Part 49

VIRGINIA. The first band of colonists sent out by the London Company, A. D. 1607, established themselves on a spot which they called Jamestown, on the James river, about fifty miles above its entrance into Chesapeake Bay. The direction of affairs had been given to a council, consisting of seven persons, nominated by the Company in England. John Smith, a military adventurer of great courage, enterprise, and sagacity, was one of them; and the incompetency of his colleagues soon becoming manifest, he gradually assumed the lead, and several times rescued the feeble settlements from the imminent perils of savage warfare and famine. Half of the emigrants perished during the first six months; and if the colony had not been fed by frequent supplies of food and additional settlers from England, the enterprise must soon have been abandoned. In spite of Smith’s remonstrances, the settlers wasted their time in seeking for gold and silver, instead of cultivating the ground; and they actually sent a vessel to England laden with dirt, in which glittering specks had been discovered, which they mistook for gold. Smith explored the country, and coasted the bay in an open boat, entering the principal rivers and inlets, and thus obtaining the requisite information for the construction of a chart, which was transmitted to England and published. In one of these expeditions, he fell into the hands of the savages, and was on the point of being put to death, when he was rescued by the chieftain’s daughter, Pocahontas, and after an imprisonment of a few weeks, was sent back to Jamestown. But the colony was soon deprived of his invaluable services; in 1609, he was severely injured by the accidental explosion of his powder bag, and was compelled to return to England for surgical aid. After his departure, the affairs of the colony again declined, and the settlers more than once determined to abandon the undertaking, and return home. But they were prevented by the seasonable arrival of ships, bringing fresh supplies and a reinforcement of men, whose broken fortunes in their native land made them eager to brave the perils of a desperate enterprise. Thus often rescued from the brink of ruin, the colony struggled on, till its members at last became inured to their novel situation, and acquired the habits of life which alone could meet its exigencies. Novel recruits were sent out from time to time to keep up their numbers. In 1619, ninety young women arrived, of irreproachable character, who were sold at the price of their passage, to become wives to the planters. Many cargoes of vagrants, thieves, and jail-birds also came, to serve as indented servants for a term of years, and afterwards to become free colonists. Then a more lasting impression was made on the future character and fortunes of the settlement by the introduction of twenty negro slaves, who were brought by a Dutch trading vessel, and readily purchased by the settlers. Tobacco had now become the staple product of the colony, and slaves were profitably employed in its cultivation.

The savages had occasionally given much trouble, and in 1622, they were nearly successful in a plot which they had formed for the entire destruction of the settlements. In one day, they killed three hundred and forty-seven of the whites. A furious war succeeded, in which the Indians, indeed, were defeated and driven back with great slaughter, so that they never became formidable again. But the colony had received a fearful blow, from which it recovered with slowness and difficulty. The number of settlements was reduced from eighty to eight, and a famine ensued that destroyed many lives. The first colonial assembly was called by Governor Yeardley in 1619, and two years afterwards, a special ordinance confirmed the right of holding such a local legislature.

The proceedings of the Company in England had now awakened the jealousy of the crown; and these misfortunes gave King James the pretext that he wanted for depriving them of their charter, and taking the government into his own hands. Of course, it was administered on the arbitrary principles which were then in favor at court. Complete legislative and executive power was given to a governor and council of twelve persons, all nominated by the crown; and this power was tyrannically exercised. Yet the General Assembly, though not formally authorized, was still permitted to meet, though it was much restricted in the exercise of its functions. At one time, in 1635, the patience of the settlers gave way, and they seized their governor, Sir John Harvey, and sent him a prisoner to England to answer for his misconduct. With the native obstinacy of his character, Charles I resented this act as savoring of audacity and rebellion, and sent back the obnoxious governor, with a fresh commission, under which he ruled more tyrannically than ever. Still, the prevailing sentiment in the colony was eminently loyal, and during the English Civil War, they took sides, as long as they durst, with the king, against the Parliament. Many of the settlers were decayed gentlemen and unportioned sons of noble families, in whose minds the prejudices of rank were rather heightened than diminished by the want of fortune. The Church of England was established by law, regular stipends being allotted to its ministers in every parish, and the preachers of any other persuasion were not allowed to exercise their functions. The English law of primogeniture and entail regulated the descent of property; and the wealthier colonists, directing the labor of many indented servants and slaves, lived apart on their plantations, affecting something of the state of a landed aristocracy. After the ruin of the king’s cause at home, in 1645, many of the disbanded cavaliers found refuge in Virginia, bringing with them their sentiment of chivalrous attachment to Church and King.

