sea, and wherever the flag of Spain was encountered, it was saluted with cannon. For a whole generation these adventurous voyages and hard combats went on without ceasing, and on the continent of Europe another outlet was presented to the fierce ardor of the times. Flanders was an incessant battle-ground; and in Transylvania the Christians were making war on the Turks. English soldiers of fortune flocked to the Christian standard, and fought among the foremost, winning fortune and renown, or " leaving their bodies in testimony of their minds."

At the end of the century this long period of fierce struggle ended — the foes seemed to have exhausted themselves. But the enterprise of the time was still unsated and demanded new fields. In spite of the disastrous ending of the Roanoke experiment, longing eyes had continued to be fixed on America, and the same glamour surrounded "Virginia" for the new generation as for the old. Beyond the Atlantic was the virgin Continent, unexplored by Englishmen, awaiting brave hearts and strong hands. To a people so ardent and restless the prospect was full of attraction. Virginia was the promised land, and they had only to go and occupy it. There the fretting cares and poverty of the Old World would be forgotten, and stirring action would replace the dull inaction of peace at the end of so much fighting. For the daring there was the charm of adventure in an unexplored world ; for the selfish the hope of profit, and for the pious the great work of converting the Indian "heathen." The first charter expressed this longing — " that so noble a work may by the providence of God hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in propagating of the Christian religion to such people as sit in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God." — " This is the work that we first intended," says a writer of the time, " and have published to the world to be chief in our thoughts, to bring the infidel people from the worship of Devils to the service of God." And worthy Mr. Crashaw exhorted the adventurers, about to embark for Virginia, to " remember that the end of this voyage is the destruction of the Devil's kingdom."

These were some of the causes which led to the settlement of America by the English.

THE OLDEST AMERICAN CHARTER. 18

III. The Oldest American Charter

At last, in 1606, the ardent desire of the Englishmen of the time to settle Virginia began to take shape. A brave sea-captain, Bartholomew Gosnold, was the mainspring of the enterprise. He had made the first direct voyage across the Atlantic to New England, and meant now to establish a colony, if possible in the milder south. He found sympathizers in Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, two brave and pious gentlemen, Richard Hakluyt, prebendary of Westminster, Robert Hunt, an exemplary clergyman, Edward Maria Wingfield, a London merchant, and John Smith, an English soldier.

This famous chevalier, who was to become the soul of the enterprise and the founder of Virginia, was born in Willoughby, England, in January, 1579. His family were connected with the Lancashire gentry, but he was left a poor orphan, and before he had grown to manhood had served as a private soldier in the Flanders wars. He then wandered away like a knight-errant in search of adventures; joined the forces of Sigismund Bathori, who was making war on the Turks in Transylvania ■, slew three Turkish " champions " in single combat, for which he was knighted; was captured and reduced to slavery by the Turks, but escaped to Russia; and thence returned by way of Germany, France, Spain, and Morocco, to England, which he reached in 1604, when he was twenty-five. He had left home an unknown youth, and returned a famous man. He was young in years, but old in experience, in suffering, and in those elements which lie at the foundation of greatness. His portrait, with sweeping mustache and frank glance, is the portrait of a fighting man ; but under it may be discerned the administrator and ruler.

When Smith came back to England, Elizabeth was dead and the reign of James I. had just begun. The city of London was full of soldiers returned from the Continental wars, and this restless social element gladly welcomed the Virginia enterprise. They were men of every character — brave soldiers and the scum of war ; frequented the " Mermaid " and other taverns ; jostled the citizens ; and flocked to the theatres, where Shakespeare's plays were the great attraction. The dramatist had not yet retired to Stratford, and it is probable that Smith made his acquaintance then or afterward, as he wrote "they have acted my fatal tragedies on the stage." The stage in London meant the Globe or Blackfriars, in which Shakespeare was a stockholder ; and Smith made his complaint to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the " W. H." of the Shakespearean sonnets. This personal acquaintance of the soldier and the writer is merely conjectural, but it is interesting to fancy them together at the " Mermaid," talking, perhaps, of the Virginia enterprise and the strange stage of the " Tempest," Written a few years afterwards. Smith and Gosnold became friends, and the wandering soldier caught the fever of exploration and adventure in America. When the scheme at last took form, he had become a prominent advocate of the enterprise, and was appointed by the King one of the first counsellors.

James I. had authorized" the undertaking, and it was now launched. He busied himself in drawing up his royal charter for the government of the colony, and April 10, 1606, the paper was ready.

