The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910 Part 5

They presented, in short, the striking anomaly of a people acknowledging a monarch and at the same time claiming the fullest measure of political liberty till then enjoyed by any community in modern history. They themselves perceived no inconsistency in their att.i.tude; but to us it is patent, and its meaning is that the sentiment of a tradition may be cherished and survive long after intelligence and experience have caused the thing itself to be consigned to the rubbish-heap of the past.

So long as Sir Thomas Smythe occupied the president's chair of the London Company, there could be no hope of substantial prosperity for the Jamestown emigrants. He was a selfish and conceited satrap, incapable of enlightened thought or beneficent action, who knew no other way to magnify his own importance than by suffocating the rights and insulting the self-respect of others. He had a protege in Argall, a disorderly ruffian who was made deputy-governor of the colony in 1617.

His administration was that of a freebooter; but the feeble and dwindling colony had neither power nor spirit to do more than send a complaint to London. Lord Delaware had in the meantime sailed for Virginia, but died on the trip; Argall was, however, dismissed, and Sir George Yeardley subst.i.tuted for him--a man of gracious manners and generous nature, but somewhat lacking in the force and firmness that should build up a state. He had behind him the best men in the company if not in all England: Sir Edward Sandys, the Earl of Southampton, and Nicolas Ferrar. Smythe had had resignation forced upon him, and with him the evil influences in the management retired to the background.

Sandys was triumphantly elected governor and treasurer, with Ferrar as corporation counsel; Southampton was a powerful supporter. They were all young men, all royalists, and all unselfishly devoted to the cause of human liberty and welfare. Virginia never had better or more urgent friends.

Yeardley, on his arrival, found distress and discouragement, and hardly one man remaining in the place of twenty. The colonists had been robbed both by process of law and without; they had been killed and had died of disease; they had deserted and been deported; they had been denied lands of their own, or the benefit of their own labor; and they had been permitted no part in the management of their own affairs. The rumor of these injuries and disabilities had got abroad, and no recruits for the colony had been obtainable; the Indians were ill-disposed, and the houses poor and few. Women too were lamentably scanty, and the people had no root in the country, and no thought but to leave it. Like the emigrants to the Klondike gold-fields in our own day, they had designed only to better their fortunes and then depart.

The former hope was gone; the latter was all that was left.

Yeardley's business, in the premises, was agreeable and congenial; he had a letter from the company providing for the abatement of past evils and abuses, and the establishment of justice, security and happiness.

He sent messengers far and wide, summoning a general meeting to hear his news and confer together for the common weal.

Hardly venturing to believe that any good thing could be in store for them, the burgesses and others a.s.sembled, and crowded into the place of meeting. Twenty-two delegates from the eleven plantations were there, clad in their dingy and dilapidated raiment, and wide-brimmed hats; most of them with swords at their sides, and some with rusty muskets in their hands. Their cheeks were lank and their faces sunburned; their bearing was listless, yet marked with some touch of curiosity and expectation. There were among them some well-filled brows and strong features, announcing men of ability and thoughtfulness, though they had lacked the opportunity and the cue for action. Their long days on the plantations, and their uneasy nights in the summer heats, had given them abundant leisure to think over their grievances and misfortunes, and to dream of possible reforms and innovations. But of what profit was it? Their governors had no thought but to fill their own pockets, the council was powerless or treacherous, and everything was slipping away.

It was in the depths of summer--the 30th of July, 1619. More than a year was yet to pa.s.s before the "Mayflower" would enter the wintry shelter of Plymouth harbor. In the lat.i.tude of Jamestown the temperature was almost tropical at this season, and exhausting to body and spirit. The room in which they met, in the governor's house in Jamestown, was hardly s.p.a.cious enough for their accommodation: four unadorned walls, with a ceiling that could be touched by an upraised hand. It had none of the aspect of a hall of legislature, much less of one in which was to take place an event so large and memorable as the birth of liberty in a new world. But the delegates thronged in, and were greeted at their entrance by Yeardley, who stood at a table near the upper end of the room, with a secretary beside him and a clergyman of the Church of England on his other hand. The colonists looked at his urbane and conciliating countenance, and glanced at the doc.u.ment he held in his hand, and wondered what would be the issue. Nothing of moment, doubtless; still, they could scarcely be much worse off than they were; and the new governor certainly had the air of having something important to communicate. They took their places, leaning against the walls, or standing with their hands clasped over the muzzles of their muskets, or supporting one foot upon a bench; and the gaze of all was concentrated on the governor. As he opened the paper, a silence fell upon the a.s.sembly.

Such, we may imagine, were the surroundings and circ.u.mstances of this famous gathering, the transactions of which fill so bright a page in the annals of the early colonies. The governor asked the clergyman for a blessing, and when the prayer was done suggested the choosing of a chairman, or speaker. The choice fell upon John Pory, a member of the former council. Then the governor read his letter from the company in London.

The letter, in few words, opened the door to every reform which could make the colony free, prosperous and happy, and declared all past wrongs at an end. It merely outlined the scope of the improvements, leaving it to the colonists themselves to fill in the details. "Those cruel laws were abrogated, and they were to be governed by those free laws under which his majesty's subjects in England lived." An annual grand a.s.sembly, consisting of the governor and council and two burgesses from each plantation, chosen by the people, was to be held; and at these a.s.semblies they were to frame whatever laws they deemed proper for their welfare. These concessions were of the more value and effect, because they were advocated in England by men who had only the good of the colony at heart, and possessed power to enforce their will.