In 1671, Governor Berkeley estimated the population of the colony at 40,000, including 2,000 negro slaves, and 6,000 indented white servants. The character of his administration may be inferred from a communication made by him, this year, to the English Privy Council. ‘I thank God,’ he wrote, ‘there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have any these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!’ Yet a few years afterwards, discontent had become so general that a rebellion broke out, and for a few months the insurgents had entire control of the government. Nathaniel Bacon, a young lawyer, distinguished for his talents and activity, was the popular leader in this movement.

In the midst of his successes, Bacon was suddenly taken sick and died; and no proper person being found to take his place, the army was dispersed, and the insurrection abandoned. Berkeley punished the rebels with great rigor, some of their leaders being condemned and executed and others were sentenced to pay heavy fines. He then went to England, where, instead of the praise and rewards that he expected, he was severely censured for his cruelty. He died a few months afterwards, as it was reported, of chagrin. An act of general pardon and oblivion was sent out from England, and other mild and popular measures soon wiped out the memory of Bacon’s rebellion. Needy and covetous governors still provoked occasional discontent; but the spirit of the people was eminently loyal, so that they were tardy and reluctant to acknowledge the revolution of 1688, and only after repeated commands was a proclamation issued announcing the succession of William and Mary to the English throne.

Far different was the character of the emigrants who founded the _New England Colonies_, under grants from the Plymouth Company. These were Puritans of the straitest sect, Independents in their notions of Church government, and now fast verging toward republicanism, in consequence of their long continued opposition to the constituted authorities of Church and State at home. The intolerant spirit of the English hierarchy and the arbitrary proceedings of the court made their residence in England uncomfortable, if not perilous; and they looked to voluntary exile for deliverance. A company of them, under the Rev. John Robinson as pastor, and William Brewster as ruling elder, embarked for Holland in 1608, carrying their wives, children, and little property along with them. They were kindly received by the Dutch, who were Protestants, and they remained over ten years in peace at Leyden. But Puritans as they were, they were still Englishmen; they disliked the sound of a foreign language, and the prospect that their children would intermarry with the Dutch, and forget their English parentage and the customs of their forefathers. The greater part of them, therefore, determined to emigrate to America, and for this purpose, returned first to England, where they easily procured the promise of a grant of land from the London Company, as they intended to establish themselves within what were then the limits of Virginia. They sailed from Plymouth in the ship Mayflower, and after a tedious and stormy voyage of over two months, arrived at Cape Cod, nearly two degrees north of the place they had aimed at. The lateness of the season, however, the fatigues of the voyage, and the perils of coasting along a shore which had been but imperfectly explored, preventing them from putting to sea again, they sought a spot for their settlement in that neighborhood. But as they were then without the limits of the Virginia Company, and the Crown had refused to grant them a charter, they deemed it necessary, before leaving the vessel, to sign an agreement, promising to submit to whatever ‘just and equal laws and ordinances might be thought convenient for the general good.’ They selected Plymouth, which offered a tolerable good harbor in the southwestern part of Massachusetts Bay, as a suitable place for the commencement of a colony; and on the 22d of December, 1620, the PILGRIMS, as they might now well be termed, landed there, numbering only one hundred and one, including the women and children. John Carver was chosen the first governer, and Miles Standish their military leader, as they had some apprehensions of the savages. Divided into nineteen families, they immediately began to fell trees and construct houses, in which to find shelter against the rigors of winter. But their exposure was necessarily great, and they had but a slender stock of provisions and other necessaries. Sickness came upon them, and during the first five months, they lost more than half of their number.

