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[1619-1624 |
4. At a later date, when wars and
insurrections broke out in England, many prisoners taken in battle
were sent over here and sold to planters.
5. Finally, the King sent some convicts to
Virginia. Again, English judges opened the jails from time to time
and sent over batches of criminals, some of whom had done nothing
worse, perhaps, than steal a loaf of bread to keep from
starving.
Thus, many elements contributed to build up the
new commonwealth. In this respect Virginia resembled the "made
land" of some of our cities. There is good material in it, and
there is some not so good; but in time it all helps to make the
solid foundation of stately streets and broad avenues.
While the South was thus growing, Dutch and
English emigrants had settled at the North. The former established
themselves in what is now New York; the latter, a little later,
founded Plymouth, Massachusetts.
53. Virginia becomes a Royal Province;
Governor Berkeley; the Puritans and the Cavaliers. After a
time King James I took away the Company's charter (1624). In
future the colony was to be governed by the King as a royal
province; but the Assembly or Legislature (§ 51) was not
prohibited, and the people continued to make their own laws to a
considerable extent.
The next king, Charles I, sent over Sir William
Berkeley as governor. The new governor had small faith in
government by the people, in education of the people,1
or in any religion but that of the Church of England.
The majority of the well-to-do colonists and of
the rich tobacco planters agreed with the Governor. They thought
it was better not to give the privileges of education and the
right to vote and to hold office to everybody who asked for them,
but to grant them only to persons of property and standing.
But at that time there was a strong party in
England who called themselves Puritans, because they insisted on
purifying,
1 Speaking of the
colony in 1671, Governor Berkeley said, "I thank God there are no
free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have them these
hundred years." His reason was that he thought common-school
education would make the mass of the people discontented and
rebellious against authority; but he subscribed toward a
college.
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1624-1660] |
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as they said, the national Episcopal Church from some of its
ceremonies and methods to which they conscientiously objected. The
Puritans were opposed to King Charles, because he attempted to
rule the country contrary to law.
Finally, civil war broke out in England. On one
side the King had an army made up of Royalists, or Cavaliers; the
army on the other side was made up of Puritans. Many of the
Puritans had now left the national Church. They called themselves
Separatists, or Independents, and set up a form of worship of
their own.
The war went against the King. He was taken
captive and beheaded. The Puritans then declared England a
republic under Oliver Cromwell, and Governor Berkeley of Virginia,
who was a stiff Royalist, retired from office. Most of the leading
Cavaliers, or Royalists, were men of rank, and before the war had
been men of property. They found the new order of things in
England very uncomfortable, and hundreds of them emigrated to
Virginia.
Some of the most illustrious names in Virginia
history are those of Cavalier emigrants or their descendants.
Richard Henry Lee was one, and Washington was probably
another.1 When the American Revolution broke out, these
illustrious men gave their strength, heart and soul, to the
establishment of the United States of America.
54. Governor Berkeley again in Power; the
Navigation Laws; the King gives away Virginia. When monarchy
was restored in England (1660), Sir William Berkeley put on the
Governor's silk robe of office again. For sixteen years he, with
an Assembly that was in sympathy with him, ruled the colony
according to his own imperious will. During that long period no
new elections were held, and consequently the mass of the people
had no voice in the government.
This grievance was not all. During Cromwell's
time certain laws, called Navigation Laws, had been enacted in
order to prevent the Dutch from competing with England in trade by
sea.
1 On the genealogy of
the Washington family in England, see W. C. Ford's "The Writings
of Washington," XIV, 319. There is a strong probability that
George Washington's ancestors belonged to the Cavalier party which
fought for the King.
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[1660-1676 |
These laws were not intended to injure the
American colonists, but they forbade the colonists to send any
tobacco out of the country except in English or colonial vessels
going to England, or to purchase any foreign goods except those
brought over in English or colonial vessels.
Under King Charles II these laws were made much
more strict (1660-1672). However, they were not really as unfair
as they seemed (§ 146). But the Virginia planters complained
bitterly of them, and they soon found means of doing pretty much
as they pleased about obeying them.
Some years later (1673) Charles, who was a
wasteful and profligate monarch, gave away the whole of Virginia
-- a territory then having a population of 40,000 -- for
thirty-one years, to the Earl of Arlington and Lord Culpepper, two
of his favorites. This caused a long and bitter dispute about the
question of the true ownership of the land, but it was finally
settled in favor of the colonists.
Meanwhile, English emigrants, both Pilgrims and
Puritans, as we shall presently see, had established flourishing
colonies in New England; the Dutch, who had taken possession of
New Netherland (or New York), had been forced to give up that
region to the English, and English Quakers had bought New Jersey.
In the South, English Catholics had settled in Maryland, and
colonies of Englishmen had been founded in the Carolinas. Thus
(1675) an English-speaking population practically held control of
the whole Atlantic coast of America from Maine nearly to the
borders of Florida.
55. Deplorable State of the Virginia
Colonists; Indian War; the Bacon Rebellion. The people of
Virginia were now in a deplorable state. They had no homes that
they could certainly call their own; they had no Assembly that
really represented them (§ 51), they were heavily taxed, and
sometimes they could get but little for the tobacco they exported.
