The Planters of Colonial Virginia Part 1

The Planters of Colonial Virginia.

by Thomas J. Wertenbaker.

PREFACE

America since the days of Captain John Smith has been the land of hope for mult.i.tudes in Europe. In many an humble home, perhaps in some English village, or an Ulster farm, or in the Rhine valley, one might find a family a.s.sembled for the reading of a letter from son, or brother, or friend, who had made the great venture of going to the New World. "Land is abundant here and cheap," the letter would state. "Wages are high, food is plentiful, farmers live better than lords. If one will work only five days a week one can live grandly."

In pamphlets intended to encourage immigration the opportunities for advancement were set forth in glowing colors. In Virginia alone, it was stated, in 1649, there were "of kine, oxen, bulls, calves, twenty thousand, large and good." When the traveller Welby came to America he was surprised to "see no misery, no disgusting army of paupers, not even beggars;" while Henry B. Fearson noted that laborers were "more erect in their posture, less careworn in their countenances" than those of Europe.

In Virginia, as in other colonies, it was the cheapness of land and the dearness of labor which gave the newcomer his chance to rise. The rich man might possess many thousands of acres, but they would profit him nothing unless he could find the labor to put them under cultivation.

Indentured workers met his needs in part, but they were expensive, hard to acquire, and served for only four years. If he hired freemen he would have to pay wages which in England would have seemed fantastic.

Thus the so-called servants who had completed their terms and men who had come over as freemen found it easy to earn enough to buy small plantations of their own. That thousands did so is shown by the Rent Roll which is published as an appendix to this book. One has only to glance at it to see that the large plantations are vastly outnumbered by the small farms of the yeomen. It proves that Virginia at the beginning of the eighteenth century was not the land of huge estates, worked by servants and slaves, but of a numerous, prosperous middle cla.s.s.

Owning plantations of from fifty to five hundred acres, cultivating their fields of tobacco, their patches of Indian corn and wheat, their vegetable gardens and orchards with their own labor or the labor of their sons, the yeomen enjoyed a sense of independence and dignity. It was their votes which determined the character of the a.s.sembly, it was they who resisted most strongly all a.s.saults upon the liberties of the people.

As the small farmer, after the day's work was over, sat before his cottage smoking his long clay pipe, he could reflect that for him the country had fulfilled its promise. The land around him was his own; his tobacco brought in enough for him to purchase clothes, farm implements, and household goods.

But he frowned as he thought of the slave s.h.i.+p which had come into the nearby river, and landed a group of Negroes who were all bought by his wealthy neighbors. If Virginia were flooded with slaves, would it not cheapen production and lower the price of tobacco? Could he and his sons, when they hoed their fields with their own hands, compete with slave labor?

The event fully justified these fears. The yeoman cla.s.s in Virginia was doomed. In the face of the oncoming tide they had three alternatives--to save enough money to buy a slave or two, to leave the country, or to sink into poverty.

It was the acquiring of a few slaves by the small planter which saved the middle cla.s.s. Before the end of the colonial period a full fifty per cent. of the slaveholders had from one to five only. Seventy-five per cent. had less than ten. The small farmer, as he led his newly acquired slaves from the auction block to his plantation may have regretted that self-preservation had forced him to depend on their labor rather than his own. But he could see all around him the fate of those who had no slaves, as they became "poor white trash." And he must have looked on with pity as a neighbor gathered up his meager belongings and, deserting his little plantation, set out for the remote frontier.

It was one of the great crimes of history, this undermining of the yeoman cla.s.s by the importation of slaves. The wrong done to the Negro himself has been universally condemned; the wrong done the white man has attracted less attention. It effectively deprived him of his American birthright--the high return for his labor. It transformed Virginia and the South from a land of hard working, self-respecting, independent yeomen, to a land of slaves and slaveholders.

