A Brief History of the United States Part 4

A chair made from the timbers of his vessel (the _Golden Hind_) is now at Oxford. Read Fiske's _Old Virginia and her Neighbours_, Vol. I, pp. 26-28.

[7] In 1576 Frobisher, when in search of a northwest pa.s.sage to China, made his way through Arctic ice to the bay which now bears his name. Two more voyages were made to the far north in search of gold.

[8] The ships were overtaken off the Azores by a furious gale. Gilbert's vessel was a very little one, so he was urged to come aboard his larger consort; but he refused to desert his companions, and replied, "Do not fear; heaven is as near by water as by land."

[9] Queen Elizabeth had declared she would recognize no Spanish claim to American territory not founded on discovery and settlement. Raleigh was authorized, therefore, to hold by homage heathen lands, not actually possessed and inhabited by Christian people, which he might discover within the next six years.

[10] The colonists took home some tobacco, which at that time was greatly prized in England. When Columbus reached the island of Cuba in 1492, two of his followers, sent on an errand into the interior, met natives who rolled certain dried leaves into tubes, and, lighting one end with a firebrand, drew the smoke into their bodies and puffed it out. This was the first time that Europeans had seen cigars smoked. The Spaniards carried tobacco to Europe, and its use spread rapidly. There is a story to the effect that a servant entering a room one morning and seeing smoke issuing from Raleigh's mouth, thought he was on fire and dashed water in his face.

[11] On Roanoke Island, August 18, 1587, a girl was born and named Virginia. She was the granddaughter of Governor White and the daughter of Eleanor and Ananias Dare, and the first child of English parents born on the soil of what is now the United States.

[12] The settlers had agreed that if they left Roanoke before White returned, the name of the place to which they went should be cut on a tree, and a cross added if they were in distress. When White returned the blockhouse was in ruins, and cut on a tree was the name of a near-by island. A storm prevented the ship going thither, and despite White's protests he was carried back to England. What became of the colony, no man knows.

[13] Raleigh was an important figure in English history for many years after the failure of his Roanoke colony. When Queen Elizabeth died (1603), he fell into disfavor with her successor, King James I. He was falsely accused of treason and thrown into prison, where he remained during twelve years. There he wrote his _History of the World_. After a short period of liberty, Raleigh was beheaded. As he stood on the scaffold he asked for the ax, and said, "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases."

[14] Read Fiske's _Old Virginia and her Neighbours_, Vol. I, pp. 33-38.

[15] The Elizabeth Islands are close to the south coast of Ma.s.sachusetts.

A few miles farther south Gosnold found another small island which he named Marthas Vineyard. Later explorers by mistake shifted the name Marthas Vineyard to a large island near by, and the little island which Gosnold found is now called No Mans Land (map, p. 59).

[16] The industrial condition of England was changing. The end of the long war with Spain had thrown thousands of soldiers out of employment; the turning of plow land into sheep farms left thousands of laborers without work; manufactures were still in too primitive a state to provide employment for all who needed it.

CHAPTER IV

THE ENGLISH ON THE CHESAPEAKE

LIFE AT JAMESTOWN.--The colonists who landed at Jamestown in 1607 were all men. While some of them were building a fort, Captain Newport, with Captain John Smith and others, explored the James River and visited the Powhatan, chief of a neighboring tribe of Indians. This done, Newport returned to England (June, 1607) with his three ships, leaving one hundred and five colonists to begin a struggle for life. Bad water, fever, hard labor, the intense heat of an American summer, and the scarcity of food caused such sickness that by September more than half the colonists were dead. [1] Indeed, had it not been for Smith, who got corn from the Indians and directed affairs in general, the fate of Jamestown might have been that of Roanoke. [2] As it was, but forty were alive when Newport returned In January, 1608, with the "first supply" of one hundred and twenty men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SMITH IN SLAVERY. Picture in one of his books.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: POWHATAN'S COAT. Now in a museum at Oxford.]

THE COMPANY'S ORDERS.--Newport was ordered to bring back a cargo. So while some of the colonists cut down cedar and black walnut trees and made clapboards, others loaded the ship with glittering sand which they thought was gold dust. These labors drew the men away from agriculture, and only four acres were planted with corn.

In September Newport was back again with the "second supply" of seventy persons; two of them were women. This time he was ordered to crown the Powhatan, and to find a gold mine, discover a pa.s.sage to the South Sea, or find Raleigh's lost colony. Smith laughed at these orders. But they had to be obeyed; so several parties went southward in search of the lost colony, but found it not; Newport went westward beyond the falls of the James in search of the pa.s.sage; and the Powhatan was duly crowned and dressed in a crimson robe. [3] No gold mine could be found, so Newport sailed for England with a cargo of pitch, tar, and clapboards.

