When as the luscious smell 1 Above the seas that flows, In kenning of the shore Let cannons roar, Frighting the wide heaven. And in regions far Such heroes bring ye forth As those from whom we came, And plant our name Under that star Not known unto our north. 1 At certain seasons the fragrance of blossom-laden vines could be detected by ships approaching the shores of the Virginia colonies, before land was visible. THE FOUNDING OF JAMESTOWN 1 THOMAS NELSON PAGE (1853- > On that May day three hundred years ago, when the company of those little ships debarked and made their final landing on American soil, they faced every peril and danger that the human mind can imagine. Every tree and bush and patch of weeds might conceal a crafty Indian with his deadly arrow. The Spaniard with sword and stake was ever on the horizon. The shadow of "Melindus "2 was yet black. No one who has the least conception of what those men endured will question their courage. It is possible, however, that had they known what they had to face in their new home the stoutest-hearted of them might have quailed. To face death was nothing to such men, it was an incident of the life of every man, as it is today of the life of the soldier in the field. Indeed, this little band was the forlorn hope of volunteers sent to seize a continent. They made the breach and held it against all odds, and it is to the lasting renown of the English Race that as fast as their numbers failed they were replaced. On their maintaining their position hung the fate of North America, and possibly of the world. They had reached a charmed 1 In the volume from which this selection is taken, Thomas Nelson Page has dealt with the history of his native state in a style not less charming than that of his stories. During the great war Mr. Page has ably represented the American government as ambassador to Italy. From the essay on "Jamestown, the Birthplace of the American People," in "The Old Dominion: Her Making and Her Manners.' Copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Used by permission of the publishers. 2 Pedro Menendes de Aviles, a Spanish explorer and military leader who massacred a colony of French Protestants in Florida in 1565. but an unknown land with a changeable and an untried climate. Their provisions, intended only to last until they could seed and harvest a new crop, had been wasted during their long voyage and would not last them out. Their form of government, under which the president could always be removed by a majority of the Council, was one well framed to breed faction. The community of interest which was imagined to be necessary in a new land placed the industrious at the mercy of the idle, and the zealous supported the shirker. But it is well for the Anglo-Saxon race to pause, and take note of the one great fact, that, however their perils may have alarmed them, however their vast isolation may have awed them, there always survived spirit enough to preserve them, and they remained in this far and perilous outpost of the Anglo-Saxon civilization, and, with the devotion of the vestal virgin of old, kept the fire, however dim its spark, ever alight on the sacred shrine. THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH ONE IN THEIR ORIGIN 1 JOHN FISKE (1842-1901) It is impossible to make any generalization concerning the origin of the white people of the South as a whole, or of the North as a whole, further than to say that their ancestors came from Europe, and a large majority of them from the British Islands. The facts are too 1 From "Old Virginia and Her Neighbours." Copyright, 1897, by John Fiske. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Used by permission of the publishers. complicated to be embraced in any generalization more definitely limited than this. When sweeping statements are made about "the North" and "the South," it is often apparent that the speaker has in mind only Massachusetts and tidewater Virginia, making these parts do duty for the whole.. 1 In Virginia the economic circumstances were very different from those of New England, and the effects were seen in a different kind of local institutions. In New England the system of small holdings facilitated the change from primogeniture to the Kentish custom of gavelkind, with which many of the settlers were already familiar, in which the property of an intestate is equally divided among the children. In Virginia, on the other hand, the large estates, cultivated by servile labor, were kept together by the combined customs of primogeniture and entail, which lasted until they were overthrown by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. In this circumstance, more than in anything else, originated the more aristocratic features in the local institutions of Virginia. . . . As already hinted, in those rural societies where people generally knew one another, its effects were not so farreaching as they would be in the more complicated society of today. Even though Virginia had not the town meeting, "it had its familiar court-day," which "was a holiday for all the countryside, especially in the fall and spring. 1 The legal custom by which property passed to the oldest son, rather than being divided between all the sons. 2 An old English legal custom by which rented or leased lands were divided equally among the sons or the children of a deceased person. Except in Kent, the custom was later replaced by the feudal custom of primogeniture introduced from France. From all directions came in the people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot. On the courthouse green assembled, in indiscriminate confusion, people of all classes, the hunter from the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the grand proprietor, and the grinning, heedless negro. Old debts were settled, and new ones made; there were auctions, transfers of property, and, if election times were near, stump-speaking." 1 Such For seventy years or more before the Declaration of Independence the matters of general public concern, about which stump speeches were made on Virginia court-days, were very similar to those that were discussed in Massachusetts town meetings when representatives were to be chosen for the legislature. questions generally related to some real or alleged encroachment upon popular liberties by the royal governor, who, being appointed and sent from beyond sea, was apt to have ideas and purposes of his own that conflicted with those of the people. This perpetual antagonism to the governor, who represented British imperial interference with American local self-government, was an excellent schooling in political liberty, alike for Virginia and for Massachusetts. When the stress of the Revolution came, these two leading colonies cordially supported each other, and their political characteristics were reflected in the kind of achievements for which each was especially distinguished. The Virginia system, concentrating the administration of local affairs in the hands of a few county families, was eminently favorable for developing skillful and vigorous leadership. And while in the history of Massachusetts during the Revolu 1 Ingle, in “Johns Hopkins University Studies,” iii. 90. |