Still their lives were safe, and while life was left, hope was
left. But the Indians suddenly rose (1676), as they had just done
in New England, and began massacring the inhabitants. It was not
the first attack, but, in some respects, the most
terrible.
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1676] |
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The
people begged Governor Berkeley's help, but he did
nothing. Then Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy planter, raised
a force and went out to fight the Indians. His influence
finally compelled Governor Berkeley to allow the people
to elect a new Assembly.|
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[1676 |
hung more men in that naked country than I did here for the
murder of my father." 1
The Virginia colonists never wholly forgot the
meaning of the Bacon rebellion, and its protest against tyrannical
government. just a century after the people's Assembly passed the
famous "Bacon Laws" (1676) their descendants met at Williamsburg,
nearly in sight of the ruins of Jamestown, and there (1776)
declared themselves independent of Great Britain.
56. Summary. Jamestown, the first town built
by the first permanent English colony in the New World, was
founded in 1607. There the first American legislative assembly
met in 1619. Negro slaves were introduced the same year. The
cultivation of tobacco built up commerce and largely increased the
population, but did not favor the growth of towns. The colony was
strongly Royalist, and received many Cavaliers from England.
Later, the Navigation Laws injured its prosperity. There was a
period of bad government, and Bacon attempted reform. His
undertaking failed. But the people remembered the man and his
work, and Virginia a hundred years later (1776) was the first
colony to propose the establishment of American independence.
57. Henry Hudson's Expedition. In the
seventeenth century (1609) the Dutch East India Company of Holland
sent Henry Hudson, an English sea captain, across the Atlantic to
explore. They hoped that he would find a passage by water through
or round America to China and the Indies (§§ 14, 16, 25,
44, 47).
Hudson, with his Dutch crew, entered what is now
New York Bay, and was the first Englishman who sailed up that
noble river which to-day bears his name. He reached a point about
150 miles from the mouth of the river, at or near where Albany now
stands. It was the month of September, and Hudson had good reason
for saying, "It is as beautiful a land as one can tread upon."
1 King Charles II had
tried and executed only six out of the fifty-nine judges who had
sentenced his father (Charles 1) to death (§ 53).
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1613-1626] |
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About a month before, Champlain (§ 48)
had come almost as far south as that, on an exploring expedition
from Quebec. He gave his own name to the lake, known ever since as
Lake Champlain, and claimed the country for France.
58. The Indians give Hudson a Reception on
Manhattan Island; the Strange Drink. The Indians thought that
the English captain, in his bright red coat trimmed with gold
lace, must have come down from the skies to visit them. The
Captain handed the chief a glass of brandy. Soon every red man
present had tried the new and strange drink. Hudson meant the gift
in no unkindly spirit, but to the natives it was simply poison.
For them alcohol had a fatal fascination. Since then liquor has
probably destroyed more Indians than war and disease combined. The
Indians were afraid of the white man's gun; it would have been far
better for them if they had been still more afraid of the white
man's drink.
59. The Dutch take Possession of New
Netherland; jealousy of England and France. The Dutch, finding
from Hudson's report that valuable furs could be bought of the
Indians at enormous profit, soon sent over ships and opened trade
with the natives (1613). Then (1614) the Republic of the United
Netherlands, or Holland, took possession of the country on the
Hudson River, and gave it the name of New Netherland.
Both the English and the French now had good
reason for turning jealous eyes on New Netherland, for that
province was like a wedge. It separated the colony of Virginia
from the unsettled region of New England, and the point of it at
the north entered that territory which Champlain claimed as part
of New France (§ 48). A number of years later (1623) the
Dutch made that wedge more dangerous still by building Fort Orange
on the upper Hudson where the city of Albany now stands.
60. The Dutch buy Manhattan Island, 1626.
In 1626 the Dutch West India Company sent out a colony under
Governor Peter Minuit to settle in New Netherland. He landed with
his emigrants on the island of Manhattan, where a Dutch trading
post already existed (1613). The Governor bought from the Indians
the
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[1626- |
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entire island of 14,000 acres for twenty-four dollars'
worth of scarlet cloth, brass buttons, and other
trinkets, or at
1
"HIGH AND
MIGHTY
LORDS:
Yesterday, arrived here the ship 'The Arms of Amsterdam,'
which sailed from New Netherland . . . on the 23d of
Sept. They report that our people are in good heart and
live in peace there. . . . They have purchased the island
of Manhattan from the Indians for the value of 60
guilders [$24,00] . . . . "Herewith, High and
Mighty Lords, be commended to the mercy of the
Almighty. "P. SCHAGEN." 2 The assessed value of the real estate in 1909, was nearly $7,000,000,000. |
the
rate of about one sixth of a cent an acre.1
The city of New York, which now occupies that land (with
additional territory), is valued at many thousand
millions,2 and the value steadily
increases.
AMSTERDAM,
Nov. 5, 1626.|
1626-] |
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The
Patroon who began a settlement agreed to do three
things:
