and in part to the friendship of Powhatan, chief of the confederacy composed of thirty-four Indian tribes. But in 1622 and again in 1644 terrible massacres of the whites occurred. In each case, however, the settlers struck back at the red foe and after 1644 Tidewater Virginia, between the James and York rivers, was unmolested and lived in peace. It is not too much to say that no race less plucky than the English could have founded and kept alive the splendid colony which became Virginia. It was a costly adventure. The London Company gave up the effort in 1624 and the colony was taken over by the

JAMESTOWN IN 1622. (From an old print.)

Crown. Up to that time the company had sent over fourteen thousand persons, more than twelve thousand of whom had died of exposure, starvation, or massacre. It had expended, in our money, five millions of dollars on the enterprise.

Yet the Indian taught the white man the art of raising and smoking the strange plant "tobacco," which the red men's ancestors had received from the South-and at

Tobacco

once the fortune of Virginia was made. In that culture strong virgin soil wheat ran to stalk and little

to head; the native corn or "maize" was not liked in England. Precious metals were as few and far between as South Sea pas

sageways; silkworms would not thrive, and vineyards failed to meet expectations. In vain the King asked the Virginians to engage in diversified agriculture, to raise the raw materials which England most needed; but their answer was, from the beginning, tobacco and more and better tobacco.

First importation of negro servants

Fate coöperated with soil and climate to effect this epochmaking result. In 1619 a Dutch or English ship brought to Jamestown a few negroes to be sold as servantsbringing blessing and bane in its hold. England's overflow population gave Virginia thousands of laborers who readily sold themselves into seven years' slavery as indentured servants-for passage-money to the New World; but the sons of Africa were more fitted for the tobacco fields and they had no such troublesome notions about becoming "free" as these "servants" had. Slavery, as such, however, was not legalized in Virginia until 1661. By Virginians of all ranks, however, this boon of independence was prized; and this same year that saw the introduction of black toilers to Virginia also saw the colony receive from the King the right to establish a general assembly to be elected by the freemen of the Old Dominion. It consisted of the Governor, the council, and two burgesses from each of the ten settlements or plantations. The story of the two plants, liberty and tobacco, is the story of Virginia.

Thus, instantly, as it were, the fate of the colony was settled. If you would catch a picture of this pleasant tidal empire with its mild winters and long growing seasons, you must note, first, its many gently flowing streams which focus in large part upon the three main-travelled highways of the infant colony, the James, York, and Potomac rivers. The towering forests that lay between these water highways were soon to begin to fall, because it was much easier to cut trees than to fertilize lands which quickly "wore out." No plant is harder on soil than tobacco. Indeed the Indians had begun this work; the firstcomers were surprised at the number of Indian clearings found on the lower James. Favorites of King or

Virginia a compound of aristocracy and democracy

Governor (for the colony became a royal province in 1624) soon found that they could secure large tracts of this forest land for the asking, on which they might rule much like the feudal barons of Europe. Yet at the same time the humblest adult citizen could secure what was known as a "head right" of fifty acres for the asking; and he could have fifty acres more for each servant he imported from England. Thus our view presents Virginia as a curious compound of feudalism and democracy almost at the very outset.

This liberal, twofold land system, one for the wealthy aristocrat and one for the man without fortune, served as a call to all conditions of men in every part of the

homeland. If we had taken our stand at the The cosmopolitan character mouth of the James in that early day we should of its inhabihave seen a remarkable procession of ships bring tants even a more remarkable assortment of mankind for the Old Dominion to nourish and mould into "Americans" -cavalier, roundhead, gentleman, commoner, soldier-of-fortune, adventurer. And, although so cosmopolitan, Virginia was ever a land of homes and never a land of cities. Here, a pioneer palace arose, surrounded by spreading acres and the cabins of the slaves; there, the hut of an energetic small planter was surrounded by a few score acres. Of this last type was the small plantation of the John Washington who founded in Westmoreland County a family line which produced the world's most famous aristocrat in ideals and democrat in sympathiesGeorge Washington. You can see that such a free-and-easy land system inspired initiative and encouraged freed men to press inland to secure lands of their A land system own; this tended to push back the blood-red borderline toward that alluring Blue Ridge tive mountain wall at the head of the rivers which were the colony's first and only roads. Before long land on this frontier could be secured on easier terms, even, than in the lowland country. "Corn" and "cabin" rights to land could be had by any who would plant corn or build cabins there.

