The Planters of Colonial Virginia Part 8

A year later President Jennings stated that the migration was continuing and that during the summer of 1709 "many entire families" had moved out of the colony.[8-24] In fact, although but few indentured servants arrived from England after the first decade of the century, poor whites were still departing for the north or for western Carolina so late as 1730. William Byrd II tells us that in 1728, when he was running the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina, he was entertained by a man who "was lately removed, Bag and Baggage from Maryland, thro a strong Antipathy he had to work and paying his Debts."

Indeed he thought it a "thorough Aversion to Labor" which made "People file off to North Carolina."[8-25]

It is impossible to estimate the numbers involved in this movement, but they must have run into the thousands. For a full half century a large proportion of the white immigrants to Virginia seem to have remained there for a comparatively short time only, then to pa.s.s on to other settlements. And the migration to Virginia during these years we know to have comprised not less than thirty or thirty-five thousand persons. In fact, it would seem that this movement out of the older colony must have been a very important factor in the peopling of its neighbors, not only western Carolina and western Maryland, but Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Though many thus fled before the stream of negroes which poured in from Africa, others remained behind to fight for their little plantations.

Yet they waged a losing battle. Those who found it possible to purchase slaves, even one or two, could ride upon the black tide, but the others slowly sank beneath it.

During the first half of the Eighteenth century the poor whites sought to offset the cheapness of slave made tobacco by producing themselves only the highest grades. The traders who dealt in the finest Orinoco, which brought the best prices, found it not upon the plantations of the wealthy, but of those who tended their plants with their own hands. "I must beg you to remember that the common people make the best," wrote Governor Gooch to the Lords of Trade in 1731.[8-26]

In fact, the wealthy planter, with his newly acquired gangs of slaves, found it difficult at this time to produce any save the lower grades of tobacco. The African was yet too savage, too untutored in the ways of civilization to be utilized for anything like intensive cultivation.

"Though they may plant more in quant.i.ty," wrote Gooch, "yet it frequently proves very mean stuff, different from the Tobacco produced from well improved and well tended Grounds." "Yet the rich Man's trash will always damp the Market," he adds, "and spoil the poor Man's good Tobacco which has been carefully managed."[8-27] Thus the small farmer made one last desperate effort to save himself by pitting his superior intelligence against the cheapness of slave labor.

But his case was hopeless. As slavery became more and more fixed upon the colony, the negro gradually increased in efficiency. He learned to speak his master's language, brokenly of course, but well enough for all practical purposes. He was placed under the tutelage of overseers, who taught him the details of his work and saw that he did it. He became a civilized being, thoroughly drilled in the one task required of him, the task of producing tobacco. Thus the rich planter soon found it possible to cultivate successfully the higher grades, and so to drive from his last rampart the white freeholder whose crop was tended by himself alone.

Placed at so great a disadvantage, the poor man, at all times in very difficult circ.u.mstances, found it almost impossible to exist whenever conditions in Europe sent the price of tobacco down. In the years from 1706 to 1714, when the tobacco trade was interrupted by the wars of Charles XII in the Baltic region and the protracted struggle known as the War of the Spanish Succession, he was reduced to the utmost extremities.

Virginia and Maryland were learning that a prosperity founded upon one crop which commanded a world market was in unsettled times subject to serious setbacks. It was a long cry from the James and the Potomac to the Baltic ports, yet the welfare of the Virginia and Maryland planters was in no small degree dependent upon the maintenance of peaceful conditions in Poland and Sweden and Russia. A war which seriously curtailed the exportation of English leaf to the northern countries would inevitably react on the price and so bring misfortune to the colonial planters. When called before the Board of Trade to testify as to the decay of the tobacco trade, the manufacturer John Linton declared that the Baltic countries, which formerly had purchased thousands of hogsheads a year, now took comparatively few. "The Russian trade is ruined," he said.[8-28]

The war against France and Spain, coming at this unfortunate juncture, still further restricted the market, sent prices down to new depths and filled to overflowing the planters' cup of misfortune. "The war has stopped the trade with Spain, France, Flanders and part of the Baltic,"

Colonel Quary reported in a memorial to the Board of Trade, "which took off yearly 20,000 hogsheads of tobacco. Now our best foreign market is Holland."[8-29] The pamphlet ent.i.tled _The Present State of the Tobacco Plantations in America_ stated, in 1708, that France and Spain alone had imported 20,000 hogsheads, but that both were now otherwise supplied.