SMITH RULES THE COLONY.--By this time Smith had become president of the council for the government of the colony. He decreed that those who did not work should not eat; and by spring his men had dug a well, shingled the church, put up twenty cabins, and cleared and planted forty acres of corn. Yet, despite all he could do, the colony was on the verge of ruin when in August, 1609, seven ships landed some three hundred men, women, and children known as the "third supply." [4]

JAMESTOWN ABANDONED.--And now matters went from bad to worse. The leaders quarreled; Smith was injured and had to go back to England; the Indians became hostile; food became scarce; and when at last neither corn nor roots could be had, the colonists began to suffer the horrors of famine.

During that awful winter, long known as "the starving time," cold, famine, and the Indians swept away more than four hundred. When Newport arrived in May, 1610, only sixty famishing creatures inhabited Jamestown. To continue the colony seemed hopeless; and going on board the ships (June, 1610), the colonists set sail for England and had gone well down the James when they met Lord Delaware with three well-provisioned ships coming up. [5]

JAMESTOWN RESETTLED.--Lord Delaware had come out as governor under a new charter granted to the London Company in 1609. This is of interest because it gave to the colony an immense domain of which we shall hear more after Virginia became a state. This domain extended from Point Comfort, two hundred miles up and two hundred miles down the coast, and then "up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest."

After the meeting between the departing settlers and the newcomers under Delaware, the whole band returned to Jamestown and began once more the struggle for existence.

PROSPERITY BEGINS.--Delaware, who soon went back to England, left Sir Thomas Dale in command, and under him the colony began to prosper.

Hitherto the colonists had lived as communists. The company owned all the land, and whatever food was raised was put into the public granary to be divided among the settlers, share and share alike. Dale changed this system, and the old planters were given land to cultivate for themselves.

The effect was magical. Men who were lazy when toiling as servants of the company, become industrious when laboring for themselves, and prosperity began in earnest.

More settlers soon arrived with a number of cows, goats, and oxen, and the little colony began to expand. When Dale's term as acting governor ended in 1616, Virginia contained six little settlements besides Jamestown. The next governor, Yeardley, introduced the cultivation of tobacco, which was now much used in Europe and commanded a high price.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIRGINIA (from 1609 to 1624).]

THE FIRST REPRESENTATIVE a.s.sEMBLY.--Yeardley was succeeded (1617) by Argall, who for two years ruled Virginia with a rod of iron. So harsh was his rule that the company was forced to recall him and send back Yeardley.

Yeardley came with instructions to summon a general a.s.sembly, and in July, 1619, the first legislative body in America met in the little church at Jamestown; eleven boroughs were represented. Each sent two burgesses, as they were called, and these twenty-two men made the first House of Burgesses, and had power to enact laws for the colony. [6]

SLAVERY INTRODUCED.--Another event which makes 1619 a memorable year in our history was the arrival at Jamestown of a Dutch ship with a cargo of African negroes for sale. Twenty were bought, and the inst.i.tution of negro slavery was planted in Virginia. This seemed quite proper, for there were then in the colony many white slaves, or bond servants--men bound to service for a term of years. The difference between one of these and an African negro slave was that the white man served for a short time, and the negro during his life. [7]

A CARGO OF MAIDS.--Yet another event which makes 1619 a notable year in Virginian history was the arrival of a ship with ninety young women sent out by the company to become wives of the settlers. The early comers to Virginia had been "adventurers," that is, men seeking to better their fortunes, not intending to live and die in Virginia, but hoping to return to England in a few years rich, or at least prosperous. That the colony with such a shifting population could not prosper was certain. Virginia needed homes. The ma.s.s of the settlers were unmarried, and the company very wisely determined to supply them with wives. The ninety young women sent over in 1619, and others sent later, were free to choose their own husbands: but each man, on marrying one of them, had to pay one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco for her pa.s.sage to Virginia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MAIDS ARRIVE IN VIRGINIA.]

THE CHARTER TAKEN AWAY.--For Virginia the future now looked bright. Her tobacco found ready sale in England at a large profit. The right to make her own laws gave promise of good government. The founding of home ties could not fail to produce increased energy on the part of the settlers.

But trouble was brewing for the London Company. The king was quarreling with a part of his people, and the company was in the hands of his opponents. Looking upon it as a "seminary of sedition," King James secured (1624) the destruction of the charter, and Virginia became a royal province. [8]

STATE OF THE COLONY IN 1624.--The colony of Virginia when deprived of its charter was a little community of some four thousand souls, scattered in plantations on and near the James River. Let us go back to those times and visit one of the plantations. The home of the planter is a wooden house with rough-hewn beams and unplaned boards, surrounded by a high stockade.

Near by are the farm buildings and the cabins of his bond servants. His books, his furniture, his clothing and that of his family, have all come from England. So also have the farming implements and very likely the greater part of his cows and pigs. On his land are fields of wheat and barley and Indian corn; but the chief crop is tobacco. [9]

EFFECTS OF TOBACCO PLANTING.--As time pa.s.sed and the Virginians found that the tobacco always brought a good price in England, they made it more and more the chief crop. This powerfully affected the whole character of the colony. It drew to Virginia a better cla.s.s of settlers, who came over to grow rich as planters. It led the people to live almost exclusively on plantations, and prevented the growth of large towns. Tobacco became the currency of the colony, and salaries, wages, and debts were paid, and taxes levied, and wealth and income estimated, in pounds of tobacco.