THE OLDEST AMERICAN CHARTER. 15

By this oldest of American charters two colonies were directed to be established in the great empire of Virginia. The southern colony was intrusted to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and others, and was to be " planted " anywhere between thirty-four and forty-one degrees of north latitude, corresponding to the southern limits of North Carolina, and the mouth of the Hudson River. It was to extend fifty miles north and fifty miles south of the spot selected for the settlement ; one hundred miles into the land ; and to embrace any islands within the same distance of the coast.

The association governing the southern colony was styled the London Company ; the northern colony was intrusted to the Plymouth Company ; and a strip of territory one hundred miles broad was to intervene between the two. Three years afterwards (1609) the boundaries of the southern colony were enlarged and exactly defined. It was to embrace the territory two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of Old Point Comfort, the mouth of James River, and to reach " up into the land from sea to sea." This was the original charter under which Virginia held at the time of the formation of the Federal Constitution in 1788.

The plan of government for the colony was simple. Everything began and ended with the King. A great council of thirteen in London, appointed by himself, was to govern. A subordinate council in Virginia, appointed by the greater, was to follow his instructions. Thus the colony of Virginia was to be ruled and directed in all its proceedings by the royal will, since the King appointed its rulers, and directed under his sign -manual •in what manner they were to rule. The details were generally judicious. The Christian religion was to be preached to the Indians ; lands were to descend as in England ; trial by jury was secured to all persons charged with crime ; the subordinate council was to try civil causes ; and the products of the colonists were to be brought to a public storehouse, where a Cape merchant or treasurer was to control and apportion them as they were needed. This early development of the socialistic and cooperative idea resulted unfortunately ; but for the moment it had a plausible appearance on paper. What was plain about the charter was, that the colony of Virginia would have no rights other than those which King James I. chose to allow it. His " instructions " were to be the law, and he held to that theory with all the obstinacy of a narrow mind to the end of his life.

Having secured this charter the friends of the enterprise made every preparation for the voyage. About one hundred colonists were secured, apparently without difficulty, and at the end of the year 1606 all was ready for the expedition. The little fleet consisted of three vessels, one of twenty tons, one of forty, and one of a hundred, the names of which were the Discovery, the Good Speed, and the Susan Constant.

On the 19th of December, 1606, these three ships set sail down the Thames for Virginia.

IV. Jamestown

The sailing of the ships excited general interest even in so busy a city as London. Prayers were offered up in the churches for the welfare of the expedition, and

JAMESTOWN. 17

the poet Drayton wished his countrymen good fortune in a glowing lyric : —

" You brave heroic minds Worthy your country's name,

That honor still pursue Whilst loitering hinds Lurk here at home with shame,

Go and subdue !

" Britons ! you stay too long, Quickly aboard bestow you,

And with a merry gale

Swell j'our stretch' d sail With vows as strong As the winds that blow you !

" And cheerfully at sea Success you still entice To get the pearls and gold, And ours to hold Virginia Earth's only paradise."

The character and motives of these first Virginia adventurers have been the subject of discussion. There is really nothing to discuss. They were men of every rank, from George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, to Samuel Collier, " boy ; " and in the lists were classed as " gentlemen, carpenters, laborers," and others. Unfortunately more than half the whole number were "gentlemen," and a gentleman at the time signified a person unused to manual labor. As to the motives of the adventurers, these lay on the surface. To get the pearls and gold was no doubt the thought in the minds of the majority, but this was not the only aim. Many had it warmly at heart to convert the Indians to Christianity, and others looked to the extension of English empire. The dissensions of the first years were due to causes which will be stated ; but a radical defect was the unfitness of the original colonists for their work. More than half their number had never used an axe, and "jewellers, gold refiners, and a perfumer," were among the people sent to fight the American wilderness.

The three small ships sailed down the Thames, followed by prayers and good wishes, and, after tossing in the Channel for some weeks, went out to sea. For reasons unexplained they were not in charge of Bartholomew Gosnold, but of Captain Christopher Newport; and, following the old southern route by way of the Azores, safely reached the West Indies toward the spring. A curious incident of the voyage was the arrest of Smith by the other leaders. He was charged with a design to murder them and make himself " King of Virginia ; " and he afterwards stated that a gallows was erected to execute him. Nothing more is known of this singular occurrence. Smith remained under arrest until after the arrival in Virginia, when the first American jury tried and acquitted him.

