USA > Virginia > Virginia, a history of the people > Part 2
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XXVI. THE TRAGEDY OF DUQUESNE . 344 General Edward Braddock; His Plan of Campaign; Franklin's Advice; At Cumberland; The March through the Woods; Braddock Surprised and Routed; His Tribute to the Virginia Troops; His Death and Burial. b
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CONTENTS.
XXVII. THE END OF THE STRUGGLE 354
The Virginia Frontier; Horrors of the Time; Wash- ington at Winchester ; Duquesne; Captain Bul- lit; Duquesne Blown Up; The Fall of Quebec; End of the War.
XXVIII. THE WRITERS OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD .
358 Narratives of Bacon's Rebellion; Style of the Writers; The Deed of Gift; Beverley's History of Virginia; Stith's, - Its Value; Colonel Byrd's Westover MSS .; The Author. XXIX. THE GOLDEN AGE OF VIRGINIA 364 The Old Regime; The Nahoh after the Pioneer ; African Slavery ; Classes of Society; Planters and Patroons; Ease of the Times; Society at Williamsburg; Amusements; St. Tammany; Lowland and Mountain.
III. THE COMMONWEALTH.
I. THE HOUR AND THE MEN . 375 The New Ideas; Virginia and New England; The Planters.
II. HENRY THE "PROPHET OF REVOLUTION " 378 His Origin and Early Life; The Parsons' Cause; His First Speech.
III. THE STAMPS 383
The English Ministry; The Stamp Act; Henry's Reso- lutions; His Outburst; Attitude of the Planters ; Effect of the Action of Virginia; A Congress Meets in New York ; Repeal of the Stamp Act.
IV. THE WAR OF THE CHURCHES 390 Attacks on the Establishment; The Baptists ; They are Persecuted; Scene at Fredericksburg; The Hanover Memorial; The Dissenters Implacable; Overthrow of the Establishment; Desecration of the Sacra- mental Vessels; Bishop William Meade; His Energy and Piety; Revives the Episcopacy; The Church at Present.
V. THE HEART OF THE REBELLION 396 Williamsburg; Historical Buildings; Winter in the Capital ; Social Habits.
CONTENTS. xix
VI. THE STEPPING STONES OF REVOLUTION 400
The Tea; Death of Fauquier ; Lord Botetourt; His Re- ception ; Dissolves the Burgesses; They Meet at the Raleigh; Death of Botetourt; His Character; Lord Dunmore; The Committees of Correspond- ence.
VII. JEFFERSON THE "APOSTLE OF DEMOCRACY " 405 His Early Life; His Gay Temperament; Becomes a Freethinker; Character of his Intellect ; His Sum- mary Vicw.
VIII. LEE, MASON, AND PENDLETON . 410
Lee's Origin ; His Advanced Opinions; Personal Ap- pearance; Mason's Wit; His Patriotism; The Bill of Rights; Pendleton's Views; His Person and Oratory.
IX. VIRGINIA AND MASSACHUSETTS . 415
The Issue; Boston Occupied by British Troops; The Tea; Action in Virginia; The Ball at the Capitol; A Convention Called; The First of June; The Gen- eral Congress ; Chatham's Opinion of It.
X. THE FIRST BLOOD OF THE REVOLUTION 422 Dunmore's Expedition ; Andrew Lewis ; He Marches to the Ohio; Is Attacked; The Battle at Point Pleasant ; Scene with Dunmore; Charges against the Governor; Lewis Returns.
XI. VIRGINIA ARMING 426 The Spring of 1775; The People in Arms; The Conven- tion at St. John's; Henry's Great Speech; Mr. Wirt's Exaggerations; The Fight at Concord. XII. THE GUNPOWDER . 429
The Seizure of the Powder; Excitement of the People; The Rappahannock Men; The March of Henry; The Olive Branch Rejected ; Explosion at the Magazine; Flight of Dunmore; Washington ap- pointed Commander-in-Chief.
XIII. THE LAST OF DUNMORE IN VIRGINIA 435
The Committee of Safety; Henry General-in-Chief; Dunmore's Depredations; Action at Great Bridge; Norfolk Burned; Lewis and Dunmore; Dunmore Sails for England.
XIV. VIRGINIA DECLARES HERSELF AN INDEPENDENT COM- MONWEALTH 438
The Convention; Proposed Declaration; The Virginia
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CONTENTS.
Bill of Rights; The Constitution ; Henry Elected Governor; Congress and the Declara- tion ; The Record of Virginia.