"The troubles in Sweden, Poland, Russia, etc., have prevented the usual exportation of great quant.i.ties to those ports. Virginia and Maryland have severely felt the loss of such exportation, having so far reduced the planters that for several years past the whole product of their tobacco would hardly clothe the servants that made it."[8-30]

Their misfortunes were accentuated by the fact that the Dutch took advantage of the European upheavals to gain control of a part of the tobacco trade. Upon the outbreak of the war with Louis XIV, England prohibited the exportation of tobacco either to France or to Spain, but Holland, despite her partic.i.p.ation in the struggle, apparently took no such action. On the contrary she strained every nerve to entrench herself in the markets of her ally before peace should once more open the flood gates to Virginia and Maryland tobacco. With this in view the acreage in Holland devoted to the cultivation of the leaf was rapidly extended. "The Dutch are improving and increasing their tobacco plantations," wrote John Linton in 1706. "In 1701 they produced only 18,000 hogsheads. Last year it was 33,500 hogsheads." Plantations at Nimwegen, Rhenen, Amersfoort and Nijkerk turned out 13,400,000 pounds, while great quant.i.ties were raised on the Main, in Higher Germany and in Prussia.[8-31]

The Dutch mixed their own leaf with that of Virginia and Maryland in the proportion of four to one, subjected it to a process of manufacture and sent it out to all the European markets.[8-32] In 1707 a letter to John Linton stated that they had from thirty to forty houses for "making up tobacco in rolls," employing 4,000 men, besides great numbers of women and girls. Their Baltic exports were estimated at 12,350,000 pounds; 2,500,000 pounds to Norway, 1,500,000 to Jutland and Denmark, 4,000,000 to Sweden, 2,350,000 to Lapland, 2,000,000 to Danzig and Konigsberg.[8-33]

With the continuation of the war on the continent Dutch compet.i.tion became stronger and stronger. In 1714, when peace was at last in prospect, they seemed thoroughly entrenched in many of the markets formerly supplied by the English. "The planting of tobacco in Holland, Germany, Etc.," it was reported to the Board of Trade, "is increased to above four times what it was 20 years ago, and amounts now to as much as is made in both Virginia and Maryland." The tobacco trade, which had formerly produced some 250,000 in the balance of trade, had declined to about half that figure, exports of manufactured goods to the Chesapeake were rapidly dwindling, the number of s.h.i.+ps engaged in carrying tobacco was greatly reduced, the merchants were impoverished, the planters were ruined.[8-34]

"It is hardly possible to imagine a more miserable spectacle than the poorer sort of inhabitants in this colony," the Council wrote in 1713, "whose labour in tobacco has not for several years afforded them clothing to shelter them from the violent colds as well as heats to both which this climate is subject in the several seasons. The importation of British and other European commodities by the merchants, whereby the planters were formerly well supplied with clothing, is now in a manner wholly left off and the small supplies still ventured sold at such prodigeous rates as they please. Many families formerly well clothed and their houses well furnished are now reduced to rags and all the visible marks of poverty."[8-35]

This unfortunate period was but temporary. With the conclusion of peace English tobacco was dumped upon the European market at a figure so low as to defy compet.i.tion. And when once the hogsheads began to move, the reaction on Virginia and Maryland was rapid and p.r.o.nounced. Soon prices rose again to the old levels, and the colony entered upon a period, for the larger planters at least, of unprecedented prosperity.[8-36] But the eight years of hards.h.i.+p and poverty made a lasting imprint upon the poorest cla.s.s of whites. Coming as they did upon the heels of the first great wave of negro immigration, they accelerated the movement of the disrupting forces already at work. It was not by accident that the largest migration of whites to other settlements occurred just at this time and that the inquiries as to its cause are most frequent. The little planter cla.s.s never fully recovered from the blow dealt it by the temporary loss of the larger part of the European tobacco trade.

