USA > Virginia > The planters of colonial Virginia > Part 2
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development of an industrial community and for many dec- ades, perhaps for centuries, could not hope to attain it. Her future lay in the discovery and exploitation of one staple com- modity for which she was so preeminently adapted that she could, even with her costly labor, meet the competition of other lands. The future history of Virginia was to be built up around the Indian plant tobacco.
CHAPTER II
THE INDIAN WEED
HISTORY is baffling in its complexity. The human mind in- stinctively strives for simplicity, endeavors to reproduce all things to set rules, to discover the basic principles upon which all action is based. And in various lines of research much success has attended these efforts. We know the laws under- lying the movements of the planets, of various chemical re- actions, of plant and animal life. It is inevitable, then, that attempts should be made to accomplish similar results in history, to master the vast multitude of facts which crowd its pages, many of them seemingly unrelated, and show that after all they obey certain fundamental laws. Despite the vaunted freedom of the human will, it is maintained, mankind like the planets or the chemical agents, cannot escape the operation of definite forces to which it is subjected. And if these forces are studied and understood, to some extent at least, the course of future events may be predicted.
Thus it may be accepted as practically established that in any country and with any people a condition of continued dis- order and anarchy must be succeeded by one of despotism. History records, we believe, no exception to this rule, while there are many instances which tend to confirm it. The abso- lute rule of the Caesars followed the anarchy of the later Ro- man republic, the Oliverian Protectorate succeeded the British civil wars, the first French Empire the Reign of Terror, the Bolshevik despotism the collapse of the old regime in Russia. Such will always be the case, we are told, because mankind turns instinctively to any form of government in quest of
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protection from anarchy, and the easiest form of government to establish and operate is despotism.
Not content with generalizations of this kind, however, cer- tain historians have undertaken to reduce all human action to some one great fundamental principle. The Freudian view emphasizes the influence of sex; Buckle maintains that the effect of climate is all-powerful. In recent years many stu- dents, while not agreeing that the solution of the problem is quite so simple, yet believe that underlying all social develop- ment will be found economic forces of one kind or another, that in commerce and industry and agriculture lies the key to every event of moment in the history of mankind. Often these forces have been obscured and misunderstood, but close study will always reveal them. It is folly to waste time, they say, as writers have so long done, in setting forth the ad- ventures of this great man or that, in dwelling upon the de- tails of political struggles or recounting the horrors of war. All these are but surface indications of the deeper movements underneath, movements in every case brought about by eco- nomic developments.
But this interpretation of history is by no means universally accepted. While admitting readily that the conditions sur- rounding the production and exchange of useful commodities have affected profoundly the course of events, many historians deny that they give the key to every important movement. We must study also the progress of human thought, of religion, of politics, or our conception of history will be warped and imperfect. How is it possible to explain the French religious wars of the Sixteenth century by the theory of economic causes? In what way does it account for the rebellion of Virginia and North Carolina and Maryland against the British government in 1775? How can one deny that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln affected profoundly the course of Amer- ican history ?
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These efforts to simplify the meaning of human events have often led to error, have stressed certain events too strongly, have minimized others. The complexity of history is self- evident; we must for the present at least content ourselves with complex interpretations of it. If there be any great underlying principles which explain all, they have yet to be discovered.
Thus it would be folly in the study of colonial Virginia to blind ourselves to the importance of various non-economic fac- tors, the love of freedom which the settlers brought with them from England, their affection for the mother country, the in- fluence of the Anglican church. Yet it is obvious that we cannot understand the colony, its social structure, its history, its development unless we have a clear insight into the eco- nomic forces which operated upon it. These Englishmen, finding themselves in a new country, surrounded by conditions fundamentally different from those to which they had been accustomed, worked out a new and unique society, were them- selves moulded into something different.
