USA > Virginia > The planters of colonial Virginia > Part 11
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For their large holdings the wealthy men paid not one penny of quit rents, Randolph said, and failed to comply with the regulations for seating new lands. The law demanded that upon receipt of a patent one must build a house upon the ground, improve and plant the soil and keep a good stock of cattle or hogs. But in their frontier holdings the wealthy men merely erected a little bark hut and turned two or three hogs into the woods by it. Or else they would clear one acre of land and plant a little Indian corn for one year, trusting that this evasion would square them with the letter of the law. By such means, Randolph adds, vast tracts were held, all of
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which had been procured on easy terms and much by means of false certificates of rights. "Which drives away the in- habitants and servants, brought up only to planting, to seek their fortunes in Carolina or other places."15
Randolph suggested that the evil might be remedied by re- quiring a strict survey of lands in every county, by demanding all arrears of quit rents, by giving strict orders that in the future no grant should exceed 500 acres. These measures, he believed, would cause 100,000 acres to revert to the Crown, and "invite home those who for want of Land left Virginia." It would encourage other persons to come from neighboring colonies to take up holdings and "mightily increase the num- ber of Planters." This would augment the production of to- bacco by many thousands of hogsheads, stimulate trade and industry in England, and aid his Majesty's revenue.
The Board of Trade was deeply impressed. They wrote to Governor Andros explaining to him the substance of Ran- dolph's report and asking what steps should be taken to remedy the evils he had pointed out. "But this seeming to us a mat- ter of very great consequence," they added, "we have not been willing to meddle in it without your advice, which we now desire you to give fully and plainly." But Andros knew full well that it was no easy matter to make the large landowners disgorge. The thing had been attempted by Nicholson several years earlier, when suit was instituted against Colonel Law- rence Smith for arrears of quit rents upon tracts of land which had never been under cultivation.16 But before the case came to trial Nicholson had been recalled and it was afterward com- pounded for a nominal sum. The proceedings had caused great resentment among the powerful clique which centered around the Council of State, and Andros was reluctant to re- open the matter. He knew of no frauds in granting patents of land, he wrote the Board, and could suggest no remedy
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for what was past, "being a matter of Property." He agreed, however, that to limit the size of future patents would tend to "the more regular planting and thicker seating of the frontier lands."17
Consequently when Francis Nicholson was commissioned as Governor in 1698, he received strict instructions to advise with the Council and the Assembly upon this matter and to report back to the Board.18 That nothing was accomplished, however, may clearly be inferred from a letter of a certain George Larkin written December 22, 1701. "There is no en- couragement for anyone to come to the Plantation," he de- clared, "most of the land lying at all convenient being taken up. Some have 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 acres, the greater part of which is unimployed."19 Two years later Nicholson himself wrote that certain recent grants were for ten or twenty thousand acres each, so that privileged persons had engrossed all the good land in those parts, by which means they kept others from settling it or else made them pay for it.20
Despite all the concern which this matter created, it is doubtful whether it was to any appreciable extent responsible for the continued emigration of poor families. The mere granting of patents for large tracts of land could not of itself fix the economic structure of the colony, could not, if all other conditions were favorable, prevent the establishment of small freeholds. Rather than have their fields lie idle while the poor men who should have been cultivating them trooped out of the colony, the rich would gladly have sold them in small parcels at nominal prices. In the first half century after the settlement at Jamestown, as we have seen, such a breakup of extensive holdings into little farms actually occurred. Had similar conditions prevailed in the later period a like develop- ment would have followed. But in 1630 or 1650, when slaves were seldom employed and when tobacco was high, the poor
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man's toil yielded a return so large that he could well afford to purchase a little farm and make himself independent. In 1680 or 1700, in the face of the competition of slave labor, he was almost helpless. Even had he found a bit of unoccupied ground to which he could secure a title, he could not make it yield enough to sustain him and his family.21
In 1728 Governor Gooch wrote the Board of Trade that the former belief that large holdings of frontier land had been an impediment to settlement was entirely erroneous. It was his opinion, in fact, that extensive grants made it to the interest of the owners to bring in settlers and so populate the country. In confirmation of this he pointed to the fact that Spotsylvania country, where many large patents had been issued, had filled up more rapidly than Brunswick, where they had been re- stricted in size.22
In the first decade of the new century the emigration out of the tobacco colonies continued without abatement. With another disastrous decline in the price of tobacco following the outbreak of the wars of Charles XII and Louis XIV, so many families moved over the border that the Board of Trade, once more becoming seriously alarmed, questioned the Council as to the causes of the evil and what steps should be taken to remedy it. In their reply the Councillors repeated the old arguments, declaring that the lack of land in Virginia and the immunity of debtors from prosecution in the proprietory colonies were responsible for the movement. But they touched the heart of the matter in their further statement that the great stream of negroes that was pouring into the colony had so in- creased the size of the tobacco crop that prices had declined and the poor found it difficult to subsist. Not only "servants just free go to North Carolina," they wrote, "but old planters whose farms are worn out."
