USA > Virginia > Virginia, a history of the people > Part 10
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The spirit inspiring the Assembly may be seen from their petition to the Company to grant them authority "to allow or disallow of their orders of court, as liis Majesty hath given them power to allow or disallow our laws." This was the great original American claim of right -the authority to govern themselves ; and Henry's protest against the Stamp Act, a century and a half afterwards, was simply its repetition.
The Assembly adjourned in August (1619), and the
THE FIRST AMERICAN ASSEMBLY. . 117
laws were sent to England, where they were regarded as "judiciously carried, but exceeding intricate." They were in truth similar to all regulations passed in new societies, and dealt with local questions which it was necessary to settle ; but under all the petty details was the vital fact that at last the representatives of the people had assembled to declare the popular will. A new power was resolutely asserting itself, and even the savages recognized its existence. Opechancanough, who had become Emperor now, sent his petition to the new authority that some corn taken from his people on the Chesapeake miglit be paid for. That was the past and present face to face - the age of Powhatan and the modern world confronting each other. The old Em- peror had appealed to club-law and flint-pointed ar- rows. The new Emperor appealed for protection to an " act of Assembly."
Smith went away with a depressed heart in 1609, giving up all as lost, and mourning over his futile at- tempt to found a new society. But he builded better than he knew. Long mouldering under ground, and fated, it seemed, to rot and perish there, life had still lingered in the grain, and here was the result. All the old adversaries hampering him at every step had disappeared. Powhatan, his most dangerous enemy, was dead. The London Council, which he had so long wrangled with, had yielded up its powers to the Com- pany. Virginia was a fact at last, not the mere dream of an enterprising spirit. At Jamestown, where he had cannonaded the rebels, and fed the starving handful, and lived days and nights of peril and anxiety, a peace- ful body of legislators had assembled to make laws for a thriving society. In less than ten years from the autumn of 1609 this marvel nad been accomplished.
118 VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
The meeting of the first Assembly in 1619 was fol- lowed in 1621 by the formal grant to the Virginians of free government by written charter: "a constitu- tion after their heart's desire," says Beverley. This was the work of Sir Edwin Sandys, the head of the Virginia party, of whom James I. said, when he was spoken of as treasurer, "Choose the devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys." Under his leader- ship the Company persisted in their liberal policy. Yeardley's ill health forced him to decline a new ap- pointment. Sir Francis Wyat, a young gentleman of high character, was sent out as Governor; and when he reached Virginia, in October, 1621, he brought the new charter with him.
This old " Ordinance and Constitution " for a Council of State and General Assembly in Virginia is still pre- served. Its tone is large and noble. The intent is " by the divine assistance to settle such a form of govern- ment as may be to the greatest benefit and comfort of the people, and whereby all injustice, grievances, and oppression may be prevented and kept off as much as possible from the said colony." The Governor is to have a Council to assist him in the administration. He and the Council, together with Burgesses chosen, two from every town, hundred, and plantation, by the in- habitants, are to constitute a General Assembly, who are to meet yearly, and decide all matters coming before them by the greatest number of voices ; but the Gov- ernor is to have a negative voice. No law of the As- sembly is to be or continue in force unless it is ratified by a General Court, and returned to them under the Company's seal. But when the government of the colony is once "well framed and settled accordingly
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THE MAIDS AND FIRST SLAVES.
. . . no orders of court afterwards shall bind the said colony unless they be ratified in like manner in the Gen- eral Assemblies."
This paper bore date July 24, 1621, and is the first charter of free government in America.
XX.
1
THE MAIDS AND FIRST SLAVES.
ABOUT the moment when Virginia thus secured the immense boon of virtual free government, slavery came. This ominous event was preceded by another, which created a great social change - the arrival of a ship's cargo of "maids" to become wives of the colonists. Let us notice, in the first place, the more agreeable incident of the two.