XV. THE OVERTURNERS .
442
The Laboring Oar; Jefferson in the Assembly; The Religious Struggle ; The Result; Entails ; The Result; The Social Change; Patrick Henry to be Dictator; Cary's Message to Him; Gloom at the End of 1776.
XVI. THE HANNIBAL OF THE WEST . 449 Morgan and his Riflemen; The Virginia Troops in the Army; George Rogers Clarke; He Marches on Kaskaskia; On Vincennes; The Drowned Lands of the Wabash ; The Capture of Vincen- nes ; The Result.
454 XVII. LAFAYETTE AND CORNWALLIS . ·
No more Slaves to be Imported; A Marauder ; Despondency of the Times; Washington's Statement; Arnold Captures Richmond; Phil- lips and Lafayette; Death of Phillips; Arrival of Cornwallis; Lafayette Retreats; Tarleton's Depredations; Wayne's Arrival; Cornwallis Retreats ; Action at Jamestown; Cornwallis Retires to Yorktown; The Result of the Cam- paign.
XVIII. YORKTOWN .
The Crisis; Washington's Resolution; His Move- ment Southward; Passage through Philadel- phia; Arrival at Williamsburg; Cornwallis at Yorktown; Lafayette's Soldiership; The Naval Fight; Washington's Visit to De Grasse; Ad- vance on Yorktown; The Siege ; General Nel- son; Burning of the English Ships; The As- sault; Lord Cornwallis Capitulates; The Cere- mony of Surrender.
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472 XIX. THE CONSTITUTION . .
Conclusion of Peace; The Articles of Confedera- tion; Virginia for Union; The Northwest Terri- tory; She Surrenders It; The Federal Constitu- tion ; Excitement in Virginia ; The Virginia Convention; A Passionate Struggle; The Con- stitution Adopted ; The Virginia Conditions.
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CONTENTS.
XX. MODERN VIRGINIA . · 477
The Republican Ascendency; Change in Manners; Resolutions of '98 ; Death of Washington and Henry; Henry's Will; Trial of Callender; Of Aaron Burr; The Servile Insurrections; The Burning of the Theatre; The War of 1812; The Colleges; The Convention of 1829; Jackson and South Carolina; Repose of the Period pre- ceding the Civil War.
XXI. VIRGINIA LITERATURE IN THE NINETEENTH CEN- TURY .
490
History and Biography; Theology and Physical Science; Constitutional Law; Poetry ; Fic- tion; Miscellany; Character of the Literature. XXII. THE WAR OF THE SECTIONS 498 The Attitude of Virginia; Her Peace Policy ; The Direct Issue; Secession ; The Virginia Troops. XXIII. VIRGINIA SINCE THE WAR. 505 Resolution of the People; Their Treatment of Northerners ; Reconstruction ; Emancipation; Relations of the Races ; Resources of the State; New Virginia.
The vignette upon the title page is a copy of the first seal of Vir- ginia as it appears on the title page of Smith's "General History of Virginia."
The map is a reproduction of so much of the official map of the State of Virginia, published in 1826, with the insertion of names of all places referred to in this history. Where the State map fails to give the localities, the authority followed is that of Frye and Jeffer- son in their survey of 1749, as published by Jeffery in his series of maps of the British possessions in America.
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VIRGINIA:
A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
I. THE PLANTATION. I.
THE GOOD LAND.
JUST three centuries ago, two ships sent from Eng- land on a voyage of exploration crossed the Atlantic by way of the Azores, sailed northward along the coast of Florida, and came to anchor off the Indian kingdom of Axacan, now North Carolina.
The voyagers were amazed at the beauty of the coun- try. The time was midsummer, and before them was a long island fringed with verdure. Above the under- growth rose " the highest and reddest cedars of the world;" the wild vines were so full of grape bunches that "the very surf overflowed them;" and deer, tur- keys, and snow-white cranes were " in incredible abun- dance." When the mariners landed, first on the island and then on the main-land, they were welcomed by the Indians, who proved to be " a kind, loving people ; " and the time from summer to autumn was spent in exploring the adjacent country. The name of the immediate re- gion was Wingandacoa, which seems to have signified "The Good Land," and the Englishmen found it " most plentiful, sweet, wholesome and fruitful of all other."
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
At last the western paradise so long dreamed of seemed to have been discovered, and when the ships went back to England, at the approach of winter, the commanders gave such glowing accounts of what they had seen, that Elizabeth called the country Virginia, the Virgin land.