A year later President Jennings stated that the migration
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was continuing and that during the summer of 1709 "many entire families" had moved out of the colony.24 In fact, al- though but few indentured servants arrived from England after the first decade of the century, poor whites were still departing for the north or for western Carolina so late as 1730. William Byrd II tells us that in 1728, when he was running the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina, he was entertained by a man who "was lately removed, Bag and Baggage from Maryland, thro a strong Antipathy he had to work and paying his Debts." Indeed he thought it a "thor- ough Aversion to Labor" which made "People file off to North Carolina."25
It is impossible to estimate the numbers involved in this movement, but they must have run into the thousands. For a full half century a large proportion of the white immigrants to Virginia seem to have remained there for a comparatively short time only, then to pass on to other settlements. And the migration to Virginia during these years we know to have comprised not less than thirty or thirty-five thousand persons. In fact, it would seem that this movement out of the older colony must have been a very important factor in the peopling of its neighbors, not only western Carolina and western Mary- land, but Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Though many thus fled before the stream of negroes which poured in from Africa, others remained behind to fight for their little plantations. Yet they waged a losing battle. Those who found it possible to purchase slaves, even one or two, could ride upon the black tide, but the others slowly sank beneath it.
During the first half of the Eighteenth century the poor whites sought to offset the cheapness of slave made tobacco by producing themselves only the highest grades. The traders who dealt in the finest Orinoco, which brought the best prices,
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found it not upon the plantations of the wealthy, but of those who tended their plants with their own hands. "I must beg you to remember that the common people make the best," wrote Governor Gooch to the Lords of Trade in 1731.26
In fact, the wealthy planter, with his newly acquired gangs of slaves, found it difficult at this time to produce any save the lower grades of tobacco. The African was yet too savage, too untutored in the ways of civilization to be utilized for anything like intensive cultivation. "Though they may plant more in quantity," wrote Gooch, "yet it frequently proves very mean stuff, different from the Tobacco produced from well im- proved and well tended Grounds." "Yet the rich Man's trash will always damp the Market," he adds, "and spoil the poor Man's good Tobacco which has been carefully managed."27 Thus the small farmer made one last desperate effort to save himself by pitting his superior intelligence against the cheap- ness of slave labor.
But his case was hopeless. As slavery became more and more fixed upon the colony, the negro gradually increased in efficiency. He learned to speak his master's language, broken- ly of course, but well enough for all practical purposes. He was placed under the tutelage of overseers, who taught him the details of his work and saw that he did it. He became a civilized being, thoroughly drilled in the one task required of him, the task of producing tobacco. Thus the rich planter soon found it possible to cultivate successfully the higher grades, and so to drive from his last rampart the white free- holder whose crop was tended by himself alone.
Placed at so great a disadvantage, the poor man, at all times in very difficult circumstances, found it almost impossible to exist whenever conditions in Europe sent the price of tobacco down. In the years from 1706 to 1714, when the tobacco trade was interrupted by the wars of Charles XII in the Baltic
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region and the protracted struggle known as the War of the Spanish Succession, he was reduced to the utmost extremities.