It seemed almost too good to be true: it was like the sun rising after the long arctic night. Those sad faces flushed, and the moody eyes kindled. The burgesses straightened their backs and lifted their heads; they looked at one another, and felt that they were once more men.

There was a murmur of joy and congratulation; and thanks were uttered to G.o.d, and to the Company, for what had been done. And forthwith they set to work with life and energy, and with a judgment and foresight which were hardly to have been looked for in legislators so untried, to construct the platform of enactments upon which the commonwealth of Virginia was henceforth to stand.

From the body of the delegates, two committees were selected to devise the new laws and provisions, while the governor and the rest reviewed the laws already in existence, to determine what part of them, if any, was suitable for continuance. Among the articles agreed upon were regulations relating to distribution and tenure of land, which replaced all former patents and privileges, and set all holders on an equal footing: the recognition of the Church of England as governing the mode of wors.h.i.+p in Virginia, with a good salary for clergymen and an injunction that all and sundry were to appear at church every Sunday, and bring their weapons with them--thus insuring Heaven a fair hearing, while at the same time making provision against the insecurity of carnal things. The wives of the planters as well as their husbands were capacitated to own land, because, in a new world, a woman might turn out to be as efficient as the man. This sounds almost prophetic; but it was probably intended to operate on the cultivation of the silkworm.

Plantations of the mulberry had been ordered, and culture of the coc.o.o.n was an industry fitting to the gentler s.e.x, who were the more likely to succeed in it on account of their known partiality for the product. On the other hand, excess in apparel was kept within bounds by a tax. The planting of vines was also ordered; but as a matter of fact the manufacture of neither wine nor silk was destined to succeed in the colony; tobacco and cotton were to be its staples, but the latter had not at this epoch been attempted. Order and propriety among the colonists were a.s.sured by penalties on gaming, drunkenness, and sloth; and the better to guard against the proverbial wiles of Satan, a university was sketched out, and direction was given that such children of the heathen as showed indications of latent talent should be caught, tamed and instructed, and employed as missionaries among their tribes.

Finally, a fixed price of three s.h.i.+llings for the best quality of tobacco, and eighteen pence for inferior brands, was appointed; thus giving the colony a currency which had the double merit of being a sound medium for traffic, and an agreeable consolation and incense when the labors of the day were past.

It was a good day's work; and the a.s.sembly dissolved with the conviction that their time had never before been pa.s.sed to such advantage. Yeardley, knowing the disposition of the managers in London, opposed no objection to the immediate practical enforcement of the new enactments; and indeed Sandys, when he had an opportunity of examining the digest, expressed the opinion that it had been "well and judiciously formed." The colonists, for their part, dismissed all anxieties and shadows from their minds, and fell to putting in crops and putting up dwellings as men will who have a stake in their country, and feel that they can live in it. Their confidence was not misplaced; within a year from this time the number of the colonists had been more than doubled, and all troubles seemed at an end.

So long, however, as James I. disgraced the throne of England, popular liberties could never be quite sure of immunity; and during the five or six years that he still had to live, he did his best to disturb the felicity of his Virginian subjects. He was unable to do anything very serious, and what he did do, was in contravention of law. He got Sandys out of the presidency; but Southampton was immediately put in his place; he tried to get away the patent which he himself had issued, and finally did so; but the colony kept its laws and its freedom, though the Throne thenceforward appointed the governors. He put a heavy tax on tobacco, which he professed to regard as an invention of the enemy; and he countenanced an attempt by Lord Warwick, in behalf of Argall, to continue martial law in the colony instead of allowing trial by Jury; but in this he was defeated. He sent out two commissioners to Virginia to discover pretexts for hara.s.sing it, and took the matter out of the hands of Parliament; but the Virginians maintained themselves until death stepped in and put a final stop to his majesty's industry, and Charles I. came to the throne.

The climate of Virginia does not predispose to exertion; yet farming involves hard physical work; and, beyond anything else, the wealth of Virginia was derived from farming. Manufactures had not come in view, and were discouraged or forbidden by English decree. But, as we saw in the early days of Jamestown, the settlers there were unused to work, and averse from it; although, under the stimulus of Captain John Smith, they did learn how to chop down trees. After the colony became popular, and populous, the emigrants continued to be in a large measure of a social cla.s.s to whom manual labor is unattractive. A country in which laborers are indispensable, and which is inhabited by persons disinclined to labor, would seem to stand no good chance of achieving prosperity. How, then, is the early prosperity of Virginia to be explained? The charter did not make men work.

It was due to the employment of slave labor. Slaves in the Seventeenth Century were easily acquired, and were of several varieties. At one time, there were more white slaves than black. White captives were often sold into slavery; and there was also a regular trade in indentured slaves, or servants, sent from England. These were to work out their freedom by a certain number of years of labor for their purchaser. Convicts from the prisons were also utilized as slaves. In the same year that the Virginia charter bestowed political freedom upon the colonists, a Dutch s.h.i.+p landed a batch of slaves from the Guinea coast, where the Dutch had a footing. They were strong fellows, and the ardor of the climate suited them better than that of the regions further north. Negroes soon came to be in demand therefore; they did not die in captivity as the Indians were apt to do, and a regular trade in them was presently established. A negro fetched in the market more than twice as much as either a red or a white man, and repaid the investment. There was no general sentiment against traffic in human beings, and it was not settled that negroes were human, exactly.