This voyage took place in the summer of 1584. For a long time afterwards the name Virginia was only the popular designation of an unknown region beyond the Atlantic. No more was known of it, and an old writer could only say, " The bounds thereof on the East side are the ocean, on the South lieth Florida, on the North Nova Francia, as for the West thereof the limits are unknown." The English had touched its shores only ; the interior was an untravelled realm, where the fancy might revel freely, - a land of fairer fruits and flowers than the fruits and flowers of Europe ; of green shores, majestic forests, and blue mountains filled with gold and jewels. In this wonderful world bright birds flitted from tree to tree, dusky beauties danced and beckoned, the rivers ran over golden sands, and somewhere far off in the direction of the South Sea was the famous Fount of Youth, which the old had only to bathe in to grow young again. With these visions of delight were min- gled weird and terrible fancies. The Bermuda Islands, a portion of Virginia, were said to be haunted by mys- terious beings. English mariners who had been ship- wrecked there described them as "an enchanted den full of furies and devils which all men did shun as hell and perdition." Even the great intelligences of the time caught the glamour or affected to do so, and the popu- lar superstition was crystallized by Shakespeare in his "Tempest." In this den of enchantment Prospero prac- ticed his magic, witches hovered in the air, and uncouth
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THE GOOD LAND.
shapes appeared and vanished. The far islands posted like sentinels on the threshold of the New World were a realm of wonders, and the ignorant and ardent minds of the men of that age believed all that was reported of them.
These fancies were supported by old tradition. It was said that " Arthur, Malgro, and Brandon, a thou- sand years ago were in this North of America, and the Friar of Lynn, by his black art, went to the north pole in 1380." The friar with his black art was the coun- terpart of Prospero with his magic, and it was as easy to believe in one as in the other. Then tradition took a few uncertain steps in the direction of history. Ma- doc, a Welsh prince, was said to have visited America, and Lief, a Norwegian, was supposed to have landed, about the year 1000, in what is now New England. This may have been the truth, but the fact is not es- tablished. The Norwegian may have been an histor- ical personage, but he and his sea rovers bear a suspi- cious resemblance to " Arthur, Malgro, and Brandon." Through a mist blown about by the winds of old years loom dim uncertain figures, which may be figures of real men or mere phantasmagoria. The outlines waver as one gazes at them, and the personages are scarcely more real than the Thors and Baldurs of the Scandina- vian sagas.
With Columbus certainty begins. At last firm ground is found to stand upon. Sailing westward over the unknown sea, the Genoese reached land and took pos- session in the name of Castile. But the land was not the Continent ; Columbus had only reached San Salva- dor, one of the Bahamas. Five years afterwards John Cabot, commanding an English fleet, discovered the
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
mainland and claimed it in the name of England ; and this was the foundation of the English title - priority of actual landing and possession.
For nearly a century after this year, 1497, England seemed blind to the importance of her claim. The New World, as far as she was concerned, seemed to go a-begging. Spain and France were wiser. Both made persistent efforts to secure the prize, and a few names and dates will tell the story.
In 1512, about twenty years after the discovery by Columbus, Ponce de Leon took possession of Florida in the name of Spain.
In 1521 Cortez overran Mexico, and soon afterward Pizarro conquered Peru.
In 1534 Jacques Cartier entered the St. Lawrence, and laid claim to Canada in the name of France.
In 1541 Fernando de Soto marched through the present Gulf States, from Florida, to the Mississippi, and claimed the country in the name of Spain; and in 1562 some French Huguenots established a colony at St. Augustine in Florida.
Thus the Continent of North America - a name de- rived from Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian and one of the early voyagers - had become a bone of contention be- tween France and Spain, without regard to England. The Spaniards acted with decision. In 1565 they at- tacked St. Augustine and massacred the French Hu- guenots, after which they pushed northward to occupy the whole country. An effort was made to establish a Jesuit mission in what is now North Carolina ; and Don Pedro Morquez, the Governor of Florida, sailed along the coast and entered " the bay of Santa Maria, in the latitude of thirty-seven degrees and a half" -
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THE GOOD LAND.
which is the Chesapeake. The country pleased him, and he sent a party of men and two Dominican monks to form a settlement. The expedition only failed from accident; and thus the banks of the Chesapeake nar- rowly escaped becoming the site of a Roman Catholic colony owning allegiance to Spain.