Virginia and Maryland were learning that a prosperity founded upon one crop which commanded a world market was in unsettled times subject to serious setbacks. It was a long cry from the James and the Potomac to the Baltic ports, yet the welfare of the Virginia and Maryland planters was in no small degree dependent upon the maintenance of peaceful con- ditions in Poland and Sweden and Russia. A war which seriously curtailed the exportation of English leaf to the northern countries would inevitably react on the price and so bring misfortune to the colonial planters. When called before the Board of Trade to testify as to the decay of the tobacco trade, the manufacturer John Linton declared that the Baltic countries, which formerly had purchased thousands of hogs- heads a year, now took comparatively few. "The Russian trade is ruined," he said.28
The war against France and Spain, coming at this unfor- tunate juncture, still further restricted the market, sent prices down to new depths and filled to overflowing the planters' cup of misfortune. "The war has stopped the trade with Spain, France, Flanders and part of the Baltic," Colonel Quary reported in a memorial to the Board of Trade. "which took off yearly 20,000 hogsheads of tobacco. Now our best foreign market is Holland."29 The pamphlet entitled The Present State of the Tobacco Plantations in America stated, in 1708, that France and Spain alone had imported 20,000 hogsheads, but that both were now otherwise supplied. "The troubles in Sweden, Poland, Russia, etc., have prevented the usual ex- portation of great quantities to those ports. Virginia and Maryland have severely felt the loss of such exportation, hav- ing so far reduced the planters that for several years past the whole product of their tobacco would hardly clothe the ser- vants that made it."30
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Their misfortunes were accentuated by the fact that the Dutch took advantage of the European upheavals to gain con- trol of a part of the tobacco trade. Upon the outbreak of the war with Louis XIV, England prohibited the exportation of tobacco either to France or to Spain, but Holland, despite her participation in the struggle, apparently took no such action. On the contrary she strained every nerve to entrench herself in the markets of her ally before peace should once more open the flood gates to Virginia and Maryland tobacco. With this in view the acreage in Holland devoted to the cultivation of the leaf was rapidly extended. "The Dutch are improving and increasing their tobacco plantations," wrote John Linton in 1706. "In 1701 they produced only 18,000 hogsheads. Last year it was 33,500 hogsheads." Plantations at Nimwegen, Rhenen, Amersfoort and Nijkerk turned out 13,400,000 pounds, while great quantities were raised on the Main, in Higher Germany and in Prussia.31
The Dutch mixed their own leaf with that of Virginia and Maryland in the proportion of four to one, subjected it to a process of manufacture and sent it out to all the European markets.32 In 1707 a letter to John Linton stated that they had from thirty to forty houses for "making up tobacco in rolls," employing 4,000 men, besides great numbers of women and girls. Their Baltic exports were estimated at 12,350,000 pounds ; 2,500,000 pounds to Norway, 1,500,000 to Jutland and Denmark, 4,000,000 to Sweden, 2,350,000 to Lapland, 2,000,000 to Danzig and Königsberg.33
With the continuation of the war on the continent Dutch competition became stronger and stronger. In 1714, when peace was at last in prospect, they seemed thoroughly en- trenched in many of the markets formerly supplied by the English. "The planting of tobacco in Holland, Germany, Etc.," it was reported to the Board of Trade, "is increased to
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above four times what it was 20 years ago, and amounts now to as much as is made in both Virginia and Maryland." The tobacco trade, which had formerly produced some £250,000 in the balance of trade, had declined to about half that figure, exports of manufactured goods to the Chesapeake were rapidly dwindling, the number of ships engaged in carrying tobacco was greatly reduced, the merchants were impoverished, the planters were ruined.84
"It is hardly possible to imagine a more miserable spectacle than the poorer sort of inhabitants in this colony," the Council wrote in 1713, "whose labour in tobacco has not for several years afforded them clothing to shelter them from the violent colds as well as heats to both which this climate is subject in the several seasons. The importation of British and other European commodities by the merchants, whereby the planters were formerly well supplied with clothing, is now in a manner wholly left off and the small supplies still ventured sold at such prodigeous rates as they please. Many families formerly well clothed and their houses well furnished are now reduced to rags and all the visible marks of poverty."35
This unfortunate period was but temporary. With the con- clusion of peace English tobacco was dumped upon the Euro- pean market at a figure so low as to defy competition. And when once the hogsheads began to move, the reaction on Vir- ginia and Maryland was rapid and pronounced. Soon prices rose again to the old levels, and the colony entered upon a period, for the larger planters at least, of unprecedented pros- perity.36 But the eight years of hardship and poverty made a lasting imprint upon the poorest class of whites. Coming as they did upon the heels of the first great wave of negro immigration, they accelerated the movement of the disrupting forces already at work. It was not by accident that the largest migration of whites to other settlements occurred just at this
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time and that the inquiries as to its cause are most frequent. The little planter class never fully recovered from the blow dealt it by the temporary loss of the larger part of the Euro- pean tobacco trade.