The "maids," as the chronicle styles them, came at the instigation of Sir Edwin Sandys. This wise states- man, now at the head of the Company, devised the plan of sending out a number of respectable young women to marry the Virginia adventurers. He had shown his warm interest in the colony in many ways. What it wanted was immigration, and he took energetic steps to supply it. In one year he sent out twelve hundred and sixty-one new settlers, to whom King James I. added a hundred convicted felons. The Virginia party in the Company protested against this outrage, and the Vir- ginians were bitterly indignant when they found that this poisonous element was to be infused into their so- ciety even as servants. But the King persisted, and the felons came. And now with the increasing immigration came a more urgent demand than ever that social order
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
in the colony should be established on a firm basis. A great change had taken place. In the early years the voyagers to far-off Virginia had been simply " adven- turers " - men adventuring to seek their fortunes, but with no intention of settling and passing the remainder of their lives in the new land. They looked upon the country as a place in which they would make no long tarrying, and neither brought their families with them nor established their homes there. They hoped to re- turn in a few years, with improved fortunes, to Eng- land; but this was not the spirit that founds new com- monwealths. Sandys clearly saw that unless Virginia was looked upon as home the enterprise would miscarry, and the best means of making it such was plain to him. What the Virginians required as a stimulus to exertion was to have wives and children depending upon them. With these they would perform honest labor cheerfully, and not look back toward England when the hand was on the plow. Wife and child would make the home in the new land what home had been in the old.
The result was that ninety young women were sent out by Sandys as wives for the settlers - persons of unexceptionable character, who had volunteered for the purpose. A singular feature of the arrangement was that their husbands were to purchase them. The ex- penditure of the Company in sending them was con- siderable, and it was required that those who selected them, or were selected by them, should repay the cost of their outfit and passage. This was fixed at one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco - about eighty dollars. On payment of that amount the settler was entitled to a wife.
The whole scheme, which is apt to strike the reader
121
THIE MAIDS AND FIRST SLAVES.
of to-day as somewhat comic, was entered into by San- dys and his associates in the most earnest spirit. In their regulations for the government of the colony, the Company made strong distinctions in favor of married men. To prevent all objection, the purity of the femi- nine supply was jealously guarded, and two of the number who transgressed were sent back to England. Every safeguard was thrown around them to make them happy in their new homes. It was ordered : " In case they cannot be presently married, we desire that they may be put with several householders that have wives until they can be supplied with husbands. . .. We de- sire that the marriage be free, according to nature, and we would not have these maids deceived and married to servants, but only such freemen or tenants as have means to maintain them, . . . not enforcing them to marry against their wills."
These orders went in the ship with the maids, and seem to have been strictly obeyed. The scheme suc- ceeded to a marvel: there was no difficulty at all in the way of being "presently married." On the arrival of the ship the settlers flocked to Jamestown, and the curious spectacle was presented of suitors going about in the crowd of maids, and selecting or being selected by their future wives. The arrangement seems to have caused no embarrassment, and the odd wooing was soon ended. Offers were made and matches agreed to with- out loss of time. The men paid for their partners, and were married to them at once ; and the happiest results followed. "These new companions were received with such fondness " that they wrote to England, and in- duced sixty other maids, "young, handsome and chaste," . to come out to Virginia for the same purpose.
122 VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
Soon the wise device of Sir Edwin Sandys bore its fruit. The careless adventurers became "provident fathers of families, solicitous about the prosperity of a country which they now considered as their own." The colony, under the effect of these virtuous home ties, grew to be a settled and well-ordered society ; immi -. gration increased ; new land patents were constantly applied for ; and in three years no less than three thousand five hundred persons went from England to cast their lot in Virginia.
And now, at the very time when Sir Edwin was executing his original project of infusing fresh and lusty blood into the depleted colony, blood of another sort was coming, and coming to stay. Up to this period the only servitude known in Virginia was that of "indented servants." This servitude was tempo- rary and conditional, even in the case of felons like those sent to Virginia by James I. Sometimes the ser- vant entered into the arrangement himself. He was not a slave, but a debtor bound to serve for a term of years, to repay the cost of bringing him to Virginia. But a class of persons in England, nicknamed "spirits," beat up recruits, sold them off to the colonies, and they were transferred there to new masters at a large ad- vance. This was protested against, but the system went on. Prisoners taken at the battles of Dunbar and Worcester were also sent as servants to New England and Virginia, and as late as 1685 men condemned as adherents of Monmonth were disposed of in the same manner. The system was soon regulated by law. The labor of the indented servant was due to his master for the term of the indenture ; if cruelly treated he had his recourse to the " Commissioner," or Justice of the
123
THE MAIDS AND FIRST SLAVES.