Slavery at all events had been the normal condition of Guinea negroes from the earliest times, and they undoubtedly were worse treated by their African than by their European and American owners. They were born slaves, or at least in slavery. There had of course been enlightened humanitarians as far back as the Greek and Roman eras, who had opined that the principle of slavery was wrong; and such men were talking still; but ordinary people regarded their deliverances as being in the nature of a counsel of perfection, which was not intended to be observed in practice. There are fas.h.i.+ons in humanitarianism, as in other matters, and mult.i.tudes who denounced slavery in the first half of this Nineteenth Century, were in no respect better practical moralists than were the Virginians two hundred years before. But the time had to come, in the course of human events, when negro slavery was to cease in America; and those whose business interests, or sentimental prejudices, were opposed to it, added the chorus of their disapproval to the inscrutable movements of a Power above all prejudices. Negro slavery, as an overt inst.i.tution, is no more in these States; but he would be a bold or a blind man who should maintain that slavery, both black and white, has no existence among us to-day. Meanwhile the Seventeenth Century planters of Virginia bought and sold their human chattels with an untroubled conscience; and the latter, comprehending even less of the ethics of the question than their masters did, were reasonably happy. They were not aware that human nature was being insulted and degraded in their persons: they were transported by no moral indignation. When they were flogged, they suffered, but when their bodies stopped smarting, no pain rankled in their minds. They were treated like animals, and became like them. They had no anxieties; they looked neither forward nor backward; their physical necessities were provided for. White slavery gradually disappeared, but the feeling prevailed that slavery was what negroes were intended for. The planters, after a few generations, came to feel a sort of affection for their bondsmen who had been born on the estates and handed down from father to son. Self-interest, as well as natural kindliness, rendered deliberate cruelties rare. The negroes, on the other hand, often loved their masters, and would grieve to leave them. The evils of slavery were not on the surface, but were subtle, latent, and far more malignant than was even recently realized. The Abolitionists thought the trouble was over when the Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation was signed.

"We can put on our coats and go home, now," said Garrison; and Wendell Phillips said, "I know of no man to-day who can fold his arms and look forward to his future with more confidence than the negro." We shall have occasion to investigate the intelligence of these forecasts by-and-by. But there is something striking in the fact that that country which claims to be the freest and most highly civilized in the world should be the last to give up "the peculiar inst.i.tution." How can devotion to liberty co-exist in the mind with advocacy of servitude?

This, too, is a subject to which we must revert hereafter. At the period we are now treating, there were more white than black slaves, and the princely estates of later times had not been thought of.

Indeed, in spite of their marriage to liberty, the colonists did not yet feel truly at home. Marriage of a more concrete kind was needed for that.

This defect was understood in England, and the Company took means to remedy it. A number of desirable and blameless young women were enlisted to go out to the colony and console the bachelors there. The plan was discreetly carried out; the acquisition of the young ladies was not made too easy, so that neither was their self-respect wounded, nor were the bachelors allowed to feel that beauty and virtue in female form were commonplace commodities. The romance and difficulty of the situation were fairly well preserved. There stood the possible bride; but she was available only with her own consent and approval; and before entering the matrimonial estate, the bridegroom elect must pay all charges--so many pounds of tobacco. And how many pounds of tobacco was a good wife worth? From one point of view, more than was ever grown in Virginia; but the sentimental aspect of the transaction had to be left out of consideration, or the enterprise would have come to an untimely conclusion. From one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds of the weed was the average commercial figure; it paid expenses and gave the agents a commission; for the rest, the profit was all the colonist's. Many a happy home was founded in this way, and, so far as we know, there were no divorces and no scandals. But it must not be forgotten that, although tobacco was paid for the wife, there was still enough left to fill a quiet pipe by the conjugal fireside. They were the first Christian firesides where this soothing G.o.ddess had presided: no wonder they were peaceful!

Charles I. was a young man, with a large responsibility on his shoulders; and two leading convictions in his mind. The first was that he ought to be the absolute head of the nation; Parliament might take counsel with him, but should not control him when it came to action.

The same notion had prevailed with James I., and was to be the immediate occasion of the downfall of James II.; as for Charles II., his long experience of hollow oak trees, and secret chambers in the houses of loyalists, had taught him the limitations of the kingly prerogative before he began his reign; and the severed head of his father clinched the lesson. But the Stuarts, as a family, were disinclined to believe that the way to inherit the earth was by meekness, and none of them believed it so little as the first Charles.

The second conviction he entertained was that he must have revenues, and that they should be large and promptly paid. His whole pathetic career--tragic seems too strong a word for it, though it ended in death--was a mingled story of n.o.bility, falsehood, gallantry and treachery, conditioned by his blind pursuit of these two objects, money and power.