This is the brief record of events connected with the first years of American history. By the middle of the century the power of Spain seemed firmly established. Before the English flag floated over so much as a log fort on the Continent, she was possessed of all Central America, and the extension of her dominion northward seemed only a question of time. The country was oc- cupied by her troops and officials, and Spanish fleets went to and fro between Cadiz and the ports of Mexico and Peru. As far as the human eye could see, the new world of America had become the property of Spain, and her right to it seemed unassailable. A mariner sailing under the Spanish flag had discovered it ; Span- ish captains had conquered it ; and the Papal authority had formally put Spain in possession of it.
If England meant to assert her claim, the time had plainly come to do so; and in 1576 an expedition was sent to explore the country. It came to nothing, and another in 1583 had no better fortune. It was com- manded by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and the Queen had sent him a small golden trinket, in the shape of an an- chor set with jewels, and the message, that she "wished him as great hap and safety to his ship as if herself were there in person." Gilbert reached the island of St. John, but his fleet was scattered by a storm. His own vessel went down, and he was heard to say as the ship sank : " Be of good cheer, my friends ; it is as near to heaven by sea as by land."
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
This expedition had been undertaken under the aus- pices of Sir Walter Raleigh, whom his contemporaries called the " Shepherd of the Ocean." This great Eng- lishman, with the soul of a sea-king and the intellect of a statesman looking before and after, saw plainly that the path of empire was westward. He was not discour- aged by Gilbert's mischance. In the next year, 1584, he secured a patent from the Queen to explore and settle America. The expedition to Wingandacoa fol- lowed ; and in 1585 Raleigh sent out a colony under command of Sir Richard Grenville.
These old voyages tempt us, with their rude pictures and strange adventures. They are full of the sea breeze and the romance of the former age; but they do not belong to the special subject of this volume. The result only need be recorded - a gloomy and pathetic tragedy, which for nearly three centuries has excited the sympathy of the world.
Sir Richard Grenville founded his colony on Roanoke Island in Albemarle Sound, but it was abandoned by the settlers, who returned to England with Sir Francis Drake ; whereupon he founded a second, which strug- gled on until 1587. White, the Governor, then went to England to obtain supplies for the colony, leav- ing behind him eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and eleven children ; among the latter his daughter Ellinor, and his grand-daughter Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America. None of these men, women, or children were ever again seen. When White returned to Roanoke he found the place deserted. What had become of the colonists ? There was an apparent solution of the mystery. When White sailed for England he had directed that if the settlers were compelled to leave
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THE GOOD LAND.
the island, they should carve the name of the place to which they removed on some conspicuous object, with a cross above the name if they went away in distress. The name CROATAN was found cut in a post, but without the cross : thus the people seemed not to have aban- doned the island in distress. But what had occasioned this strange exodus of the Roanoke men, women, and children to Croatan - an Indian town on the coast ? The whole affair remained a mystery and remains as great a mystery to-day. Repeated efforts were made to ascertain from the Indians what had become of the colonists ; but they could not or would not say what had happened. Had the poor people wandered away into the cypress forests and been lost? Had they starved on the route to Croatan ? Had the Indians put them to death ? The secret is still a secret, and this sudden dis- appearance of more than a hundred human beings is one of the strangest events of history.
So the Roanoke colony ended. It was the first tragic chapter in the history of the United States, and resem- bles rather the sombre fancy of some dramatist of the time than an actual occurrence. All connected with it is moving, and the sharply contrasted figures cling to the memory - the bearded mariners, and women and children wandering away into the woods; the pale-faced Governor searching for his daughter, when he returns to the lonely island; and, passing across the background, the stalwart forms of Drake and Grenville, the one fa- mous for hunting down the great Armada in the English Channel, and the other for his desperate fight on board the Revenge. His fate and the fate of his colony were not unlike. Both struggled long and bravely, but the struggle came to an end in dire catastrophe.
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
" All hopes of Virginia thus abandoned," wrote one of the old chroniclers, "it lay dead and obscured from 1590 till this year 1602." It lay dead and obscured longer. Nothing further was effected in the sixteenth century, and the Americas seemed fated to remain Span- ish possessions to the end of time. The struggle was apparently over, and the wildest fancy could scarcely have conceived what we see to-day - this huge empire dwindled to a few weak dependencies, and confront- ing them the great Protestant Republic of the United States occupying the continent from ocean to ocean.
The wedge which split this hard trunk was the land- ing in May, 1607, of about one hundred Englishmen at Jamestown.
II.
THE TIMES.
THE Virginia "plantation," as the old writers called it, began at a remarkable period. The year 1600 may be taken as the dividing line between two eras - the point of departure of a new generation on the untried journey into the future.