The small freeholders who possessed neither servants nor slaves did not disappear entirely, but they gradually declined in numbers and sank into abject poverty. During the period of Spotswood's administration they still const.i.tuted a large part of the population. The tax list for 1716 in Lancaster, one of the older counties, shows that of 314 persons listed as t.i.thables, 202 paid for themselves only.[8-37] Making ample deductions for persons not owning land it would appear that more than half the planters at this date still tilled their fields only with their own labor. At the time of the American Revolution, however, the situation had changed materially, and a decided dwindling of the poor farmer cla.s.s is noticeable. In Gloucester county the tax lists for 1782-83 show 490 white families, of which 320 were in possession of slaves. Of the 170 heads of families who possessed no negroes, since no doubt some were overseers, some artisans, some professional men, it is probable that not more than eighty or ninety were proprietors.[8-38] In Spotsylvania county similar conditions are noted. Of 704 t.i.thable whites listed in 1783 all save 199 possessed slaves.[8-39] In Dinwiddie county, in the year 1782, of 843 t.i.thable whites, 210 only were not slave holders.[8-40] Apparently the Virginia yeoman, the st.u.r.dy, independent farmer of the Seventeenth century, who tilled his little holding with his own hands, had become an insignificant factor in the life of the colony. The glorious promises which the country had held out to him in the first fifty years of its existence had been belied. The Virginia which had formerly been so largely the land of the little farmer, had become the land of masters and slaves. For aught else there was no room.

Before the end of the Eighteenth century the condition of the poorest cla.s.s had become pitiable. The French philosopher Chastellux who spent much time in Virginia during the American Revolution testifies to their extreme misery. "It is there that I saw poor persons for the first time since crossing the ocean," he says. "In truth, near these rich plantations, in which the negro alone is unhappy, are often found miserable huts inhabited by whites whose wan faces and ragged garments give testimony to their poverty."[8-41]

Philip Fithian, in his _Journal_, describes the habits of this cla.s.s and is vigorous in his condemnation of the brutal fights which were so common among them. "In my opinion animals which seek after and relish such odius and filthy amus.e.m.e.nts are not of the human species," he says, "they are dest.i.tute of the remotest pretension of humanity."[8-42] Even the negroes of the wealthy regarded these persons with contempt, a contempt which they were at no pains to conceal.

The traveller Smyth thought them "kind, hospitable and generous," but "illiberal, noisy and rude," and much "addicted to inebriety and averse to labor." This cla.s.s, he says, "who ever compose the bulk of mankind, are in Virginia more few in numbers, in proportion to the rest of the inhabitants, than perhaps in any other country in the universe."[8-43]

But it must not be imagined that slavery drove out or ruined the entire cla.s.s of small farmers, leaving Virginia alone to the wealthy. In fact, most of those who were firmly established remained, finding their salvation in themselves purchasing slaves. Few indeed had been able to avail themselves of the labor of indentured servants; the cost of transportation was too heavy, the term too short, the chances of sickness or desertion too great. But with the influx of thousands of negroes, the more enterprising and industrious of the poor planters quite frequently made purchases. Although the initial outlay was greater, they could secure credit by pledging their farms and their crops, and in the end the investment usually paid handsome dividends and many who could not raise the money to buy a full grown negro, often found it possible to secure a child, which in time would become a valuable a.s.set.

This movement may readily be traced by an examination of the tax lists and county records of the Eighteenth century. In Lancaster even so early as 1716 we find that the bulk of the slaves were in the hands, not of wealthy proprietors, but of comparatively poor persons. Of the 314 taxpayers listed, 113 paid for themselves alone, 94 for two only, 37 for three, 22 for four, thirteen for five, while thirty-five paid for more than five. As there were but few servants in the colony at this time it may be taken for granted that the larger part of the t.i.thables paid for by others were negro slaves. It would seem, then, that of some 200 slave owners in this country, about 165 possessed from one to four negroes only. There were but four persons listed as having more than twenty slaves, William Ball with 22, Madam Fox with 23, William Fox with 25 and Robert Carter with 126.[8-44]