And in colonial Virginia history there is a key, which though it may not explain all, opens the door to much that is funda- mental. This key is tobacco. The old saying that the story of Virginia is but the story of tobacco is by no means a gross exaggeration. It was this Indian plant, so despised by many of the best and ablest men of the time, which determined the character of the life of the colony and shaped its destinies for two and a half centuries. Tobacco was the chief factor in bringing final and complete failure to the attempts to produce useful raw materials, it was largely instrumental in moulding the social classes and the political structure of the colony, it was almost entirely responsible for the system of labor, it even exerted a powerful influence upon religion and morals. In a word, one can understand almost nothing of Virginia, its in-
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fancy, its development, its days of misfortune, its era of pros- perity, its peculiar civilization, the nature of its relations to England, unless one knows the history of tobacco.
As though they had a prophetic vision of its future impor- tance, the Virginia Indians revered the plant. To them it was an especial gift direct from the Great Spirit, and as such was endowed with unusual properties for doing good. When the fields of maize were dried and parched for lack of rain they powdered the tobacco and cast it to the winds that the evil genii might be propitiated; their priests on great occasions fed it to the sacrificial fires; when the usual catch of fish failed it was scattered over the water.1 Smoking was considered a token of friendship and peace. When the white men first visited the native villages they soon found that to reject the proffered pipe was to offend their savage hosts and incur their hostility.
It was John Rolfe, celebrated as the husband of Pocahontas, who first experimented with the native leaf. This gentleman was himself fond of smoking, but he found the Virginia to- bacco as it came from the hands of the savages, decidedly in- ferior to that of the West Indies. The leaf itself was small, and although the flavor was weak it was biting to the tongue.2 Rolfe's efforts proved entirely successful. In 1614, two years after his first attempt, he had obtained a product which Ralph Hamor declared to be as "strong, sweet and pleasant as any under the sun."3
Thus, early in its history, Virginia had found a commodity for which she was preeminently suited, in the production of which she could compete successfully with any country in the world. And for her tobacco she had a ready market. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth the habit of smoking had spread rapidly among the upper classes of English, until at the end of the sixteenth century, it was almost universal. When
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James I ascended the throne, although feeling a strong aversion to tobacco, he was forced to take up its use in order not to appear conspicuous among his courtiers, for the dictates of custom seem to have been as strong three hundred years ago as at present.4 At the time that Rolfe was making his experiments England was spending yearly for the Spanish product many thousands of pounds.
It is not surprising, then, that the colonists turned eagerly to tobacco culture. The news that Rolfe's little crop had been pronounced in England to be of excellent quality spread rapidly from settlement to settlement, bringing with it new hope and determination. Immediately tobacco absorbed the thoughts of all, became the one topic of conversation, and every available patch of land was seized upon for its cultiva- tion. The fortified areas within the palisades were crowded with tobacco plants, while even the streets of Jamestown were utilized by the eager planters.5 In 1617 the George set sail for England laden with 20,000 pounds of Virginia leaf, the first of the vast fleet of tobacco ships which for centuries were to pass through the capes of the Chesapeake bound for Europe.6 By 1627, the tobacco exports amounted to no less than half a million pounds.7
The London Company, together with the host of patriotic Englishmen who had placed such great hopes in the colony, were much disappointed at this unexpected turn of events. They had sought in the New World those "solid commodities" which they realized were fundamental to the prosperity of their country, commodities upon which English industrial life was founded. And they had found only the Indian weed- tobacco. This plant not only contributed nothing to the wealth of the kingdom, it was felt, but was positively injurious to those who indulged in its use. Surely, declared one writer, men "grow mad and crazed in the brain in that they would
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adventure to suck the smoke of a weed." James I thought there could be no baser and more harmful corruption, while Charles I expressed himself with equal emphasis. So late as 1631 the latter protested against the growing use of tobacco, which he termed "an evil habit of late tymes."8
Yet England soon learned to welcome the colonial tobacco as far better than no product at all. Hitherto the leaf in use had been raised in the Spanish colonies, and England's annual tobacco bill was becoming larger and larger. It seemed calamitous that British industry should be drained of good and useful commodities in exchange for a plant the consumption of which was harmful rather than beneficial. It was at least some satisfaction to know, then, that England could substitute for the Spanish leaf the growth of their own colonies. Ap- parently it was only later, however, that there came a full realization of the opportunity afforded for enriching England and building up her merchant marine by exporting tobacco to foreign countries. For the present they accepted this one product of their experiment in colonial expansion, reluctantly and with keen disappointment, as the best that could be ob- tained.