Europe had just passed through the great convulsion of the Reformation, and this with the invention of print- ing had suddenly changed the face of the world. It is difficult to speak of this change without apparent exag- geration. The dissemination of the Bible in the vulgar tongue was followed by astonishing results. The un- learned could search the Scriptures for their rule of conduct without the intervention of a priesthood, and an upheaval of the human mind followed. A mysterious voice had awakened the sleepers, and they had started
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THE TIMES.
up, shaking off the old fetters. The lethargy of ages had disappeared. Thought, so long paralyzed by dogma, roved in every direction, moving nimbly and joyfully where it had groped and stumbled before in the thick darkness. The nations of Europe were like blind men who have suddenly been made to see. Daring aspi- rations took possession of them, and the new ideas of the new age crowded into every mind, hurrying and jostling each other. In our old and prosaic world it is difficult to realize the youth and enthusiasm of that time. Authority had lost its prestige, and serfdom to prej- udices social or religious had disappeared. The priest muttering his prayers in Latin was no longer the keeper of men's consciences ; and the prerogative of the King and the privilege of the noble began to be regarded as superstitions. That hitherto unknown quantity, the People, all at once revealed its existence, and those who for centuries had allowed others to think for them be- gan to think for themselves.
All this had come with the new century which summed up and inherited the results of that which had preceded it. Beginning at Wittenberg with the protest of Luther, the Reformation had swept through the Continent and extended to England and Scotland, where its fury was greatest and lasted longest. It raged there during the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth, and only died down at her death, when the long work was at last accomplished, and Protestantism was firmly established.
The free thought of the time in England, as every- where, had resulted from reaction and the immense influence of printed books. But books were not all. Bacon, the author of the inductive philosophy, had
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
published his " Advancement of Learning," and Spen- ser, the perfect flower of the Renaissance, his " Faëry Queen ;" but volumes of abstruse thought and refined poesy were for the few. The people at large were compelled to look elsewhere, and to educate their minds by other appliances than costly folios which were be- yond their reach. The acted drama precisely supplied this popular want, and became the educator of the people. The time had come for Shakespeare and his brother dramatists ; and suddenly the epoch flowered in the great names which have made the age of Elizabeth so illustrious. A race of giants appeared, whose works were the expression of the times. All the characteris- tics of the generation were summed up in these dramas - the unreined fancy, the wild imagination, the revolt against the conventional, the daring thought which questioned all things and would sound the mysteries of this world and the world beyond. At the head of this great group stood Shakespeare. On the stage of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres this master dramatist of the age, and of all the ages, directly addressed the ardent crowds who flocked at his summons. Packed together in the dingy pit, under the smoking flambeaux, the rude audiences saw pass before them in long pano- rama the whole history of England with its bloody wars, the fierce scenes of the Roman forum, the loves of Ro- meo and Antony, lump-backed Richard, the laughing Falstaff, and the woeful figures of Lear and Hamlet. What came from the heart of Shakespeare went to the human hearts listening to him. The crowd laughed with his comedy and cried with his tragedy. He was the great public teacher, as well as the joy of his age - an age full of impulse, of hot aspiration and vague desire, which recognized its own portrait in his dramas.
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THE TIMES.
Thus books, the acted drama, the thirst for knowledge, the ardent desire of the human mind to expand in all directions, made the last years of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth a new era in the history of the human race. Men longed for new expe- riences, to travel and discover new countries, to find some outlet for the boiling spirit of enterprise which had rushed into and overflowed the time. The adventurous sea voyages of the period were the direct outcome of this craving ; suddenly a passion for maritime explora- tion had developed itself. We have the record of what followed in the folios of Hakluyt and Purchas - " Divers Voyages touching the Discovery of America," " Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries made by the English Nation," " Purchas, his Pilgrimage," and other works of the same character. Magellan circumnavigated the world, and Sir Francis Drake doubled Cape Horn, coasted northward to the present Alaska, attempted the northwest passage, and finding it impracticable, crossed the Pacific, traversed the Indian Ocean, and returned to England by the Cape of Good Hope. The English flag was thus carried into every sea, and wherever the flag of Spain was encountered, it was saluted with can- non. For a whole generation these adventurous voy- ages and hard combats went on without ceasing, and on the continent of Europe another outlet was presented to the fierce ardor of the times. Flanders was an inces- sant battle-ground; and in Transylvania the Christians were making war on the Turks. English soldiers of fortune flocked to the Christian standard, and fought among the foremost, winning fortune and renown, or "leaving their bodies in testimony of their minds."
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