It was the intention to found the colony on the old site, Roanoke Island, but a violent storm drove the ships northward quite past the shores of Wingandacoa, and they reached the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. In this they took shelter toward the end of April 1607, and the beauty of the country induced the commanders of the expedition to settle there instead of at Roanoke. The low shores were covered with " flowers of divers colors ; " the " goodly trees " were in full foliage ; and all around was inviting. A party landed to look at the country, and had their first experience with the Indians. They were received with a flight of arrows from the

JAMESTOWN. 19

lurking people hidden in the tall grass, but they fled at a volley from the English guns, and the party returned to the ships, which continued their way. Before them was the great expanse of Chesapeake Bay, the " Mother of Waters " as the Indian name signified, and in the distance the broad mouth of a great river, the Powhatan. As the ships approached the western shore of the bay the storm had spent its force, and they called the place Point Comfort. A little further, — at the present Hampton, — they landed and were hospitably received by a tribe of Indians. The ships then sailed on up the river, which was new-named James River, and parties landed here and there, looking for a good site for the colony. A very bad one was finally selected, — a low peninsula half buried in the tide at high water. Here the adventurers landed on May 13, 1607, and gave the place the name of Jamestown, in honor of the King.

Nothing remains of this famous settlement but the ruins of a church tower covered with ivy, and some old tombstones. The tower is crumbling year by year, and the roots of trees have cracked the slabs, making great rifts across the names of the old Armigers and Honourables. The place is desolate, with its washing waves and flitting sea-fowl, but possesses a singular attraction. It is one of the few localities which recall the first years of American history ; but it will not recall them much longer. Every distinctive feature of the spot is slowly disappearing. The river encroaches year by year, and the ground occupied by the original huts is already submerged.

The English landed and pitched tents, but soon found it more agreeable to lodge " under boughs of trees "

in the pleasant May weather, until they built cabins. These were erected on the neck of the peninsula, and before the summer they had settled into something like a community. From the moment of landing they had paid sedulous attention to the exercises of religion. An " old rotten tent " was the first church in the American wilderness. The next step was to stretch an awning between the trunks of trees ; to nail a bar between two of these to serve as a reading-desk — and here " the religious and courageous divine," Mr. Hunt, read the service morning and evening, preached twice every Sunday, and celebrated the Holy Communion at intervals of three months. After a while the settlers busied themselves in constructing a regular church. It was not an imposing structure, since the chronicle describes it as a log building " covered with rafts, sedge, and dirt," but soon they did better. When Lord Delaware came, in 1610, he found at Jamestown a church sixty feet long and twenty-four broad, the first permanent religious edifice erected by Englishmen in North America.

The Virginians had thus made a good beginning. They" had felled trees, built houses, erected a church, and were saying their prayers in it, like honest people who were bent on doing their duty in that state of life in which it had pleased Heaven to place them. But the whole cheerful prospect was overclouded by a simple circumstance. Their leaders were worthless. The names of the Council had not been announced in England by King James. He had had the eccentric fancy of sealing them up in a box, which was not to be opened until the expedition reached Virginia. The box had then been opened and the Councillors were found to be Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith, Edward Maria

JAMESTOWN. 21

Wingfield, Christopher Newport, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall. One and all of these men, with the exception of Smith and Gosnold, were grossly incompetent ; and Gosnold died soon afterwards, and Smith was still under arrest and excluded from the Council. Wingfield had been elected President, but it was soon seen that he was a man of no capacity. He was indolent, self-indulgent, wanting in every faculty which should characterize a ruler, and his mind was haunted by the idea that Smith was secretly plotting to murder him and usurp his authority. The rest of the Council were no better, and the promise of the future was gloomy. The little band of Englishmen were in a new country, surrounded by enemies, and those who ruled over them seemed unconscious of their perilous situation.

Soon the Indian peril revealed itself. A party of men sailed up James River and paid a visit to Powhatan, Emperor of the country, near the present site of Richmond. They found him in his royal wigwam, — a " sour " old man of whom more will be said hereafter, — and after a brief interview returned to Jamestown. Exciting intelligence awaited them. In their absence, a band of Indians had attacked the colonists while planting corn, and a flight of arrows had killed one man and wounded seventeen others, but a cannon shot fired from the ships had put the dusky people to rout. It was more than probable that the sour old emperor had directed this onslaught, and the palisade was mounted with cannon and a guard established.

It was plain from this dangerous incident, that the Virginia colony required a military ruler. Wingfield was a merchant and faineant, utterly unfitted for his position. Smith was still under arrest, but all at once he demanded a trial. This, Wingfield strove to evade ; he would send him home to England to be tried by the authorities, he said. But the restive soldier suddenly flamed out. He would be tried in Virginia as was his r jo-ht — there was the charter ! and the trial took place. The result was a ruinous commentary on the characters of Wingfield and the Council. The testimony of their own witnesses convicted them of subornation of perjury to destroy Smith ; he was acquitted by the jury of all the charges against him; and Kendall, who had conducted the prosecution, was condemned to pay him £200 damages. This sum was presented by Smith to the colony for the general use, and then the foes partook of the Communion, and the soldier was admitted to his seat in the Council.