The small freeholders who possessed neither servants nor slaves did not disappear entirely, but they gradually declined in numbers and sank into abject poverty. During the period of Spotswood's administration they still constituted a large part of the population. The tax list for 1716 in Lancaster, one of the older counties, shows that of 314 persons listed as tithables, 202 paid for themselves only37 Making ample de- ductions for persons not owning land it would appear that more than half the planters at this date still tilled their fields only with their own labor. At the time of the American Revolu- tion, however, the situation had changed materially, and a de- cided dwindling of the poor farmer class is noticeable. In Gloucester county the tax lists for 1782-83 show 490 white families, of which 320 were in possession of slaves. Of the 170 heads of families who possessed no negroes, since no doubt some were overseers, some artisans, some professional men, it is probable that not more than eighty or ninety were proprietors.38 In Spotsylvania county similar conditions are noted. Of 704 tithable whites listed in 1783 all save 199 possessed slaves.39 In Dinwiddie county, in the year 1782, of 843 tithable whites, 210 only were not slave holders.40 Ap- parently the Virginia yeoman, the sturdy, independent farmer of the Seventeenth century, who tilled his little holding with his own hands, had become an insignificant factor in the life of the colony. The glorious promises which the country had held out to him in the first fifty years of its existence had been belied. The Virginia which had formerly been so largely the land of the little farmer, had become the land of masters and slaves. For aught else there was no room.
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Before the end of the Eighteenth century the condition of the poorest class had become pitiable. The French philosopher Chastellux who spent much time in Virginia during the Ameri- can Revolution testifies to their extreme misery. "It is there that I saw poor persons for the first time since crossing the ocean," he says. "In truth, near these rich plantations, in which the negro alone is unhappy, are often found miserable huts inhabited by whites whose wan faces and ragged gar- ments give testimony to their poverty."41
Philip Fithian, in his Journal, describes the habits of this class and is vigorous in his condemnation of the brutal fights which were so common among them. "In my opinion animals which seek after and relish such odius and filthy amusements are not of the human species," he says, "they are destitute of the remotest pretension of humanity."42 Even the negroes of the wealthy regarded these persons with contempt, a contempt which they were at no pains to conceal.
The traveller Smyth thought them "kind, hospitable and generous," but illiberal, noisy and rude," and much "addicted to inebriety and averse to labor." This class, he says, "who ever compose the bulk of mankind, are in Virginia more few in numbers, in proportion to the rest of the inhabitants, than perhaps in any other country in the universe."43
But it must not be imagined that slavery drove out or ruined the entire class of small farmers, leaving Virginia alone to the wealthy. In fact, most of those who were firmly established remained, finding their salvation in themselves purchasing slaves. Few indeed had been able to avail themselves of the labor of indentured servants; the cost of transportation was too heavy, the term too short, the chances of sickness or deser- tion too great. But with the influx of thousands of negroes, the more enterprising and industrious of the poor planters quite frequently made purchases. Although the initial outlay
-
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was greater, they could secure credit by pledging their farms and their crops, and in the end the investment usually paid handsome dividends and many who could not raise the money to buy a full grown negro, often found it possible to secure a child, which in time would become a valuable asset.