Yet it was obvious to the London Company that tobacco held out the only prospect, not only of securing a profit from their venture, but of bringing to Virginia some measure of prosperity. The first consignment of leaf which came from the colony sold for no less than 5s. 3d. a pound, a price which promised a rich return to the planters on the James and their backers in England.9 And they much preferred to have a prosperous colony, even when prosperity was founded on to- bacco, than a weak, impoverished settlement, which would be a drain upon their personal resources and of no value to the nation. Thus they accepted the inevitable, gave what en- couragement they could to the new product, and sought to
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use it as a means for building up the British empire in America. When once England had established herself firmly in the New World, it would be time enough to return to the attempt to secure from the colony ship-stores, potash, iron and silk.
With the overthrow of the Company, however, the Crown made repeated efforts to direct the energies of Virginia away from the all-absorbing cultivation of tobacco. In 1636 Charles I wrote to the Governor and Council bidding them moderate the excessive quantities of the plant laid out each year and to endeavor to produce some other staple commodi- ties.10 "The King cannot but take notice," he reiterated the next year, "how little that colony hath advanced in Staple com- modities fit for their own subsistence and clothing," and he warned the planters to emulate the Barbados and Caribee Islands, where a beginning had been made in cotton, wool and other useful things.11 But the colonists paid no heed to these repeated warnings. The King's commands were no more effective in establishing new industries than had been the first attempts of the Company. Virginia was not prepared to compete with the workers of Europe in their own chosen fields, and persisted, had to persist, in the production of the one commodity for which she possessed unsurpassed natural advantages.
It is remarkable how universally the plant was cultivated by all classes of Virginians throughout the colonial period. It was difficult to find skilled artisans in any line of work, since those who had pursued in England the various trades usually deserted them, when they landed in the colony, in order to turn to the raising of tobacco. And the few who continued to pursue their old vocations usually rented or pur- chased a small tract of land and devoted a part of their time to its cultivation. Blacksmiths, carpenters, shipwrights,
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coopers all raised their little tobacco crop and sold it to the British merchants,12 while even the poor minister sought to make ends meet by planting his glebe with Orinoco or Sweet- scented. The Governor himself was not free from the all- prevailing custom, and frequently was the possessor of a farm where his servants and slaves, like those of other gentlemen in the colony, were kept busy tending the tobacco crop.
It is doubtful whether the members of the London Com- pany, even Sir Edwin Sandys himself, ever attempted to vis- ualize the social structure which would develop in the Virginia they were planning. If so, they unquestionably pictured a state of affairs very different from that which the future held in store. They took it for granted that Virginia would to a large extent be a duplicate of England. In the forests of the New World would grow up towns and villages, centers of in- dustry and centers of trade. The population would be di- vided into various classes-well-to-do proprietors boasting of the title of gentleman ; professional men, lawyers, physicians, ministers ; skilled artisans of all kinds; day laborers.
We catch a glimpse of the Virginia of their minds from a Broadside issued in 1610, appealing for volunteers for service in the colony.13 We can see the shipwrights at work in the busy yards of thriving ports; the smelters caring for their iron and copper furnaces; the "minerall-men" digging out the ore; saltmakers evaporating the brackish waters for their use- ful product; vine-dressers tending their abundant crops of grapes and coopers turning out the hogsheads in which to store the wine which came from the presses; bricklayers and carpenters fashioning substantial houses; fishermen bringing in the plentiful yield of the day and dressers preparing the fish for foreign shipment; joiners, smiths, gardeners, bakers, gun-founders, ploughwrights, brewers, sawyers, fowlers, each plying his trade in the New Brittania.
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But how different was the reality. Virginia became, not an industrial, but a distinctly agricultural community. For more than a century it could boast not a single town worthy of the name.14 It was but a series of plantations, not large in extent, but stretching out for miles along the banks of the rivers and creeks, all devoted to the raising of tobacco. The population of the colony was but the aggregate of the population of the plantation-the owner, the wage earners, the indentured ser- vant, a few slaves. Virginia in the Seventeenth century, de- spite the design of its founders, developed a life of its own, a life not only unlike that of England, but unique and distinct.
Immigration, like everything else in the colony, was shaped by the needs of tobacco. For its successful production the plant does not require skilled labor or intensive cultivation. The barbarous natives of Africa, who later in the century were imported in such large numbers, eventually proved quite adequate to the task. But it does require the service of many hands. For decades after Rolfe's discovery had opened a new vista of prosperity for Virginia, fertile land was so cheap that a person even of moderate means might readily purchase an extensive plantation,15 but it would be of little service to him unless he could find hands for clearing away the forests, break- ing the soil, tending and curing the plants.
Of the three requirements of production-natural resources, capital and labor-the fertile soil furnished the first in abun- dance, the second could readily be secured, but the last re- mained for a full century the one great problem of the planters. From the days of Sir George Yeardley to those of Nicholson and Andros there was a persistent and eager demand for work- ers. Of this there can be no better evidence than the remark- ably high wages which prevailed in the colony, especially in the years prior to the Restoration. In fact, it is probable that the laborer received for his services four or five times the
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amount he could earn in England. Even during the time of the London Company we find George Sandys writing to a friend in London to procure indentured servants for the colony as the wages demanded were intolerable. A day's work brought, in addition to food, a pound of tobacco valued at one shilling, while in England the unskilled worker considered him- self fortunate if he could earn so much in a week.16
In his efforts to solve this acute problem the planter found little hope in the aborigines. The Spaniards, it is true, had made use of the Indians to till their fields or work in the gold and silver mines, but the Pamunkey and the Powhatan were cast in a different mold from the Aztec and the Peruvian. To hunt them out of their native lairs and bind them to arduous and ignominious servitude was hardly to be thought of. Their spirit was too proud to be thus broken, the safe refuge of the woods too near at hand. One might as well have attempted to hitch lions and tigers to the plough shaft, as to place these wild children of the forest at the handles. At times it proved practicable to make use of Indian children for servants, and there are numerous instances on record in which they are found in the homes of the planters.17 But this, of course, could be of little service in solving the pressing labor problem, in clearing new ground or tilling the idle fields. The Vir- ginia landowner was forced to turn elsewhere for his helpers.
In 1619 a Dutch privateer put into the James river and dis- embarked twenty Africans who were sold to the settlers as slaves. This event, so full of evil portent for the future of Virginia, might well have afforded a natural and satisfac- tory solution of the labor problem. Slaves had long been used in the Spanish colonies, proving quite competent to do the work of tending the tobacco plants, and bringing hand- some returns to their masters. But it was impossible at this time for England to supply her plantations with this type
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of labor. The slave trade was in the hands of the Dutch, who had fortified themselves on the African coast and jealously ex- cluded other nations. Thus while the demand for negro slaves remained active in the colony, they increased in num- bers very slowly. The muster of 1624-25 shows only 22.18 During the following half century there was a small influx of negroes, but their numbers were still too small to affect seri- ously the economic life of the colony.19
The settlers were thus forced to look to England itself to supply them with hands for their tobacco fields. They knew that in the mother country were many thousands of indigent persons who would welcome an opportunity to better their lot by migrating to the New World. And the English states- men, feeling that there was need for blood letting, welcomed an opportunity to divert the surplus population to the new colony in America.20 The decline in English foreign trade and the stagnation of home industry had brought unemploy- ment and suffering to every class of workers. Wages were so low that the most industrious could not maintain themselves in comfort, while to provide against want in case of sickness or old age was hardly to be thought of. Every parish, every town swarmed with persons stricken with abject poverty. In some parts of the country no less than 30 per cent of the population were dependent in part upon charity for their daily bread, while many were driven into vagabondage and crime, becoming an element of danger rather than of strength to the nation.21 It seemed to the planters that the mother country constituted an abundant reservoir of labor, a reservoir already overflowing and capable of supplying indefinitely their every need.
The only drawback was the long and expensive voyage across the Atlantic. The fare, even for the poorest and most crowded accommodations, was no less than six pounds ster-
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ling, a sum far beyond the means of the thriftiest laborer.22 Obviously some scheme had to be evolved to overcome this difficulty before Virginia could make use of English labor. And so the planters turned to the simple expedient of ad- vancing the passage money to the immigrant and of placing him under strict legal bonds to work it out after reaching the colony.
This system, around which the economic life of Virginia centered for a full century, proved satisfactory to all con- cerned. The credit advanced to the immigrant made it pos- sible for him to earn his ocean fare, not in England where labor was cheap, but in America where it was dear. In other words, he was enabled without delay to enjoy the full benefits of selling his services in the best market. The necessity for placing him under a stringent contract or indenture is evident. Had this not been done the immigrant, upon finding himself in Virginia, might have refused to carry out his part of the bargain. But the indenture was in no sense a mark of servi- tude or slavery. It simply made it obligatory for the new- comer, under pain of severe penalties, to work out his passage money, and until that was accomplished to surrender a part of the personal liberty so dear to every Englishman.
It is erroneous to suppose that most of the servants were degenerates or criminals. It is true that the English Govern- ment from time to time sought to lessen the expense of pro- viding for convicted felons by sending some of them to the colonies, among them on rare occasions a few decidedly ob- jectionable characters. More than once the Virginians pro- tested vigorously against this policy as dangerous to the peace and prosperity of the colony.23 By far the larger part of these penal immigrants, however, were but harmless paupers, driven perhaps. to theft or some other petty offense by cold and hunger. Often they were sentenced to deportation by merci-
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ful judges in order that they might not feel the full weight of the harsh laws of that day.24
And of the small number of real criminals who came in, few indeed made any lasting imprint upon the social fabric of the colony. Many served for life and so had no opportunity of marrying and rearing families to perpetuate their degenerate traits. Those who escaped fled from the confines of settled Virginia to the mountains or to the backwoods of North Caro- lina. Many others succumbed to the epidemics which proved so deadly to the newcomers from England. In fact the crimi- nal servant was but a passing incident in the life and develop- ment of England's greatest and most promising colony.25
An appreciable proportion of the so-called criminal laborers were no more than political prisoners taken in the rebellions of the Seventeenth century. These men frequently repre- sented the sturdiest and most patriotic elements in the kingdom and were a source of strength rather than of weakness to the colony. When Drogheda was captured by Cromwell's stern Puritan troops in 1649, some of the unfortunate rebels escaped the firing squad only to be sent to America to serve in the sugar or tobacco fields. Just how many of these Irishmen fell to the share of Virginia it is impossible to say, but the number rises well into the hundreds, and the patent books of the period are full of headrights of undoubted Irish origin.26
When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 it be- came the turn of the Puritans to suffer, and many non-con- formists and former Oliverian soldiers were sent to Virginia. In fact so many old Commonwealth men were serving in the tobacco fields in 1663 that they felt strong enough to plot, not only for their own freedom, but for the overthrow of the colonial government.27 In 1678, after the suppression of the Scottish Covenanters by the Highland Host, a new batch of prisoners were sent to the plantations.28 Seven years later
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