_Princeton, New Jersey_ THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER _August, 1957_

_CHAPTER I_

ENGLAND IN THE NEW WORLD

At the beginning of the Seventeenth century colonial expansion had become for England an economic necessity. Because of the depletion of her forests, which const.i.tuted perhaps the most important of her natural resources, she could no longer look for prosperity from the old industries that for centuries had been her mainstay. In the days when the Norman conquerors first set foot upon English soil the virgin woods, broken occasionally by fields and villages, had stretched in dense formation from the Scottish border to Suss.e.x and Devons.h.i.+re. But with the pa.s.sage of five centuries a great change had been wrought. The growing population, the expansion of agriculture, the increasing use of wood for fuel, for s.h.i.+pbuilding, and for the construction of houses, had by the end of the Tudor period so denuded the forests that they no longer sufficed for the most pressing needs of the country.

Even at the present day it is universally recognized that a certain proportion of wooded land is essential to the prosperity and productivity of any country. And whenever this is lacking, not only do the building, furniture, paper and other industries suffer, but the rainfall proves insufficient, spring floods are frequent and the fertility of the soil is impaired by was.h.i.+ng. These misfortunes are slight, however, compared with the disastrous results of the gradual thinning out of the forests of Elizabethan England. The woods were necessary for three all-important industries, the industries upon which the prosperity and wealth of the nation were largely dependent--s.h.i.+pbuilding, for which were needed timber, masts, pitch, tar, resin; the manufacture of woolens, calling for a large supply of potash; smelting of all kinds, since three hundred years ago wood and not coal was the fuel used in the furnaces. It was with the deepest apprehension, then, that thoughtful Englishmen watched the gradual reduction of the forest areas, for it seemed to betoken for their country a period of declining prosperity and economic decay. "When therefore our mils of Iron and excesse of building have already turned our greatest woods into pasture and champion within these few years,"

says a writer of this period, "neither the scattered forests of England, nor the diminished groves of Ireland will supply the defect of our navy."[1-1]

From this intolerable situation England sought relief through foreign commerce. If she could no longer smelt her own iron, if she could not produce s.h.i.+p-stores or burn her own wood ashes, these things might be procured from countries where the forests were still extensive, countries such as those bordering the Baltic--Germany, Poland, Russia, Sweden. And so the vessels of the Muscovy Company in the second half of the Sixteenth century pa.s.sed through the Cattegat in large numbers to make their appearance at Reval and Libau and Danzig, seeking there the raw materials so vitally necessary to England. "Muscovia and Polina doe yeerly receive many thousands for Pitch, Tarre, Sope Ashes, Rosen, Flax, Cordage, Sturgeon, Masts, Yards, Wainscot, Firres, Gla.s.se, and such like," wrote Captain John Smith, "also Swethland for Iron and Copper."[1-2]

But this solution of her problem was obviously unsatisfactory to England. The northern voyage was long, dangerous and costly; the King of Denmark, who controlled the entrance to the Baltic, had it within his power at any moment to exclude the English traders; the Muscovy company no longer enjoyed exemption from customs in Prussia, Denmark and Russia.

In case war should break out among the northern nations this trade might for a time be cut off entirely, resulting in strangulation for England's basic industries. "The merchant knoweth," said the author of _A True Declaration_, "that through the troubles in Poland & Muscovy, (whose eternall warres are like the Antipathy of the Dragon & Elephant) all their traffique for Masts, Deales, Pitch, Tarre, Flax, Hempe, and Cordage, are every day more and more indangered."[1-3] Moreover, the trade was much impeded by the ice which for several months each year choked some of the northern ports.