which inspired initia

For all its odd human types there was yet a blending in the

Local govern-
ment by
Vestries

Virginia type of character while this most hospitable and chivalric society the New World knew came into existence in that outof-doors, sunny land. We may say certain factors made this true, but the real causes probably lie beyond the power of analysis. The tidewater people generally were pure English. They had a relish for all things that Englishmen loved; the idea of a king had no terrors for them, and the sturdy uplanders of the colony were not afraid to oppose royal monopoly and governmental oppression. The established church automatically produced the kind of local government (by vestries) which was known by these Virginians in England. The touch with that homeland was always very close; and while Virginia, as one of her famous sons, Woodrow Wilson, has said, remained "more English than England," this showed in no way more plainly than in keeping alive sympathies for the ancient rights of Englishmen. For Virginia bred patriots "without whom," said a noted New Englander, "the Revolutionary War would not have been possible."

This spirit flared out surprisingly in Bacon's Rebellion, 1675-6, when the free backwoodsmen sought to revenge themselves of inroads by the Potomac Valley Indians. Governor Berkeley tried to check these frontiersmen, influenced, as the frontiersmen believed, by the aristocratic class which had a monopoly of the Indian trade. Embittered by this, the backwoodsmen under Nathaniel Bacon, a born leader, marched upon Jamestown and took and burned it. Eventually these "rebels" were routed, after the death of their leader. But Bacon's soul kept "marching on" in the reforms immediately adopted by Governor Berkeley's successor. The episode showed plainly that while, on the one hand, Virginia was in closest touch with the Mother Country,

Bacon's
Rebellion

she was, on the other, developing a yeomanry every whit as virile and independent as the best type of middle-class Englishmen beyond the sea. It was this type of Virginian also which made possible a democracy which produced a Washington, a Jefferson, a Patrick Henry, and a George Rogers Clark.

Education in

Virginia

In the year that slaves first came and a democratic legislature was first assembled (1619), the first land grant was secured for a college; but it was not until 1693 that William and Mary College actually came into existence. The well-to-do sent their boys abroad for an education, as in the case of George Washington's father who sent his two sons Lawrence and Augustine (George's half brothers) to England. But it was in the "old field" schools, located in abandoned fields which had run to seed, that many of the greatest Americans of this Southland received their early education. If the gentleman or gentlewoman was more admired as a type than the scholar, it was not because of a lack of appreciation of scholarship. The Old Dominion was, itself, a school of honor, and, in the delightful relationships between its plantations, in the stalwartness of the political battles that engaged its gentlemen, in the sweep of the frontier communities to the mountains that guarded the valley behind them, in the contests with royalty as represented now and again by unworthy princelings, Virginia spoke again and again to the colon- The voice ies which grew up about her of her love of manliness and hatred of hypocrisy, of her democratic solidarity, of her republican devotion, and of the reborn Englishman's love of those downright honest qualities of personal worth that make for nationality.

of Virginia

READING LIST

M. Johnston, Pioneers of the Old South (Chronicles of America, V), Chaps. 1-9; Tyler, Chaps. 3-7; Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, I, Chap. 1; E. Channing, I, Chap. 5; P. A. Bruce, Economic History of Virginia; J. E. Cooke, Virginia; Capt. J. Smith, General History; S. P. Orth, Our Foreign (Chronicles of America, XXXV), Chaps. 1 and 3; Fox, Map Studies,