FEW ROADS IN VIRGINIA.--As there were few towns, [10] so there were few roads. The great plantations lay along the river banks. It was easy, therefore, for a planter to go on visits of business or pleasure in a sailboat or in a barge rowed by his servants. The fine rivers and the location of the plantations along their banks enabled each planter to have his own wharf, to which came ships from England laden with tables, chairs, cutlery, tools, rich silks, and cloth, everything the planter needed for his house, his family, his servants, and his plantation, all to be paid for with casks of tobacco.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOUNDATIONS AT JAMESTOWN.]

GOVERNOR BERKELEY.--Despite the change from rule by the company to rule by the king, Virginia grew and prospered. When Sir William Berkeley came over as governor (in 1642), her English population was nearly fifteen thousand and her slaves three hundred, and many of her planters were men of much wealth. Berkeley's first term as governor (1642-1652) covered the period of the Civil War in England.

CIVIL WAR IN ENGLAND.--When King James died (in 1625) he was succeeded by Charles I, under whom the old quarrel between the king and the people, which had caused the downfall of the London Company, was pushed into civil war. In 1642 Charles I took the field, raised the royal standard, and called all loyal subjects to its defense. The Parliament of England likewise raised an army, and after varying fortunes the king was defeated, captured, tried for high treason, found guilty, and beheaded (1649).

England then became a republic, called the Commonwealth.

THE CAVALIERS.--While the Civil War was raging in England, Virginia (largely because of the influence of Governor Berkeley) remained loyal to the king. As the war went on and the defeats of the royal army were followed by the capture of the king, numbers of his friends, the Cavaliers, fled to Virginia. After Charles I was beheaded, more than three hundred of the n.o.bility, gentry, and clergy of England came over in one year. No wonder, then, that the General a.s.sembly recognized the dead king's son as King Charles II, and made it treason to doubt his right to the throne. Because of this support of the royal cause, Parliament punished Virginia by cutting off her trade, and ordered that steps be taken to reduce her to submission. A fleet was accordingly dispatched, reached Virginia early in 1652, and forced Berkeley to hand over the government to three Parliamentary commissioners. One of them was then elected governor, and Virginia had almost complete self-government till 1660, when England again became a kingdom, under Charles II.

MARYLAND, THE FIRST PROPRIETARY COLONY.--When Virginia became crown property (1624), the king could do with it what he pleased. King Charles I accordingly cut off a piece and gave it to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore.

[11] This Lord Baltimore was a Catholic who had tried in vain to found a settlement in Newfoundland. He died before the patent, or deed, was drawn for the land cut off from Virginia, so (1632) it was issued to his son Cecilius, the second Lord Baltimore. The province lay north of the Potomac River and was called Maryland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARYLAND BY THE ORIGINAL PATENT.]

By the terms of the grant Lord Baltimore was to pay the king each year two arrowheads in token of homage, and as rent was to give the king one fifth of all the gold and silver mined. This done, he was proprietor of Maryland. He might coin money, grant t.i.tles, make war and peace, establish courts, appoint judges, and pardon criminals. But he was not allowed to tax the people without their consent. He had to summon a legislature to a.s.sist him in making laws, but the laws when made did not need to be sent to the king for approval.

THE FIRST SETTLERS.--The first settlement was made by a company of about twenty gentlemen and three hundred artisans and laborers. They were led and accompanied by two of Lord Baltimore's brothers, and by two Catholic priests. They came over in 1634 in two ships, the _Ark_ and the _Dove_, and not far from the mouth of the Potomac founded St. Marys. In February, 1635, they held their first a.s.sembly. To it came all freemen, both landholders and artisans, and by them a body of laws was framed and sent to the proprietor (Lord Baltimore) for approval.

SELF-GOVERNMENT BEGUN.--This was refused, and in its place the proprietor sent over a code of laws, which the a.s.sembly in its turn rejected. The a.s.sembly then went on and framed another set of laws. Baltimore with rare good sense now yielded the point, and gave his brother authority to a.s.sent to the laws made by the people, but reserved the right to veto. Thus was free self-government established in Maryland. [12]

TROUBLE WITH CLAIBORNE.--Before Lord Baltimore obtained his grant, William Claiborne, of Virginia, had established an Indian trading post on Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay. This fell within the limits given to Maryland; but Claiborne refused to acknowledge the authority of Baltimore, whereupon a vessel belonging to the Kent Island station was seized by the Marylanders for trading without a license. Claiborne then sent an armed boat with thirty men to capture any vessel belonging to St. Marys. This boat was itself captured, instead; but another fight soon occurred, in which Claiborne's forces beat the Marylanders. The struggle thus begun lasted for years. [13]

THE TOLERATION ACT.--The year 1649 is memorable for the pa.s.sage of the Maryland Toleration Act, the first of its kind in our history. This provided that "no person or persons whatsoever within this province, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth be any ways troubled, molested, or discountenanced for, or in respect to, his or her religion."