This movement may readily be traced by an examination of the tax lists and county records of the Eighteenth century. In Lancaster even so early as 1716 we find that the bulk of the slaves were in the hands, not of wealthy proprietors, but of comparatively poor persons. Of the 314 taxpayers listed, 113 paid for themselves alone, 94 for two only, 37 for three, 22 for four, thirteen for five, while thirty-five paid for more than five. As there were but few servants in the colony at this time it may be taken for granted that the larger part of the tithables paid for by others were negro slaves. It would seem, then, that of some 200 slave owners in this country, about 165 possessed from one to four negroes only. There were but four persons listed as having more than twenty slaves, William Ball with 22, Madam Fox with 23, William Fox with 25 and Robert Carter with 126.44
Nor did the class of little slave holders melt away as time passed. In fact they continued to constitute the bulk of the white population of Virginia for a century and a half, from the beginning of the Eighteenth century until the conquest of the State by Federal troops in 1865. Thus we find that of 633 slave owners in Dinwiddie county in 1782, 95 had one only, 66 had two, 71 three, 45 four, 50 five, making an aggregate of 327, or more than half of all the slave holders, who pos- sessed from one to five negroes.45 In Spotsylvania there were, in 1783, 505 slave owners, of whom 78 possessed one each, 54 two, 44 three, 41 four, and 30 five each. Thus 247, or nearly 49 per cent of the slave holders, had from one to five slaves only. One hundred and sixteen, or 23 per cent, had
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from six to ten inclusive.46 The Gloucester lists for 1783 show similar conditions. There were in this country 320 slave holders, having 3,314 negroes, an average of about 1013 for each owner. Fifty had one each, 4I had two each, 9 had three, 30 had four and twenty-six had five. Thus 156, or about half of all the owners, had from one to five slaves.47 In Princess Anne county, of a total of 388 slave owners, 100 had one each, 56 had two each and forty-five had three each.48
Records of transfers of land tend to substantiate this testi- mony, by showing that the average holdings at all times in the Eighteenth century were comparatively small. In the years from 1722 to 1729 Spotsylvania was a new county, just opened to settlers, and a large part of its area had been granted in large tracts to wealthy patentees. Yet the deed book for these years shows that it was actually settled, not by these men themselves, but by a large number of poor planters. Of the 197 transfers of land recorded, 44 were for 100 acres or less and IIO for 300 acres or less. The average deed was for 487 acres. As some of the transfers were obviously made for speculative purposes and not with the intent of putting the land under cultivation, even this figure is misleading. The average farm during the period was probably not in excess of 400 acres. One of the most extensive dealers in land in Spotsylvania was Larkin Chew who secured a patent for a large tract and later broke it up into many small holdings which were sold to new settlers.49
This substitution of the small slave holder for the man who used only his own labor in the cultivation of his land unques- tionably saved the class of small proprietors from destruction. Without it all would have been compelled to give up their holdings in order to seek their fortunes elsewhere, or sink to the condition of "poor white trash." Yet the movement was in many ways unfortunate. It made the poor man less in-
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dustrious and thrifty. Formerly he had known that he could win nothing except by the sweat of his brow, but now he was inclined to let the negro do the work. Slavery cast a stigma upon labor which proved almost as harmful to the poor white man as did negro competition. Work in the tobacco fields was recognized as distinctly the task of an inferior race, a task not in keeping with the dignity of freemen.
Jefferson states that few indeed of the slave owners were ever seen to work. "For in a warm climate," he adds, "no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him."50 Chastellux noted the same tendency, declaring "that the indolence and dissipation of the middling and lower classes of white inhabitants of Virginia is such as to give pain to every reflecting mind."51
Slavery developed in the small farmers a spirit of pride and haughtiness that was unknown to them in the Seventeenth century. Every man, no matter how poor, was surrounded by those to whom he felt himself superior, and this gave him a certain self-esteem. Smyth spoke of the middle class as gen- erous, friendly and hospitable in the extreme, but possessing a rudeness and haughtiness which was the result of their "general intercourse with slaves."52 Beverley described them as haughty and jealous of their liberties, and so impatient of restraint that they could hardly bear the thought of being con- trolled by any superior power. Hugh Jones, Anbury, Fithian and other Eighteenth century writers all confirm this testi- mony.
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