One of their associates, who had been left behind in England, obtained for them a grant of land from the Company which was now incorporated, under a new charter, as ‘The Council established at Plymouth, in the County of Devon, (England,) for the Planting, Ruling, Ordering, and Governing of New England in America.’ This grant authorized the colonists to choose a governor, council, and general court, for the enactment and execution of laws. Strictly speaking, however, the Company had no right to give them any thing more than the property of the soil. A charter from the Crown was necessary to complete their political organization; and this they never obtained. But the necessity of the case compelled them to act as if they had received full powers; and their remoteness and insignificance prevented the authorities at home from questioning their right. The agreement which they had signed on board the Mayflower was the basis of their legislation; and for some time, all the settlers came together in a general assembly, to enact the necessary laws. Thus, in its origin, the colony was the purest democracy on earth. Time showed the inconveniences of such an arrangement, and the legislative power was then delegated to an Assembly, composed of representatives from the several towns. Land and other property were at first held in common, the Company in England being entitled to a specified share of the total profits. But this experiment turned out like the similar one in Virginia; finding that industry was discouraged by it, the Colonists succeeded in purchasing, on credit, the share of the London partners. A division was then made of the land and movable property, and henceforth each one reaped the fruits of his own toil. The people were united in religious faith, and wished not to be disturbed by theological controversies; so, when one Lyford, a clergyman of the Church of England, was sent out to them as a suitable pastor, in place of Robinson, who had died at Leyden, they refused him, and exercised their undoubted right of ownership of the soil, by expelling him, and two who adhered to him, Oldham and Conant, from their territory. These banished persons established themselves at Nantasket, just beyond the limits of the Plymouth colonists. The soil around Plymouth was thin and poor, and the people had brought but few worldly goods along with them; thus, the progress of the settlement was slow. Some of their old companions, who had been left behind in Holland, now came out to join them; and a few others, attracted by similarity of worship, and by the prospect of driving a little traffic in fish and peltry, were added to their number. But ten years after the landing at Plymouth, the population numbered only three hundred. Their territory, indeed, was but small, being bounded on the land side by a line drawn northerly from the mouth of Narraganset river, till it met one carried westerly from Cohasset rivulet, ‘at the uttermost limits of a place called Pocanoket.’

But encouraged by the growth of this colony, feeble as it was, the Council of New England proceeded to make lavish grants of their remaining lands, and to send out other bands of emigrants, taking little care to define the boundaries of the new grants, or to avoid ceding to one company or individual the very tract already bestowed upon another. This negligence was the cause of much subsequent dispute and difficulty. A few persons also established themselves at various points along the coast, who had no formal title to any land, but who were afterwards generally admitted to have an imperfect right, founded on occupancy and prescription. Some few fishing settlements were thus established; but their inhabitants had not the disposition to toil, the habits of order and self-denial, or the indomitable perseverance which characterized the Puritans. All their establishments were subsequently absorbed by the Massachusetts colony, which became the chief agent in the settlement of New England.

The persecution of all who would not conform to the Established Church still continuing in England, and king Charles having avowed his purpose to govern without a Parliament, many of the wealthier class of Puritans now determined to emigrate to America. A company was formed at the instigation of Mr. White, a clergyman of Dorchester; among its members were John Humphrey and Isaac Johnson, two brothers-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, John Winthrop, a gentleman of landed property in Suffolk, Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Endicott, Thomas Dudley, William Coddington, Richard Bellingham, Matthew Cradock, and other merchants and lawyers of wealth and influence in London and some of the northern and midland counties. They obtained from the Council for New England a grant of a tract of land, bounded by two parallel lines running westward to the Pacific Ocean, one drawn three miles north of any part of the Merrimac river, and the other, three miles south of any portion of the Charles. Soon afterwards, their organization was completed by a charter from the Crown, which incorporated them under the title of the ‘Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England,’ with power to admit what new members or freemen they might choose. They were supposed to be a private trading corporation, resident in England, where they were to make laws and regulations for the government of their colony in America. A governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants were to have the management of their affairs; and these officers were to be chosen, and all important laws enacted, at a ‘Great and General Court’ of all the freemen, to be held quarterly. A company of sixty or seventy persons, under John Endicott, were sent out in 1628, who commenced a settlement at Salem; and these were followed, the next year, by six ships, bringing about two hundred colonists, of whom many were indented servants, together with a stock of cattle and other necessaries. It was soon manifest, however, that a colony, to be prosperous, must have the management of its own affairs, without being obliged to wait for orders from a distance. John Winthrop and many other leading stockholders offered to emigrate, if they were allowed to carry the charter and the government along with them. The legality of such a measure was at least doubtful; but the urgency of the case removed all scruple, and the colonists probably hoped that the remoteness of their new home would screen their procedings from public notice. New officers were therefore chosen from those who were disposed to emigrate; and in 1630, a fleet of fifteen ships, equipped at an expense of £20,000, sailed from the Isle of Wight, having on board Winthrop and Dudley as governor and deputy-governor, together with most of the assistants, and a company of about one thousand persons. They began a settlement at Charlestown, but soon removed to the neighboring peninsula of Trimountain, which they named Boston, after the English town whence some of the chief emigrants came. The hardships of the first winter, which was a severe one, caused disease to break out among them, and over two hundred died, among whom were Isaac Johnson, and his wife, Arabella. But after this period, the order and industry which prevailed in the colony, the commencement of trade with Virginia and the Dutch at Manhattan (New York), and the rapid influx of settlers, driven away from England by the religious and political persecution which still raged there, laid the foundations of steady growth and permanent prosperity. During the first ten years after the settlement of Massachusetts, about twenty-five thousand persons left their native land to find a home in New England.