Peace. He could not marry without his master's per- mission on penalty of a year's additional service. Har- boring runaways was a misdemeanor, and the runaway was to serve double the time lost. If he offended a second time he "passed under the statute of incorri- gible rogues," and was branded. This brand was the letter R, signifying Runaway, burned into his cheek. If he went to the Indians with fire-arms, and left them, he was to suffer death.
This is sufficient to define the social status of the in- dented servants. They were similar to the " redemp- tioners " of the banks of the Hudson in the next gen- eration - persons "brought over free, not being able to pay their passage money, and sold to the landed pro- prietors for a certain number of years." At the end of their terms of service, both the indented servants of the Virginia planter and the redemptioners of the New York patroon became free citizens.
Now (August, 1619), a portentous personage ap- peared on the soil of North America - the African slave.1 A Dutch ship sailed up James River, and of- fered for sale to the planters twenty negroes as slaves. There was to be no trouble about an indenture, or any limitation of the term of service. The negroes were cap- tives, and their owners sold them to repay themselves for their trouble and expense. There seems to have been no difference of opinion as to their right to do so. The negroes were probably regarded as substantially the
1 The year of the arrival of the first slaves is sometimes stated to have been 1620. The correct date is here given. Rolfe, then at James- town, says : " To begin with, this year, 1619, about the last of August, came in a Dutch man-of-war that sold us twenty negars." The first Assembly had met in July. Thus free government and African slav. ery were introduced into America nearly at the same moment.
124 VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
same as indented servants, with the important exception that the servitude was to last during their lives. The planters readily purchased them to cultivate tobacco ; they were scattered among the plantations ; and from this small nucleus widened, year by year, the great African shadow, out of which were to issue the light- ning and thunder of the future.
XXI.
THE MASSACRE.
WITH the opening of the year 1622 Virginia seemed to be on the highroad to prosperity. There were more than four thousand people in it. The old huddle of huts at Jamestown had streamed away into new settle- ments everywhere. Along the banks of James River, from a point just below the falls down to Chesapeake Bay, were numerous "plantations," the residences of little groups of settlers, varying from a few families to a hundred persons ; and adventurous people had pene -. trated the country and established " forts " toward the Potomac. The fields smiled with plenty ; there was no trace now of the old starving era. Tobacco had suddenly become a great source of revenue, and was assiduously cultivated. Glass and other works were in process of ercction. An Indian college had been founded at the City of Henricus. Virginia had repre- sentative government, and law and order reigned. To human cyes the foundation of a thriving state had been firmly laid.
Suddenly the one leader among the Indians who seemed to have inherited the brains and courage of
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THE MASSACRE.
Powhatan struck a heavy blow at all this prosperity. And it was struck at a moment when there was a feel- ing of profound security everywhere. The Indians were no longer feared, and a lasting peace between the two races seemed to have followed the old tur- moil. The red men went in and out of the houses, The whites visited them at their scattered villages, and traded with them for the proceeds of their hunting. They were supplied with fire-arms, and had become ex- cellent shots ; Sir George Yeardley had an Indian ser- vant to shoot game for him. In the eyes of the Vir- ginians, these red people were a conquered race - an inferior people, who had at last accepted their fate with resignation, and from whom nothing more was to be feared, since events had decided to whom Virginia be- longed.
From this dream they now had a rude waking. Powhatan had died in 1618, and had been succeeded by his brother, Opitchapan, an old and inert man, who was quickly deposed by Opechancanough. The Indian tra- dition in the time of Beverley was that Opechancanough was not Powhatan's brother, nor a Virginian at all, but a mysterious stranger from Mexico or some southwestern country. But he became the Virginia ruler, and, as soon as he found himself in authority, formed a plot for the extermination of the English. It was laid with great secrecy and skill. The essential point was to wait, and lull the colonists to a sense of security ; and this was thoroughly effected. For four years Opechan- canough was maturing his scheme, and bringing tribe after tribe into it ; and during this time no one of the many Indians acquainted with it betrayed him. He himself acted his part of friend of the English with the
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126 VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
utmost skill. When Argall came he visited Jamestown, and accepted the presents made him with effusion. When Yeardley invaded the Chickahominy tribe, Ope- chancanough appeared as a peacemaker. This went on until the early spring of 1622, by which time his plans were all matured and he was ready to strike.