Nor did the cla.s.s of little slave holders melt away as time pa.s.sed. In fact they continued to const.i.tute the bulk of the white population of Virginia for a century and a half, from the beginning of the Eighteenth century until the conquest of the State by Federal troops in 1865. Thus we find that of 633 slave owners in Dinwiddie county in 1782, 95 had one only, 66 had two, 71 three, 45 four, 50 five, making an aggregate of 327, or more than half of all the slave holders, who possessed from one to five negroes.[8-45] In Spotsylvania there were, in 1783, 505 slave owners, of whom 78 possessed one each, 54 two, 44 three, 41 four, and 30 five each. Thus 247, or nearly 49 per cent of the slave holders, had from one to five slaves only. One hundred and sixteen, or 23 per cent, had from six to ten inclusive.[8-46] The Gloucester lists for 1783 show similar conditions. There were in this country 320 slave holders, having 3,314 negroes, an average of about 10-1/3 for each owner. Fifty had one each, 41 had two each, 9 had three, 30 had four and twenty-six had five.

Thus 156, or about half of all the owners, had from one to five slaves.[8-47] In Princess Anne county, of a total of 388 slave owners, 100 had one each, 56 had two each and forty-five had three each.[8-48]

Records of transfers of land tend to substantiate this testimony, by showing that the average holdings at all times in the Eighteenth century were comparatively small. In the years from 1722 to 1729 Spotsylvania was a new county, just opened to settlers, and a large part of its area had been granted in large tracts to wealthy patentees. Yet the deed book for these years shows that it was actually settled, not by these men themselves, but by a large number of poor planters. Of the 197 transfers of land recorded, 44 were for 100 acres or less and 110 for 300 acres or less. The average deed was for 487 acres. As some of the transfers were obviously made for speculative purposes and not with the intent of putting the land under cultivation, even this figure is misleading. The average farm during the period was probably not in excess of 400 acres.

One of the most extensive dealers in land in Spotsylvania was Larkin Chew who secured a patent for a large tract and later broke it up into many small holdings which were sold to new settlers.[8-49]

This subst.i.tution of the small slave holder for the man who used only his own labor in the cultivation of his land unquestionably saved the cla.s.s of small proprietors from destruction. Without it all would have been compelled to give up their holdings in order to seek their fortunes elsewhere, or sink to the condition of "poor white trash." Yet the movement was in many ways unfortunate. It made the poor man less industrious and thrifty. Formerly he had known that he could win nothing except by the sweat of his brow, but now he was inclined to let the negro do the work. Slavery cast a stigma upon labor which proved almost as harmful to the poor white man as did negro compet.i.tion. Work in the tobacco fields was recognized as distinctly the task of an inferior race, a task not in keeping with the dignity of freemen.

Jefferson states that few indeed of the slave owners were ever seen to work. "For in a warm climate," he adds, "no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him."[8-50] Chastellux noted the same tendency, declaring "that the indolence and dissipation of the middling and lower cla.s.ses of white inhabitants of Virginia is such as to give pain to every reflecting mind."[8-51]

Slavery developed in the small farmers a spirit of pride and haughtiness that was unknown to them in the Seventeenth century. Every man, no matter how poor, was surrounded by those to whom he felt himself superior, and this gave him a certain self-esteem. Smyth spoke of the middle cla.s.s as generous, friendly and hospitable in the extreme, but possessing a rudeness and haughtiness which was the result of their "general intercourse with slaves."[8-52] Beverley described them as haughty and jealous of their liberties, and so impatient of restraint that they could hardly bear the thought of being controlled by any superior power. Hugh Jones, Anbury, Fithian and other Eighteenth century writers all confirm this testimony.

Despite the persistence of the small slave holder it is obvious that there were certain forces at work tending to increase the number of well-to-do and wealthy planters. Now that the labor problem, which in the Seventeenth century had proved so perplexing, had finally been solved, there was no limit to the riches that might be acquired by business ac.u.men, industry and good management. And as in the modern industrial world the large corporation has many advantages over the smaller firms, so in colonial Virginia the most economical way of producing tobacco was upon the large plantations.