Upon general principles, then, it was to be expected that Charles would be the enemy of Virginian liberties. But it happened that money was his more pressing need at the time his attention first was turned on the colony; he saw that revenues were to be gained from them; he knew that the charter recently given to them had immensely increased their productiveness; and as to his prerogative, he had not as yet felt the resistance which his parliament had in store for him, and was therefore not jealous of the political privileges of a remote settlement--one, too, which seemed to be in the hands of loyal gentlemen. "Their liberties harm me not," was his thought, "and they appear to be favorable to the success of the tobacco crop; the tobacco monopoly can put money in my purse; therefore let the liberties remain. Should these planters ever presume to go too far, it will always be in my power to stop them." Thus it came about that tobacco, after procuring the Virginians loving wives, was also the means of securing the favor of their king. But they, naturally, ascribed the suns.h.i.+ne of his smile to some innate merit in themselves, and their grat.i.tude made them his enthusiastic supporters as long as he lived. They mourned his death, and opened their arms to all royalist refugees from the power of Cromwell. When Cromwell sent over a man-of-war, however, they accepted the situation. Virginia had by that time grown to so considerable an importance that they could adopt a somewhat conservative att.i.tude toward the affairs even of the mother country.

The ten years following Charles's accession were a period of peace and growth in the colony; of great increase in population and in production, and of a steady ripening of political liberties. But the conditions under which this development went on were different from those which existed in New England and in New York. The Puritans were actuated by religious ideals, the Dutch by commercial projects chiefly; but the Virginia planters were neither religious enthusiasts nor tradesmen. Their tendency was not to huddle together in towns and close communities, but to spread out over the broad and fertile miles of their new country, and live each in a little princ.i.p.ality of his own, with his slaves and dependants around him. They modeled their lives upon those of the landed gentry in England; and when their crops were gathered, they did not go down to the wharfs and haggle over their disposal, but handed them over to agents, who took all trouble off their hands, and after deducting commissions and charges made over to them the net profits. This left the planters leisure to apply themselves to liberal pursuits; they maintained a dignified and generous hospitality, and studied the art of government. A race of gallant gentlemen grew up, well educated, and consciously superior to the rest of the population, who had very limited educational facilities, and but little of that spirit of equality and independence which characterized the northern colonies. Towns and cities came slowly; the plantation system was more natural and agreeable under the circ.u.mstances. Orthodoxy in religion was the rule; and though at first there was a tendency to eschew narrowness and bigotry, yet gradually the church became hostile to dissenters, and Puritans and Quakers were as unwelcome in Virginia as were the latter in Ma.s.sachusetts, or Episcopalians anywhere in New England. All this seems incompatible with democracy; and probably it might in time have grown into a liberal monarchical system. The slaves were not regarded as having any rights, political or personal; their masters exercised over them the power of life and death, as well as all lesser powers. The bulk of the white population was not oppressed, and was able to get a living, for Virginia was "the best poor man's country in the world"; there was little or none of the discontent that embarra.s.sed the New Amsterdam patroons; the charter gave them representation, and their manhood was not undermined. Had Virginia been an island, or otherwise isolated, and free from any external interference, we can imagine that the planters might at last have found it expedient to choose a king from among their number, who would have found a n.o.bility and a proletariat ready made.

But Virginia was not isolated. She was loyal to the Stuarts, because they did not bring to bear upon her the severities which they inflicted upon their English subjects; but when she became a royal colony, and had to put up with corrupt and despotic favorites of the monarch, who could do what they pleased, and were responsible to n.o.body but the monarch who had made them governor, loyalty began to cool. Moreover, men whose ability and advanced opinions made them distasteful to the English kings, fled to the colonies, and to Virginia among the rest, and sowed the seeds of revolt. Calamity makes strange bedfellows: the planters liked outside oppression as little as did the common people, and could not but make common cause with them. The distance between the two was diminished. Social equality there could hardly be; but political and theoretic equality could be acknowledged. The English monarchy made the American republic; spurred its indolence, and united its parts. Man left to himself is lax and indifferent; from first to last it is the pressure of wrong that molds him into the form of right.

George I. gave the victory to the Americans in the Revolution as much as Was.h.i.+ngton did. And before George's time, the colonies had been keyed up to the struggle by years of injustice and outrage. And this injustice and outrage seemed the more intolerable because they had been preceded by a period of comparative liberality. It needs powerful pressure to transform English gentlemen with loyalist traditions, and sympathies into a democracy; but it can be done, and the English kings were the men to do it.

Until the period of unequivocal tyranny arrived, the chief shadow upon the colony was cast by its relations with the Indians. Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, and chief over tribes whose domains extended over thousands of square miles, kept friends.h.i.+p with the whites till his death in 1618. His brother, Opechankano, professed to inherit the friends.h.i.+p along with the chieftains.h.i.+p; but the relations between the red men and the colonists had never been too cordial, and the latter, measuring their muskets and breastplates against the stone arrows and deerskin s.h.i.+rts of the savages, fell into the error of despising them.

The Indians, for their part, stood in some awe of firearms, which they had never held in their own hands, and the penalty for selling which to them had been made capital years before. But they had their own methods of dealing with foes; and since neither side had ever formally come to blows, they had received no object lesson to warn them to keep hands off. Opechankano was intelligent and far-seeing; he perceived that the whites were increasing in numbers, and that if they were not checked betimes, they would finally overrun the country. But he did not see so far as his brother, who had known that the final domination of the English could not be prevented, and had therefore adopted the policy of conciliating them as the best. Opechankano, therefore, quietly planned the extermination of the settlers; the familiar terms on which the white and red men stood played into his hands. Indians were in the habit of visiting the white settlements, and mingling with the people.

Orders for concerted action were secretly circulated among the savages, who were to hold themselves ready for the signal.