A pretext was suddenly afforded him for making the attack. An Indian named Nemattanow, called "Jack o' the Feather " by the English, murdered one of the settlers, and was killed in turn. Opechancanough in- flamed his people by representing the death of this Indian as a wanton outrage, and the day of the mas- sacre was fixed upon. To the last moment there was not a cloud to foretell the coming storm. When, about the middle of March, one of the English visited Ope- chancanough, he sent word to Governor Wyat that he held so firmly to peace that "the sky should fall be fore he broke it." Some English lost in the woods were furnished with Indian guides. Some of the set- tlers who had lived with them were allowed to return ; and on the very morning of the outbreak the Indians came to the various plantations with presents of game, and breakfasted with the English in the friendliest manner.
The blow fell everywhere at the same hour of the same day, over an extent of one hundred and forty miles. Berkeley's Plantation, at the present " Amp- thill," a few miles below Richmond, was attacked at the same instant with Southampton Hundred on the Bay. There was no means of resisting in the furthest settle- ments, and the central authority at Jamestown had only been warned at the last moment. A converted Indian, living with one of the colonists, had revealed the plot on
127
THE MASSACRE.
the night before its execution, and his master hurried to Jamestown with the intelligence. This saved many lives, but there was no time to warn the settlers in re- mote places. The result was a wholesale butchery.
The Indians savagely attacked them when they least expected it, and no more spared the women and chil- - dren than the men. Of twenty-four persons at Falling Creek, near Richmond, only a boy and girl escaped. In the upper plantations toward the Falls, including the Henrico settlements, more than eighty were put to death. At Berkeley, afterwards the seat of the Harri- son family, they killed the pious George Thorpe, one of the most prominent men of the colony, who had been their warm friend, and had built Opechancanough "a fair house, after the English fashion." He had been warned by his servant, but would not believe there was real danger, and was killed, and his "dead corpse " hacked in a manner "unfitting to be heard with civil ears." At Appomattox, Flower de Hundred, Macocks, Wyanoke, Westover, Powell's-Brooke, Martin's-Bran- don, everywhere, the Indian guns, clubs, and tomahawks did their bloody work. Captain Powell, one of Smith's old soldiers, was slain, with his whole family, and his head was cut off. Nathaniel Causie, another of the old first settlers, escaped by dashing out the brains of an Indian who attacked him. Near Warrasqueake, Cap- tain Ralphı Hamor, apparently the author of the " True Discourse of Virginia," defended his home and succeeded in beating off the assailants ; as did Daniel Gookin, on the eastern shore. Toward the Bay thie colonists fought with desperation in the midst of their burning homes, but large numbers were killed. At Martin's Hundred, seventy-three people were butchered. Before sunset
128 VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
three hundred and forty-seven persons were slain, in- cluding six members of the Governor's Council. It was a terrible blow. From the Falls to the Bay, many of the plantations were entirely destroyed, and there was mourning over husband, or wife, or child, or brother, in almost every house.
Bitter rage succeeded, and a fixed resolve to exter- minate these wild beasts. The colonists rose in mass, full-armed, and thirsting for blood. They have been denounced for inhumanity for what followed; but the historians, composing their histories in comfortable stud- ies, in the midst of law and order, have failed to do what it seems they ought to have done - put them- selves in the place of those early Virginians. They had merciless adversaries. Opechancanough had spared nobody. He had even before the massacre, according to a contemporary writer, "practiced with a King on the Eastern Shore to furnish him with a kind of poison to poison us." He had preferred the bludgeon ; and poison and bludgeons were weapons that it was neces- sary to meet with something stronger than rose-water. An indiscriminate butchery of the Indians followed. They were hunted down in all quarters, as far as the Potomac ; and at harvest, by an act of treachery, they were thrown off their guard, and a massacre took place similar to the massacre of the white people in the spring.