The wealthy man had the advantage of buying and selling in bulk, he enjoyed excellent credit and could thus often afford to withhold his crop from the market when prices were momentarily unfavorable, he could secure the best agricultural instruments. Most important of all, however, was the fact that he could utilize the resources of his plantation for the production of crude manufactured supplies, thus to a certain extent freeing himself from dependence upon British imports and keeping his slaves at work during all seasons of the year. Before the Eighteenth century had reached its fifth decade every large plantation had become to a remarkable degree self-sustaining. Each numbered among its working force various kinds of mechanics--coopers, blacksmiths, tanners, carpenters, shoemakers, distillers. These men could be set to work whenever the claims of the tobacco crop upon their time were not imperative producing many of the coa.r.s.er articles required upon the plantation, articles which the poor farmer had to import from England.

For this work white men were at first almost universally made use of, but in time their places were taken by slaves. "Several of them are taught to be sawyers, carpenters, smiths, coopers, &c.," says the historian Hugh Jones, "though for the most part they be none of the aptest or nicest."[8-53]

The carpenter was kept busy constructing barns and servants' quarters, or repairing stables, fences, gates and wagons. The blacksmith was called upon to shoe horses, to keep in order ploughs, hinges, sickles, saws, perhaps even to forge outright such rough iron ware as nails, chains and hoes. The cooper made casks in which to s.h.i.+p the tobacco crop, barrels for flour and vats for brandy and cider. The tanner prepared leather for the plantation and the cobbler fas.h.i.+oned it into shoes for the slaves. Sometimes there were spinners, weavers and knitters who made coa.r.s.e cloth both for clothing and for bedding. The distiller every season made an abundant supply of cider, as well as apple, peach and persimmon brandy.

And the plantation itself provided the materials for this varied manufacture. The woods of pine, chestnut and oak yielded timber for houses and fuel for the smithy. The herd of cattle supplied hides for the tanner. The cloth makers got cotton, flax and hemp from the planter's own fields, and wool from his sheep. His orchard furnished apples, grapes, peaches in quant.i.ties ample for all the needs of the distiller. In other words, the large planter could utilize advantageously the resources at hand in a manner impossible for his neighbor who could boast of but a small farm and half a score of slaves.[8-54]

It was inevitable, then, that the widespread use of slave labor would result in the gradual multiplication of well-to-do and wealthy men. In the Seventeenth century not one planter in fifty could be cla.s.sed as a man of wealth, and even so late as 1704 the number of the well-to-do was very narrowly limited. In a report to the Lords of Trade written in that year Colonel Quary stated that upon each of the four great rivers of Virginia there resided from "ten to thirty men who by trade and industry had gotten very competent estates."[8-55] Fifty years later the number had multiplied several times over.

Thus in Gloucester county in 1783, of 320 slave holders no less than 57 had sixteen or more. Of these one possessed 162, one 138, one 93, one 86, one 63, one 58, two 57, one 56, one 43 and one 40.[8-56] In Spotsylvania, of 505 owners, 76 had sixteen or more. Of these Mann Page, Esq., had 157, Mrs. Mary Daingerfield had 71, William Daingerfield 61, Alexander Spotswood 60, William Jackson 49, George Stubblefield 42, Frances Marewither 40, William Jones 39.[8-57]

The Dinwiddie tax lists for 1783 show that of 633 slave holders, no less than 60 had twenty-one or more negroes. Among the more important of these were Robert Turnbull with 81, Colonel John Banister with 88, Colonel William Diggs with 72, John Jones with 69, Mrs. Mary Bolling with 51, Robert Walker with 52, Winfield Mason with 40, John Burwell with 42, Gray Briggs with 43, William Yates with 55, Richard Taliaferro with 43, Major Thomas Scott with 57, Francis Muir with 47.[8-58] The wealth of the larger planters is also shown by the large number of coaches recorded in these lists, which including phaetons, chariots and chairs, aggregated 180 wheels.