It might after all never have been given, but for an unlooked for incident. A noisy and troublesome Indian, who imagined that bullets could not kill him, fell into a quarrel with a settler, and slew him; and was himself shot while attempting to escape from arrest. "Sooner shall the heavens fall," devoutly exclaimed Opechankano, when informed of this mishap, "than I will break the peace of Powhatan." But the waiting tribes knew that the time had come.

On the morning of March 22, 1622, the settlers arose as usual to the labors of the day; some of them took their hoes and spades and went out into the fields; others busied themselves about their houses. Numbers of Indians were about, but this excited no remark or suspicion; they were not formidable; a dog could frighten them; a child could hold them in check. Indians strolled into the cabins, and sat at the breakfast-tables. No one gave them a second thought. No one looked over his shoulder when an Indian pa.s.sed behind him.

But, miles up the country from Jamestown lived a settler who kept an Indian boy, whom he instructed, and who made himself useful about the place; and of all the Indians in Virginia that day he was the only one whose heart relented. His brother had lain with him the night before, and had given him the word: he was to kill the settler and his family the next morning. The boy seemed to a.s.sent, and the other went on his way. The boy lay till dawn, his savage mind divided between fear of the great chief and compa.s.sion for the white man who had been kind to him and taught him. In the early morning he arose and stood beside his benefactor's bed. The man slept: one blow, and he would be dead. But the boy did not strike; he wakened him and told him of the horror that was about to befall.

Pace--such was the settler's name--did not wait for confirmation of the tale; indeed, as he ran to the paddock to get his packhorse, he could see the smoke of burning cabins rising in the still air, and could hear, far off, the yells of the savages as they plied their work.

He sprang on the horse's back, with his musket across the withers, and set off at a gallop toward Jamestown. Most of the colonists lived in that neighborhood; if he could get there in time many lives might be saved. As he rode, he directed his course to the cabins, on the right hand and on the left, that lay in his way, and gave the alarm. Many of the savages, who had not yet begun their work, at once took to flight; they would not face white men when on their guard. In other places, the warning came too late. The missionary, who had devoted his life to teaching the heathen that men should love one another, was inhumanly butchered. Pace arrived in season to avert the danger from the bulk of the little population; but, of the four thousand scattered over the country-side, three hundred and forty-seven died that morning, with the circ.u.mstances of hideous atrocity which were the invariable accompaniments of Indian ma.s.sacre. The colonists were appalled; and for a time it seemed as if the purpose of Opechankano would be realized.

Two thousand settlers came in from the outlying districts, panic-stricken, and after living for a while crowded together in unwholesome quarters in the vicinity of Jamestown, took s.h.i.+p and returned to England. Hardly one in ten of the plantations was not deserted. The bolder spirits, who remained, organized a war of extermination, in which they were supported and re-enforced by the company, who sent over men and weapons as soon as the news was known in England. But the campaign resolved itself into long and hara.s.sing attacks, ambuscades and reprisals, extending over many years. There could be no pitched battles with Indians; they gave way, but only to circ.u.mvent and surprise. The whites were resolved to make no peace, and to give no quarter to man, woman or child. The formerly peaceful settlement became inured to blood and cruelty. But the red men could not be wholly driven away. Just twenty years after the first ma.s.sacre the same implacable chief, now a decrepit old man, planned a second one; some hundreds were murdered; but the colonists were readier and stronger now, and they gathered themselves up at once, and inflicted a crus.h.i.+ng vengeance. The ancient chief was finally taken, and either died of wounds received in fight, or was slain by a soldier after capture. After 1646, the borders of Virginia were safe. There is no redeeming feature in this Indian warfare, which fitfully survives, in remote parts of our country, even now. It aided, perhaps, to train the race of pioneers and frontiersmen who later became one of the most remarkable features of our early population. Contact with the savage races inoculated us, perhaps, with a touch of their stoicism and grimness. But in our conflicts with them there was nothing n.o.ble or inspiring; and there could be no object in view on either side but extermination. Our Indian fighters became as savage and merciless as the creatures they pursued. The Indian must be fought by the same tactics he adopts--cunning, stealth, surprise, and then unrelenting slaughter, with the sequel of the scalping knife. They compel us to descend to their level in war, and we have utterly failed to raise them to our own in peace. Some of them have possessed certain harshly masculine traits which we can admire; some of them have showed broad and virile intelligence, the qualities of a general, a diplomatist, or even of a statesman. There have been, and are, so-called tame Indians; but such were not worth taming. As a whole, the red tribes have resisted all attempts to lift them to the civilized level and keep them there. Roger Williams, and the "apostle," John Eliot, were their friends, and won their regard; but neither Williams' influence nor Eliot's Bible left any lasting trace upon them. The Indian is irreclaimable; disappointment is the very mildest result that awaits the effort to reclaim him. He is wild to the marrow; no bird or beast is so wild as he. He is a human embodiment of the untrodden woods, the undiscovered rivers, the austere mountains, the pathless prairies--of all those parts and aspects of nature which are never brought within the smooth sway of civilization, because, as soon as civilization appears, they are, so far as their essential quality is concerned, gone. To hear the yelp of the coyote, you must lie alone in the sage brush near the pool in the hollow of the low hills by moonlight; it will never reach your ears through the bars of the menagerie cage. To know the mountain, you must confront the avalanche and the precipice uncompanioned, and stand at last on the breathless and awful peak, which lifts itself and you into a voiceless solitude remote from man and yet no nearer to G.o.d; but if you journey with guides and jolly fellows.h.i.+p to some Mountain House, never so airily perched, you would as well visit a panorama. To comprehend the ocean, you must meet it in its own inviolable domain, where it tosses heavenward its careless nakedness, and laughs with death; from the deck of a steamboat you will never find it, though you sail as far as the Flying Dutchman. But the solitude which nature reveals, and which alone reveals her, does but prepare you for the inaproachableness that s.h.i.+nes out at you from the Indian's eyes. Seas are shallow and continents but a span compared with the breadths and depths which separate him from you. The sphinx will yield her mystery, but he will not unveil his; you may touch the poles of the planet, but you can never lay your hand on him. The same G.o.d that made you, made him also in His image; but if you try to bridge the gulf between you, you will learn something of G.o.d's infinitude.