When intelligence reached England of the bloody "Indian Massacre," it caused a great sensation, and a spasmodic effort was made to supply the Virginians with arms. It came to nothing, and a proposition made by Smith to the Company, to go out and completely subject the tribes, was not acted upon. His plan was the device of a soldier : to contract the settlements for
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129
THE FALL OF THE COMPANY.
the time into the peninsula between the James and York, with the Chickahominy for the western frontier ; establish forts on the outposts toward the Rappahannock and Potomac ; and patrol the country with flying de- tachments, to discover and break up further plots. But the colonists were strong enough of themselves. Hav- ing recovered from the effect of the blow, they acted with vigor, and the armed parties harrying the woods completely paralyzed any further efforts which the In- dians could make.
It was a harsh and bloody business, as such affairs always are, and it was not to be the last. When nearly a hundred years old, and so weak that he was obliged to be carried in a litter, the old ruler Opechancanough was going to strike again.
XXII.
THE FALL OF THE COMPANY.
ONE other notable event will conclude the history of the Plantation period. While these bloody scenes were in progress in Virginia, a great turmoil was going on in London.
At last the King and Company were at dagger's draw. The antagonism between them was radical, and not to be healed by any compromise. Under the old chaos of commissions and conferences and disputes of every de- scription, we can see one plain fact - that the growing spirit of popular freedom and the jus divinum of the past were at deadly issue. The London Company was worse than the House of Commons. At their great quarterly " courts," the hall resounded with bold dis- cussions, and the demand for free inquiry in all direc-
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130 VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
tions. The Court party, headed by the Earl of Warwick and representing the King, were in close grapple with the Country party, headed by the Earl of Southampton and representing the opposition - that is, Virginia. This last had recently triumphed, and the Plantation of Virginia had representative government in consequence of the fact. But this triumph was short-lived. James I. was not a man of ability, but he was opinionated and obstinate. Soon the struggle began again, and this time it was to end in the manner in which all struggles between kings and people generally ended at that time.
James was looking for a pretext to crush the Com- pany, when it was suddenly supplied. A certain captain, Nathaniel Butler, a second edition of Argall, had been Governor of Bermuda, visited Virginia in the winter of 1622, and on his return to England published "The Unmasked Face of our Colony in Virginia," a bitter libel on the country. At this the Court party caught with avidity. They appeared before the King, and ar- raigned the Company for gross maladministration of Virginia affairs. The representatives of the Virginia or Country party defended the Company, and the inter- view was a stormy one; but James had already made up his mind. He ordered the records of the Company to be seized, appointed a commission to examine them, and arrested and imprisoned the Deputy Treasurer, Nicho- las Ferrar.1
1 This was the excellent man who, after distinguishing himself in the House of Commons, retired to Huntingdonshire, and, "in obedi- ence to a religious fancy which he had long entertained," established there, at Little Gidding, the singular monastic retreat of which so much has been written. In his house eighty persons, sworn to a life of celi- bacy, passed their time in religious duties, acts of charity, and a con- stant repetition, day and night, of the English Liturgy, by the light of candles which were never suffered to go out.
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THE FALL OF THE COMPANY.
This occurred in the spring of 1623, and in the au- tumn of that year the King sent out a commission to Virginia to collect evidence against the Company. One of these was the Master John Pory, who had been Speaker of the first Virginia Assembly, a roving Bohe- mian, good-natured, but much too fond of drink, who had traveled in Virginia, and written an account of an interview withi " the laughing King of Accomac," on the Eastern Shore. He and his fellow commissioners duly arrived at Jamestown, and demanded that the Assembly should declare their approval of the intended revocation of the Company's charter. The Assembly refused to do so, and denied the authority of the commissioners. When they demanded access to the records, the Assem- bly would not consent to it, and when Pory bribed the clerk to furnish him with copies the Burgesses con- demned the clerk to the pillory, with the loss of his ears, one of which was cut off. Then they entered their for- mal protest against what they saw all this meant. They sent a member of the Council to the Privy Council in England, to pray that in Virginia " the Governors may not have absolute power ; that they might still retain the liberty of popular assemblies, than which nothing could more conduce to the public satisfaction and public util- ity," - the protest wliich, from that time forward, the Virginia Burgesses continued to make against every successive invasion of their rights.
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