Thus it was that the doors of opportunity opened wide to the enterprising and industrious of the middle cla.s.s, and many availed themselves of it to acquire both wealth and influence. Smyth tells us that at the close of the colonial period there were many planters whose fortunes were "superior to some of the first rank," but whose families were "not so ancient nor respectable."[8-59] It was the observation of Anbury that gentlemen of good estates were more numerous in Virginia than in any other province of America.[8-60]

In fact the Eighteenth century was the golden age of the Virginia slave holders. It was then that they built the handsome homes once so numerous in the older counties, many of which still remain as interesting monuments of former days; it was then that they surrounded themselves with graceful furniture and costly silverware, in large part imported from Great Britain; it was then that they collected paintings and filled their libraries with the works of standard writers; it was then that they purchased coaches and berlins; it was then that men and women alike wore rich and expensive clothing.

This movement tended to widen the influence of the aristocracy and at the same time to eliminate any sharp line of demarkation between it and the small slave holders. There was now only a gradual descent from the wealthiest to the poor man who had but one slave. The Spotsylvania tax lists for 1783 show 247 slaveholders owning from one to five negroes, 116 owning from six to ten inclusive, 66 owning from eleven to fifteen inclusive, and seventy-six owning more than fifteen.[8-61] In Gloucester 156 had from one to five slaves, 66 from five to ten inclusive, 41 from eleven to fifteen inclusive, and fifty-seven over fifteen. Thus in a very true sense the old servant holding aristocracy had given way to a vastly larger slave holding aristocracy.

It is this fact which explains the decline in power and influence of the Council in Virginia, which was so notable in the Eighteenth century.

This body had formerly been representative of a small clique of families so distinct from the other planters and possessed of such power in the government as to rival the n.o.bility of England itself. Now, however, as this distinction disappeared, the Council sank in prestige because it represented nothing, while the House of Burgesses became the mouthpiece of the entire slave holding cla.s.s, and thus the real power in the colonial Government.

Historians have often expressed surprise at the small number of Tories in Virginia during the American Revolution. The aristocratic type of society would naturally lead one to suppose that a large proportion of the leading families would have remained loyal to the Crown. Yet with very few exceptions all supported the cause of freedom and independence, even though conscious of the fact that by so doing they were jeopardizing not only the tobacco trade which was the basis of their wealth, but the remnants of their social and political privileges in the colony. When the British Ministry tried to wring from the hands of the a.s.sembly the all-important control over taxation which all knew to be the very foundation of colonial self-government, every planter, the largest as well as the smallest, felt himself aggrieved, for this body was the depository of his power and the guardian of his interests. A hundred years before, when the commons rose against the oppression and tyranny of the Government, the wealthy men rallied to the support of Sir William Berkeley and remained loyal to him throughout all his troubles.

In 1775 there was no such division of the people; the planters were almost a unit in the defense of rights which all held in common.

It is obvious, then, that slavery worked a profound revolution in the social, economic and political life of the colony. It practically destroyed the Virginia yeomanry, the cla.s.s of small planters who used neither negroes nor servants in the cultivation of their fields, the cla.s.s which produced the bulk of the tobacco during the Seventeenth century and const.i.tuted the chief strength of the colony. Some it drove into exile, either to the remote frontiers or to other colonies; some it reduced to extreme poverty; some it caused to purchase slaves and so at one step to enter the exclusive cla.s.s of those who had others to labor for them. Thus it transformed Virginia from a land of hardworking, independent peasants, to a land of slaves and slave holders. The small freeholder was not destroyed, as was his prototype of ancient Rome, but he was subjected to a change which was by no means fortunate or wholesome. The wealthy cla.s.s, which had formerly consisted of a narrow clique closely knit together by family ties, was transformed into a numerous body, while all sharp line of demarkation between it and the poorer slave holders was wiped out. In short, the Virginia of the Eighteenth century, the Virginia of Gooch and Dinwiddie and Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson, was fundamentally different from the Virginia of the Seventeenth century, the Virginia of Sir William Berkeley and Nathaniel Bacon. Slavery had wrought within the borders of the Old Dominion a profound and far reaching revolution.

NOTES TO CHAPTERS

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

[1-1] Peter Force, Tracts and Other Papers, Vol. III, A True Declaration, p. 25.

[1-2] Purchas, Vol. XVIII, pp. 437-438.

[1-3] Peter Force, Tracts and Other Papers, Vol. III, A True Declaration, p. 23.