The government of the colony was theocratic in many of its features, modified at first by an aristocratic or patriarchal element, which was soon eliminated, however, by the force of circumstances, that set strongly towards republican institutions. The few men of wealth and consideration, who were the leaders of the emigration, naturally strove to retain the chief power and influence in their own hands, and to govern according to their notions of what religion and the word of God required; and in this attempt they were strongly seconded by the ministers of the churches. At first, the people, with the instinctive respect of Englishmen for rank and station, gave way to them, and conferred the whole power of legislation on the governor and the assistants, who were familiarly known as ‘the magistrates.’

Even a council for life at one time was instituted, but it continued only for a few years, and the freemen also resumed the power of enacting laws. Still, they were moderate in the exercise of their functions; and persons once chosen to the board of magistrates were usually reäppointed, no one being left out but for some extraordinary cause. Purity of faith and worship was the chief motive for establishing the colony. The people wished to be free, not only from persecution, but from the presence of other sects and from theological controversies. Only such persons were to be admitted to be freemen, or voters, as those who were already freemen should designate; and this privilege was soon confined by law to those who were members of the churches. But as there was little difference among them in point of religious opinion, and as most of the adult males, or at least, nearly all the heads of families, were church members, this exclusive privilege created no general discontent. The magistrates exercised their large powers resolutely to keep out heretics and schismatics, and to maintain religious worship and practice in all their purity. Those who did not agree with them were required to go elsewhere, and establish a colony for themselves. Roger Williams, and some followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, did so, and founded a new settlement in Rhode Island. Others took refuge in New Hampshire; but Massachusetts claimed the land there as a part of her own territory, and from 1640 to 1680, the claim was made good. A few Quakers gave great annoyance by their fanatical and outrageous conduct; they were once and again dismissed, with threats in case they returned. They did come again, and then three of them were hanged. The magistrates, on this occasion, published a defense of their conduct, dwelling especially on the case of Mary Dyre, who was a third comer, and had been once reprieved when already on the gallows, as a proof they desired, not the death, but the absence, of the Quakers. Some adherents of the Church of England, who had come out without invitation to join them, were summarily sent back to the mother country. Two hundred years ago, the principles of religious toleration were but little understood; yet as the Company owned the territory, and had emigrated for the avowed purpose of forming a religious community by themselves, it is perhaps harsh in us to charge them with intolerance. They had a right to expel intruders.

Of course, great severity of manners and punctiliousness of religious observances were enjoined. Various sumptuary laws were enacted; the Sabbath was observed with Jewish strictness; blasphemy, witchcraft, and adultery, were punished with death; slanderers were whipt, cropped, and banished. But except in these particulars, and a few others of no great importance, the Mosaic law was not established in the colony. The people had good sense enough to see that it was not adapted to the circumstances and the times. No restriction was imposed upon them except that contained in the Charter, that no laws should be made repugnant to the laws of England; and this was construed, very liberally, to mean that no part of the English law was in force there till it was expressly reenacted. At first the magistrates governed without any other rule than their own sense of right and their interpretation of the law of God. But the people becoming jealous of so large a discretion, a code, or ‘Body of Liberties,’ was established in 1641, consisting of one hundred articles, drawn up with singular brevity and clearness, embracing many of the best and most liberal provisions of the English Common Law, and, in some respects, in advance both of English and American law of the present day. This code became the basis of legislation, not only in Massachusetts, but throughout New England, the other colonies adopting many of its most important provisions. In one important respect, the Mosaic rule was followed in preference to the English law; the estates of persons dying without a will were divided equally among the children, except that the eldest son received a double share. This law, favoring the distribution rather than the aggregation of property, made the establishment of a territorial aristocracy impossible, kept up the idea of equality among the people, and tended strongly to the development of republican sentiments.