Sir George Yeardley and Sir Francis Wyatt both held the office of governor twice, and with good repute; in 1630, Sir John Harvey succeeded the former. He was the champion of monopolists; he would divide the land among a few, and keep the rest in subjection. He fought with the legislature from the first; he could not wring their rights from them, but he distressed and irritated the colony, levying arbitrary fines, and browbeating all and sundry with the brutality of an ungoverned temper. His chief patron was Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, and therefore disfavored by the Protestant colony, who would not suffer him to plant in their domain. He bought a patent authorizing him to establish a colony in the northern part of Virginia, which was afterward called Maryland, being cut off from the older colony; and this diminution of their territory much displeased the Virginians. But Harvey supported him throughout; and permitted ma.s.s to be said in Virginia. He likewise prevented the settlers from carrying on the border warfare with the Indians, lest it should disturb his perquisites from the fur trade. Violent scenes took place in the hall of a.s.sembly, and hard words were given and exchanged; the planters were men of hot pa.s.sions, and the conduct of the governor became intolerable to them.

Matters came to a head during the last week in April of 1635. An unauthorized gathering in York complained of an unjust tax and of other malfeasances; whereupon Harvey cried mutiny, and had the leaders arrested. But the boot was on the other leg. Several members of council, with a company of musketeers at their back, came to his house; Matthews, with whom the governor had lately had a fierce quarrel, and the other planters, tramped into the broad hall of the dwelling, with swords in their hands and threatening looks, and confronted him. John Utie brought down his hand with staggering force on his shoulder, exclaiming, "I arrest you for treason!" "How, for treason?" queried the frightened governor. "You have betrayed our forts to our enemies of Maryland," replied several stern voices. Harvey glanced from one to another; in the background were the musketeers; plainly this was no time for trifling. He offered to do whatever they demanded. They required the release of prisoners, which was immediately done, and bade him prepare to answer before the a.s.sembly. They would listen to no arguments and no excuses; he was told by Matthews, with a menacing look, that the people would have none of him. "You intend no less than the subversion of Maryland," protested Harvey; but he promised to return to England, and John West, who had already acted as ad-interim governor while Harvey was on his way to Virginia, was at once elected in his place.

This incident showed of what stuff the Virginians were made. It was an early breaking-out of the American spirit, which would never brook tyranny. In offering violence to the king's governor they imperiled their own lives; but their blood was up, and they heeded no danger.

When Harvey presented himself before Charles at the privy council, his majesty remarked that he must be sent back at all hazards, because the sending him to England had been an a.s.sumption on the colonists' part of regal power; and, tobacco or no tobacco, the line must be drawn there.

If the charges against him were sustained, he might stay but a day; if not, his term should be extended beyond the original commission. A new commission was given him, and back he went; but this shuttlec.o.c.k experience seems to have quelled his spirit, and we hear no more of quarrels with the Virginia council. Wyatt relieved him in 1639; and in 1642 came Sir William Berkeley. This man, who was born about the beginning of the century, was twice governor; his present term, lasting ten years, was followed by a nine years' interval; reappointed again in 1660, he was in power when the rebellion broke out which was led by Nathaniel Bacon. Little is known of him outside of his American record; in his first term, under Charles I., he acted simply as the creature of that monarch, and aroused no special animosities on his own account: during the reign of Cromwell, he disappeared; but when Charles II.

ascended the throne, Berkeley, though then an old man, was thought to be fitted by his previous experience for the Virginia post, and was returned thither. But years seemed to have soured his disposition, and lessened his prudence, and, as we shall see, his bloodthirsty conduct after Bacon's death was the occasion of his recall in disgrace; and he died, like Andros more than half a century later, with the curse of a people on his grave.

But his first appearance was auspicious; he brought instructions designed to increase the reign of law and order in the colony, without infringing upon its existing liberties. Allegiance to G.o.d and the king were enjoined, additional courts were provided for, traffic with the Indians was regulated, annual a.s.semblies, with a negative voice upon their acts by the governor, were commanded. The only discordant note in the instructions referred to the conditions of maritime trade, afterward known in history as the Navigation Acts. The colony desired free trade, which, as it had no manufactures, was obviously to its benefit. But it was as obviously to the interest of the king that he alone should enjoy the right of controlling all imports into the colony, and absorbing all its exports; and his rulings were framed to secure that end. But for the present the Acts were not carried into effect; and, on the other hand, the prospect was held out that there should be no taxation except what was voted by the people themselves; and their contention that they, who knew the conditions and needs of their colonial existence, were better able to regulate it than those at home, was allowed. By way of evincing their recognition of this courtesy, the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed among other laws, one against toleration of any other than the episcopalian form of wors.h.i.+p; and when Charles was beheaded, in 1649, it voted to retain Berkeley in office. But when in the next year, the fugitive son of the dead king undertook to issue a commission confirming him in his place, Parliament intervened.

Virginia was brought to her bearings; and the Navigation Acts were brought up again. Cromwell, no less than Charles, appreciated the advantages of a monopoly.

Restrictions on commerce, first imposed by Spain, were first resisted by the Dutch, with the result of rendering them the leading maritime power. Cromwell wished to appropriate or share this advantage; but instead of adopting the means employed for that purpose by the Dutch, he decreed that none but English s.h.i.+ps should trade with the English colonies, and that foreign s.h.i.+ps should bring to England only the products of their own countries. The restriction did little harm to Virginia, so long as England was able to take all her products, and to supply all her needs; but it brought on war with Holland, in which both the moral and the naval advantage was on the side of the Dutch. But England acquired a foothold in the West Indies, and her policy was maintained. Virginia asked that she should have representatives to act for her in England, and when a body of commissioners was appointed to examine colonial questions, among them were Richard Bennett and William Clairborne, both of them colonists, and men of force and ability. In the sequel, the liberties of the colony were enlarged, and Bennett was made governor by vote of the a.s.sembly itself, which continued to elect governors during the ascendency of Parliament in England. When Richard Cromwell, who had succeeded the great Protector, resigned his office, the Virginia burgesses chose Sir William Berkeley to rule over them, and he acknowledged their authority. Meanwhile the Navigation Acts were so little enforced that smuggling was hardly illegal; and, in 1658, the colonists actually invited foreign nations to deal with them. This was the period of Virginia's greatest freedom before the Revolution. The suffrage was in the hands of all taxpayers; in religious matters, all restrictions except those against the Quakers were removed; loyalists and roundheads mingled amicably in planting and legislation, and the differences which had arrayed them against one another in England were forgotten. The population increased to thirty thousand, and the inhabitants developed among themselves an ardent patriotism. It is not surprising. Their country was one of the richest and loveliest in the world; everything which impairs the enjoyment of life was eliminated or minimized; hucksters, pettifoggers and bigots were scarce as June snowflakes; indentured servants, on their emanc.i.p.ation, were speedily given the suffrage; it might almost be said that a man might do whatever he pleased, within the limits of criminal law. a.s.suredly, personal liberty was far greater at this epoch, in Virginia, than it is today in New York City or Chicago. The instinct of the Virginians, in matters of governing, was so far as possible to let themselves alone; the planters, in the seclusion of their estates, were practically subject to no law but their own pleasure. There was probably no place in the civilized world where so much intelligent happiness was to be had as in Virginia during the years immediately preceding the Restoration.

What would have been the political result had the absence of all artificial pressure indefinitely continued? Two tendencies were observable, working, apparently, in opposite directions. On one side were the planters, many of them aristocratic by origin as well as by circ.u.mstance; who lived in affluence, were friendly to the established church, enjoyed a liberal education, and naturally a.s.sumed the reins of power. The law which gave fifty acres of land to the settler who imported an emigrant, while it made for the enlargement of estates, created also a large number of tenants and dependants, who would be likely to support their patrons and proprietors, who exercised so much control over their welfare. These dependants found the conditions of existence comfortable, and even after they had become their own masters, they would be likely to consult the wishes of the men who had been the occasion of their good fortune. Neither education nor religious instruction were so readily obtainable as to threaten to render such a cla.s.s discontented with their condition by opening to them hitherto unknown gates of advantage; and the suffrage, when by owners.h.i.+p of private property they had qualified themselves to exercise it, would at once appease their independent instincts, and at the same time make them willing, in using it, to follow the lead or suggestion of men so superior to them in intelligence and in political sagacity.

From this standpoint, then, it seemed probable that a self-governing community of the special kind existing in Virginia would drift toward an aristocratic form of rule.

But the matter could be regarded in another way. Free suffrage is a power having a principle of life within itself; it creates in the mind that which did not before exist, and educates its possessor first by prompting him to ask himself of what improvement his condition is susceptible, and then by forcing him to review his desire by the light of its realization--by practical experience of its effects, in other words: a method whose teachings are more thorough and convincing than any school or college is able to supply. The use of the ballot, in short, as a means of instruction in the problems of government, takes the place of anything else; it will of itself build up a people both capable of conducting their own affairs, and resolved to do so. The plebeians of Virginia, therefore, who began by being poor and ignorant emigrants, or indentured servants, to whom the planters accorded such privileges because it had never occurred to them that a plebeian can ever become anything else--these men, unconsciously to themselves, perhaps, were on the road which leads to democracy. The time would come when they would cease to follow the lead of the planters; when their interests and the planters' would clash. In that collision, their numbers would give them the victory. With a similar community planted in the old world, such might not be the issue; the strong influence of tradition would combat it, and the surrounding pressure of settled countries, which offered no escape or asylum for the man of radical ideas. But the boundaries of Virginia were the untrammeled wilderness; any man who could not have his will in the colony had this limitless expanse at his disposal; there could be no finality for him in the decrees of a.s.semblies, if he possessed the courage of his convictions in sufficient measure to make him match himself against the red man, and be independent not only of any special form of society, but of society itself. The consciousness of this would hearten him to entertain free thoughts, and to strive for their embodiment. It was partly this, no doubt, which, in the Seventeenth Century, drove hundreds of Ishmaels into the interior, where they became the Daniel Boones and the Davy Crocketts of legend and romance. So, although Virginia was as little likely as any of the colonies to breed a democracy, yet even there it was a more than possible outcome of the situation, even with no outside stimulus. But the old world, because it desired the oppression of America, was to become the immediate agent of its emanc.i.p.ation.

There was rejoicing in Virginia when Charles II. acceded to power; on the part of the planters, because they saw opportunity for political distinction; on the part of the plebeians, as the expression of a loyalty to kings.h.i.+p which centuries had made instinctive in them.

Berkeley, putting himself in line with the predominant feeling, summoned the a.s.sembly in the name of the king, thus announcing without rebuke the termination of the era of self-government. The members who were elected were mostly royalists. They met in 1661. It was found that the Navigation Acts, which had been a dead letter ever since their pa.s.sage, were to be revived in full force; and the increase of the colony in the meanwhile made them more than ever unwelcome. The exports were much larger than before, and unless the colony could have a free market for them the profits must be materially lessened. And again, since England was the only country from which the Virginian could purchase supplies, her merchants could charge him what they pleased.

This was galling alike to royalists and roundheads in Virginia, and quickly healed the breach, such as it was, between the parties.

Charles's true policy would have been to widen the gulf between them; instead of that, he forced them into each other's arms. It was determined to send Berkeley to England to ask relief; he accepted the commission, but his sympathies were not with the colonists, and he obtained nothing. Evidently, there could be no relief but in independence, and it was still a hundred years too early for that. The exasperation which this state of things produced in the great landowners did more for the cause of democracy than could decades of peaceful evolution. But the colonists could no longer have things their own way. Liberal laws were repealed, and intolerance and oppression took their place. Heretics were persecuted; the power of the church in civil affairs was increased; and fines and taxes on the industry of the colony were wanton and excessive. The king of England directly ruled Virginia. The people were forced to pay Berkeley a thousand pounds sterling as his salary, and he declared he ought to get three times as much even as that. His true character was beginning to appear. The judges were appointed by the king, and the license thus given them resulted in a petty despotism; when an official wanted money, he caused a tax to be levied for the amount. Appeals were vain, and ere long were prohibited. The a.s.sembly, partisans of the king, declared themselves permanent, so that all chance for the people to be better represented was gone, and as the members fixed their own pay, and fixed it at a preposterous figure, the colony began to groan in earnest. But worse was to come. The suffrage was restricted to freeholders and householders, and at a stroke, all but a fraction of the colonists were deprived of any voice in their own government. The spread of education, never adequate, was stopped altogether. "I thank G.o.d there are no free schools nor printing," Sir William Berkeley was able to say, "and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. G.o.d keep us from both!" This was a succinct and full formulation of the spirit which has ever tended to make the earth a h.e.l.l for its inhabitants. "The ministers," added the governor, "should pray oftener, and preach less."

But he spake in all solemnity; there was not the ghost of a sense of humor in his whole insufferable carca.s.s.

The downward course was not to stop here. Charles, with the freehandedness of a highwayman, presented two of his favorites, in 1673, for a term of one and thirty years, with the entire colony! This act stirred even the soddenness of the legislature. At the time of their election, a dozen years before, they had been royalists indeed, but men of honor, intending the good of the colony; and had tried, as we saw, to stop the enforcement of the Navigation Acts. But when they discovered that they could continue themselves in office indefinitely, with such salary as they chose to demand, they soon became indifferent about the Navigation Acts, or anything else which respected the welfare and happiness of their fellows. Let the common folk do the work, and the better sort enjoy the proceeds: that was the true and only respectable arrangement. We may say that it sounds like a return to the dark ages; but perhaps if we enter into our closets and question ourselves closely, we shall find that precisely the same principles for which Berkeley and his a.s.sembly stood in 1673, are both avowed and carried into effect in this same country, in the very year of grace which is now pa.s.sing over us. A nation, even in America, takes a great deal of teaching.

But the generosity of Charles startled the a.s.sembly out of their porcine indifference, for it threatened to bring to bear upon them the same practices by which they had destroyed the happiness of the colony.

If the king had given over to these two men all sovereignty in Virginia, what was to prevent these gentlemen from dissolving the a.s.sembly, who had become, as it were, incorporate with their seats, and had hoped to die in them--and ruling the country and them without any legislative medium whatever? Accordingly, with gruntings of dismay, they chose three agents to sail forthwith to England, and expostulate with the merry monarch. The expostulation was couched in the most servile terms, as of men who love to be kicked, but hope to live, if only to be kicked again. Might the colony, they concluded, be permitted to buy itself out of the hands of its new owners, at their own price?

And might the people of Virginia be free from any tax not approved by their a.s.sembly? That was the sum of their pet.i.tion.

The king let his lawyers talk over the matter, and, when they reported favorably, good-naturedly said, "So let it be, then!" and permitted a charter to be drawn up. But before the broad seal could be affixed to it he altered his mind, for causes satisfactory to him, and the envoys were sent home, poorer than they came. But before relating what awaited them there, we must advert briefly to the doings of George Calvert, Lord Baltimore in the Irish peerage, in his new country of Maryland.