The most alarming aspect of this unfortunate situation was the effect of the shortage of s.h.i.+pbuilding material upon the merchant marine. Situated as it was upon an island, England enjoyed communication with the nations of the world only by means of the ocean pathways. Whatever goods came to her doors, whatever goods of her own manufacture she sent to foreign markets, could be transported only by sea. It was a matter of vital import to her, then, to build up and maintain a fleet of merchant vessels second to none. But this was obviously difficult if not impossible when "the furniture of s.h.i.+pping" such as "Masts, Cordage, Pitch, Tar, Rossen" were not produced in quant.i.ty by England itself, and could be had "only by the favor of forraigne potency."[1-4] Already, it was stated, the decay of s.h.i.+pping was manifest, while large numbers of able mariners were forced to seek employment in other countries. "You know how many men for want of imploiment, betake themselves to Tunis, Spaine and Florence," declared one observer, "and to serve in courses not warrantable, which would better beseeme our own walles and borders to bee spread with such branches, that their native countrey and not forreine Princes might reape their fruit, as being both exquisite Navigators, and resolute men for service, as any the world affords."[1-5]

It must be remembered that the merchant vessel three hundred years ago const.i.tuted an important part of the nation's sea defence. The fleet which met the mighty Spanish Armada in the Channel and inflicted upon it so decisive a defeat, was made up in large part of volunteer s.h.i.+ps from every English port. And the Britisher knew full well that the merchant marine const.i.tuted the "wooden walls" of his country, knew that its decay would leave England almost defenseless. At the moment when one able writer was pointing out that "the Realme of England is an Island impossible to be otherwise fortified than by stronge s.h.i.+ppes," another was complaining that there were scarce two vessels of 100 tons belonging to the whole city of Bristol, and few or none along the Severn from Gloucester to Land's End on one side, and to Milford Haven on the other.[1-6]

For this intolerable situation there could be but one remedy--England must secure colonial possessions to supply her with the products for which her forests were no longer sufficient. Her bold navigators had already crossed the Atlantic, returning with alluring stories of the limitless resources of the New World, of mighty forests spreading in unbroken array for hundreds of miles along the coast and back into the interior as far as the eye could see.[1-7] Why, it was asked, should Englishmen be forced to make the hazardous journey to the Baltic in order to procure from other nations what they might easily have for themselves by taking possession of some of the limitless unoccupied areas of America? It was folly to remain in economic bondage while the road to independence stretched so invitingly before them.

Long before the Goodspeed, the Discovery and the Sarah Constant turned their prows into the waters of the James, able English writers were urging upon the nation the absolute necessity for colonial expansion. In 1584 the fa.r.s.eeing Hakluyt pointed out that the recent voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert had proved that "pitche, tarr, rosen, sope ashes" could be produced in America in great plenty, "yea, as it is thought, ynoughe to serve the whole realme."[1-8] Captain Christopher Carleill had the previous year made an effort to persuade the Muscovy Company to divert its energies toward America. Why remain under the power of the King of Denmark, he asked, or other princes who "command our s.h.i.+ppes at their pleasure," when all the products of the Baltic regions were to be had from unoccupied territories which so easily could be placed under the English flag?

It has often been taken for granted that the statesmen and merchants of three centuries ago pursued always a mistaken and shortsighted economic policy. John Fiske a.s.sures us that even at the close of the Eighteenth century the barbarous superst.i.tions of the Middle Ages concerning trade between nations still flourished with scarcely diminished vitality. Yet it requires but a cursory study of the theories and arguments of the Elizabethan economists to realize that they were men of ability and vision, that they knew what was needed and how to procure it, that they were nearer right than many have supposed. In fact, they acted upon sound economic principles a century and a half before Adam Smith formulated and expounded them.

These men realized keenly that England's safety demanded a larger measure of economic independence and they pointed out what seemed to be the only available means of securing it. Since her forests upon which her prosperity in the past had been so largely based, were nearing the point of exhaustion, she must expand to embrace new lands where the virgin growth of trees stood untouched. If this is barbarous, then the recent efforts of Italy to gain an independent coal supply, of Great Britain to get control of various oil fields, of the United States to build up a dye industry, are all likewise barbarous. In fact the world today in matters of economic policy has by no means gotten away from the conceptions of the men whose able writings cleared the way for the beginning of the British colonial empire.

But it must not be supposed that England in this matter was concerned only for her supply of naval stores, potash and pig iron. There were other products, not so vital it is true, but still important, which she was forced to seek abroad. From the south of Europe came salt, sugar, wine, silk, fruits; from the Far East saltpetre and dyes, together with spices for making palatable the winter's stock of food; from Holland came fish, from France wine and silk. And as in the Baltic, so elsewhere the merchants of London and Bristol and Plymouth found their activities resented and their efforts blocked and thwarted.

All commerce with the dominions of the King of Spain was carried on with the greatest difficulty. "Our necessitie of oiles and colours for our clothinge trade being so greate," pointed out Hakluyt, "he may arreste almoste the one halfe of our navye, our traficque and recourse beinge so greate in his dominions." The rich trade with the Far East was seriously hampered by the Turks, through whose territories it had to pa.s.s, and often a heavy tribute was laid upon it by the Sultan and his minions.

Even after the merchants had succeeded in lading their vessels in the eastern Mediterranean with goods from the Orient, they still had to run the gauntlet of the hostile Powers who infested that sea. If they escaped the Knights of Malta, they might be captured by the corsairs of Algeria or Tripoli.

The trade with France had also declined greatly during the closing years of the Sixteenth century. Not only had the religious wars proved a tremendous obstacle, but the government at Paris discriminated against the woolens from England by means of custom duties, while the French workmen were themselves manufacturing cloth of excellent quality in larger amounts than had hitherto been thought possible. In the Low Countries the long and bitter struggle of the people against the b.l.o.o.d.y bands of Alva had wrought such destruction and had so ruined industry that all foreign commerce had greatly declined.[1-9]

There can be no surprise, then, that many English economists felt that a crisis had been reached, that nothing save the immediate establishment of colonies would prevent disaster. With the woolen industry declining, with the s.h.i.+pbuilding centres almost idle, with able mariners deserting the service, with the foreign market gradually closing to English wares, with the country overrun with idle and starving laborers, with some of her chief natural resources nearly exhausted and the trade by which her needs were replenished in constant danger, England turned to America as her hope for salvation. Upon securing a foothold in the New World, hitherto monopolized by Spain and Portugal, depended Albion's future greatness and prosperity.

It is this which gave to the London Company its national character, and made its efforts to establish a colony across the Atlantic a crusade, a movement in which every Englishman was vitally concerned. The great lords and wealthy merchants who comprised the Company knew well enough that there was little hope of immediate returns upon the money they subscribed so liberally. They expected to receive their reward in another way, in the revival of English industrial life and the restoration of English economic independence. It is a singular perversion of history, an inaccurate interpretation of men and events, which for so many years beclouded our conception of the beginning of the British colonial empire. The settlement at Jamestown was not the product of a selfish, private venture, but the fruition of long years of thought and endeavor, long years of pleading with the English public, of the conscious and deliberate efforts of the nation to expand to the New World, to break the bonds of economic dependence and to restore to England the place in the world which rightfully was hers.

In addition to, but closely a.s.sociated with, the economic causes of Anglo-Saxon expansion was the realization in England of the need for prompt action in putting a limit to the growing domains of the King of Spain. In the century which had elapsed since Columbus opened a new world to the peoples of Europe, this monarch had seized the richest part of the great prize, and was still reaching forward to the north and to the south. Unless England took advantage of the present opportunity, the vast American continents might be closed to her forever. Anglo-Saxon civilization in that case might well remain permanently cooped up in the little island that had seen its inception, while the Spanish language and Spanish inst.i.tutions expanded to embrace the garden spots of the world.[1-10]

There were still other motives for this great movement. The English felt the prime necessity of discovering and controlling a new route to the East, they wished to expand the influence of the Anglican church and convert the Indians, they hoped to seize and fortify strategic points in America which would aid them in their struggles with the Spaniards. But these things, important as they were, paled beside the pressing necessity of national expansion, of rehabilitating English industrial life, restoring the merchant marine and securing economic independence.

Thus, when Captain Newport returned in 1607 to report that the colony of Virginia had been safely launched, many Englishmen were aroused to a high pitch of hope and expectation. Now at last a province had been secured which could supply the raw materials which England so greatly needed. The active supporters of the undertaking were lavish in their promises. Virginia would yield better and cheaper timber for s.h.i.+pping than Prussia or Poland, she would furnish potash in abundance, and since wood could there be had for the cutting, her copper and iron ore could be smelted on the spot. Wine could be made there, as excellent as that of the Canaries, they boasted, while it was hoped soon to manufacture silk rivalling in fineness that of Persia or of Turkey. The waters of the colony were full of "Sturgion, Caviare and new land fish of the best," her fields could produce hemp for cordage and flax for linen. As for pitch, tar, turpentine and boards, there was a certainty of a rich return.[1-11] In February 1608, the Council of Virginia wrote to the corporation of Plymouth: "The staple and certain Comodities we have are Soap-ashes, pitch, tar, dyes of sundry sorts and rich values, timber for all uses, fis.h.i.+ng for sturgeon and divers other sorts ... making of Gla.s.s and Iron, and no improbable hope of richer mines."[1-12]

And no sooner had the infant colony been established than the Company turned with enthusiasm to the production of these highly desired commodities. A number of foreigners, Dutchmen and Poles skilled in the manufacture of s.h.i.+p-stores, were sent over to make a start with pitch, tar, turpentine and potash. They were to act as instructors, also, and it was expected that within a few years the Virginia forests would be filled with workers in these trades. Unfortunately their efforts met with ill success, and save for a few small samples of pitch and tar which were sent to England, nothing of value was produced.

For this failure the reason is apparent. All the able economists and statesmen who had predicted that the colony would become an industrial center had overlooked one vitally important factor--the lack of cheap labor. No matter how rich in natural resources, Virginia could not hope to compete with the long-established industries of Europe and Asia, because she lacked the abundant population requisite to success. It had been imagined by Hakluyt and others that the colony could avail herself of the surplus population of England, could drain off the upper stratum of the idle and unemployed. What more feasible than to set these men to work in the forests of the New World to produce the raw materials the want of which was responsible for unemployment in England itself!

But the voyage across the Atlantic was so long and costly, that it proved impossible to transport in any reasonable length of time enough workers to Virginia to supply her needs. And the few thousand that came over in the early years of the Seventeenth century were in such great demand that they could secure wages several times higher than those in vogue throughout Europe. Thus the London Company, from the very outset, found itself face to face with a difficulty which it could never surmount. Virginia could not compete with the s.h.i.+p-stores of the Baltic nations because her labor, when indeed it was found possible to secure labor at all, was far more expensive than that of Poland or Sweden or Russia. It mattered not that the Company sent over indentured servants, bound by their contracts to work for a certain number of years; the effect was the same. The cost of transportation swallowed up the profits from the servant's labor, when that labor was expended upon industries which had to face the compet.i.tion of the cheap workers of the Old World.

It speaks well for the ac.u.men of Captain John Smith that he seems to have been the first to grasp clearly this truth. He wrote that the workingmen had made a beginning of "Pitch and Tarre, Gla.s.s, Sope-ashes and Clapboard," but that little had been accomplished. "If you rightly consider what an infinite toyle it is in Russia and Swetland, where the woods are proper for naught else, and though there be the helpe both of man and beast in those ancient Common-wealths, which many a hundred years have used it, yet thousands of those poor people can scarce get necessaries to live ... you must not expect from us any such matter."[1-13]

The attempt to produce iron in Virginia was pursued even more vigorously, but with equally poor success. The early settlers, eager to a.s.sure the Company that the venture they had entered upon would soon yield a rich return, spoke enthusiastically of the numerous indications of the presence of iron ore. In 1609 Captain Newport brought with him to England a supply of ore from which sixteen or seventeen tons of metal were extracted of a quality equal or superior to that obtained from any European country. The iron was sold to the East India Company at the rate of 4 a ton.[1-14] Immediately plans were launched for taking advantage of what seemed to be a splendid opportunity. In the course of the first three years machinery for smelting and manufacturing iron was sent over and men were set to work to operate it. But the difficulties proved too great and ere long the attempt had to be abandoned.

The Company had no idea of relinquis.h.i.+ng permanently its quest for staple commodities, however, and soon a new and far more ambitious project was set on foot for extracting the ore. The spot selected was at Falling Creek, in the present county of Chesterfield, a few miles below the rapids of the James river. George Sandys had noted with satisfaction some years before that the place was in every respect suited for iron smelting, for in close proximity to the ore was wood in abundance, stones for the construction of the furnace and deep water for transportation. To him it seemed that nature itself had selected the site and endowed it with every facility which the enterprise could require.[1-15] Here the London Company spent from 4,000 to 5,000 in a supreme effort to make their colony answer in some degree the expectations which had been placed in it. A Captain Blewit, with no less than 80 men, was sent over to construct the works, upon which, they declared, were fixed the eyes of "G.o.d, Angels and men." But Blewit soon succ.u.mbed to one of the deadly epidemics which yearly swept over the little colony, and a Mr. John Berkeley, accompanied by 20 experienced workers, came over to take his place.

At first things seem to have gone well with this ambitious venture. Soon the Virginia forests were resounding to the whir of the axe and the crash of falling trees, to the exclamations of scores of busy men as they extracted the ore, built their furnace and began the work of smelting. Operations had progressed so far that it was confidently predicted that soon large quant.i.ties of pig iron would be leaving the James for England, when an unexpected disaster put an abrupt end to the enterprise. In the terrible ma.s.sacre of 1622, when the implacable Opechancanough attempted at one stroke to rid the country of its white invaders, the little industrial settlement at Falling Creek was completely destroyed. The furnace was ruined, the machinery thrown into the river, the workmen butchered. This project, which had absorbed so much of the attention and resources of the Company, is said to have yielded only a shovel, a pair of tongs and one bar of iron.[1-16]

The history of the attempts to establish gla.s.s works in Virginia is also a story of wasted energy and money, of final failure. The Dutch and Polish workers who came in 1608 set up a furnace at Jamestown,[1-17] but nothing more is heard of them, and it is clear that they met with no success. Nor did Captain William Norton, who arrived in 1621 with a number of skilled Italian gla.s.s workers fare any better.[1-18] In 1623 George Sandys wrote: "Capt. Norton dyed with all save one of his servants, the Italians fell extremely sick yet recovered; but I conceave they would gladly make the work to appear unfeasable, that they might by that means be dismissed for England. The fier hath now been for six weeks in ye furnace and yet nothing effected. They claim that the sand will not run." Shortly after this the workmen brought matters to an end by cracking the furnace with a crowbar.[1-19]

Thus ended in complete failure the efforts of England to reap what she considered the legitimate fruits of this great enterprise. The day of which her fa.r.s.eeing publicists had dreamed had arrived; she had at last challenged the right of Spain to all North America, her sons were actually settled on the banks of the James, a beginning had been made in the work of building a colonial empire. But the hope which had so fired the mind of Hakluyt, the hope of attaining through Virginia British economic independence, was destined never to be fulfilled. However lavishly nature had endowed the colony with natural resources, however dense her forests, however rich her mines, however wide and deep her waterways, she could not become an industrial community. Fate had decreed for her another destiny. But England was reluctant to accept the inevitable in this matter. Long years after Sir Edwin Sandys and his fellow workers of the London Company had pa.s.sed to their rest, we find the royal ministers urging upon the colony the necessity of producing pig iron and silk and potash, and promising every possible encouragement in the work. But the causes which operated to bring failure in 1610 or 1620 prevented success in 1660 and 1680. Virginia had not the abundant supply of labor essential to the development of an industrial community and for many decades, perhaps for centuries, could not hope to attain it. Her future lay in the discovery and exploitation of one staple commodity for which she was so preeminently adapted that she could, even with her costly labor, meet the compet.i.tion of other lands. The future history of Virginia was to be built up around the Indian plant tobacco.