Such was the first open trial of strength between Smith and the factionists. He was destined to have more, involving the very life of the colony. For the moment all was quiet, however, and Newport sailed for England to report and obtain supplies, leaving one of the barks, the Pinnace, for the use of the colony. From this, were to spring woes unnumbered.

V. The Terrible Summer Of 1607

The colony now seemed prosperous. The skies were blue and the corn was growing ; the supply of provisions was sufficient for three months, and the settlers, in their " Monmouth caps, Irish stockings, and coats of mail," went in and out about their occupations, with a sense

THE TERRIBLE SUMMER OF 1607. 23

of security. The reed-thatched huts were defended by cannon, but Powhatan had " sued for peace," and the men met and ate their food from the " common kettle " without fear.

But under this fair outside was the canker of incapacity and misrule. In the bright days all went well, but discerning eyes might have seen that in the hour of trial the leaders would be found wanting. The old chronicle paints the men with pitiless accuracy. They had neither brains, courage, nor morals, nor anything good about them. Wingfield, the President, had corrupted his easilycorrupted associates, and the whole bad crew spent their time in idleness and gluttony. The enterprise had grievously disappointed them, and, seeing no further profit in it, they were looking for an opportunity to abandon it. The true men looked sidewise at them since Smith's trial, and shook their heads. It was the next thing to a certainty that when the dark hour came they would desert their comrades and leave them to destruction.

Soon the dark hour arrived. A worse enemy than the Indians assailed the colony. With July came the sultry " dog days " of the southern summer, and the marshy banks of the river,- sweltering in the sun, sweated a poisonous malaria which entered into the blood of the English. The whole colony was prostrated by a virulent epidemic. All thought of guarding against the Indians was abandoned. The supply of food was soon exhausted, and destruction stared them in the face. The men lay wasting away in the sultry cabins. Those who were not attacked were too few to wait on the sick, scarcely enough to drag them out and bury them when they died. " Burning fevers destroyed them," says George Percy, writing of this terrible time, " some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were, in this new discovered Virginia." Night and day men were heard " groaning in every corner of the fort, most pitiful to hear." The writer seems to groan himself as he remembers the fearful scene. "If there were any conscience in men," he exclaims, " it would make their hearts to bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries . . . some departing out of the world, sometimes three and four in a night ; in the morning their bodies trailed out of the cabins like dogs to be buried."

By the month of September famine and fever had swept off fifty men, one half the colony, and among the dead were Bartholomew Gosnold and Thomas Studley, the treasurer. Smith was left to contend single-handed with Wingfield and his followers. These people now showed their true characters, and added cowardice to incapacity. Wingfield and Kendall made an effort to seize the Pinnace and escape to England ; but the colonists rose in their wrath and dealt promptly with them. They deposed them from the Council and elected Ratclifife President in Wingfield's place ; but Ratcliffe was little better than his predecessor, and did nothing to succor them. The only hope was Smith, and the settlers compelled him by popular uprising to assume the control of the colony.

Smith acted with energy, for the poor people were nearly starving. By an interposition of Providence, the Indians had voluntarily brought them a small supply of corn ; but this was soon exhausted, and Smith went down James River to obtain more. The tribe at

THE TERRIBLE SUMMER OF 1607. 25

Hampton refused it, when he fired a volley into the crowd, captured their idol, seized the supplies, and returned to Jamestown. Another expedition followed, from which Smith returned at a critical moment. Wingfield and Kendall had again seized the Pinnace and were on the point of escaping, but Smith opened on them with cannon and they were compelled to surrender. Short work was made of Kendall, the ringleader of the conspiracy. He was tried by a jury, found guilty, and shot. The life of Wingfield was spared, but he was deprived of all authority. He remained in the colony " living in disgrace," and anxiously looking for an opportunity to return to England.

Thus with famine and disease, hot turmoil and conspiracy, the groans of the dying in the huts, and the sudden thunder of Smith's cannon summoning the mutineers to surrender, passed this terrible summer of 1607. It tried the stoutest hearts, but had this much of good in it, that it showed the adventurers who was their true leader. In the midst of the general despondency one man at least had refused to give way to despair. Though sick himself of the fever, Smith had labored unceasingly for the rest. When " ten men could neither go nor stand," he had fed the sick and dying, infused hope into the survivors, and had the right to say of himself what he said of Pocahontas, that he " next under God was still the instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine, and utter confusion."