A History of the United States

by Charles Kendall Adams; William P. Trent

Ruins of the Old
Church at Jamestown.

23. The Settlement at Jamestown.—In 1607 both sub-companies began operations. The Plymouth men sent a fleet to the coast of the present state of Maine, but the colony they tried to plant was a failure. The London Company was more fortunate. Their colonists reached Chesapeake Bay in the spring, and settled about fifty miles above the mouth of a large river, since then known as the James, in honor of the English king. They called their new settlement Jamestown, and at once began to build huts and fortifications.

24. Captain John Smith.[^[21]]—Their leading spirit was Captain John Smith, an adventurous and able man, who in spite of jealousies put himself at the head of affairs and saved the colony. The men sent out were mainly gentlemen adventurers seeking to mend their fortunes, and even some of the real workers followed callings not required in the wilderness. There was consequently much bickering, and soon a scarcity of provisions caused great suffering. The site of the town proved unhealthy, and the Indians encountered had to be watched. Altogether the situation was a wretched one, and but for the energy of Smith and a few others, Christopher Newport, the captain of the fleet, who had gone back to England for supplies, might have found few vestiges of a settlement on his return in 1609. Newport brought stores, but also a number of undesirable colonists. He speedily sailed back to England with a cargo of shining earth, which did not yield the gold it promised to credulous eyes. Smith besought the Company to send out good workmen to cultivate the rich soil; and after a while the promoters of the colony learned not to expect vast discoveries of gold and silver. In October, 1609, owing to an accident to his eyes, Smith left the colony, never to return.

John Smith.

25. Smith’s Character.—Smith’s relations with Virginia have been the subject of much hostile criticism. Discrepancies have been found between his earlier and his later accounts of his exploits, and some historians have been led to regard him as little more than a braggart. This is an untenable view. His management of the refractory colonists, his dealings with the Indian chief Powhatan, his wise and manly remonstrances with the London Company,—all go to show that he was an able and unselfish leader to whom the life of the struggling settlement was mainly due. On the other hand, there can be little doubt, save in the minds of his partisans, that he frequently embellished his accounts of his adventures, and that he is not the most reliable of historians. It is not at all impossible that he was really saved by Pocahontas,[^[22]] yet the story may be as mythical as the coat of arms granted to him by the king of Hungary.

Pocahontas.

26. Annulling of the Virginia Company’s Charter.—In 1609, the year of Smith’s departure, King James gave the Virginia Company a new charter, which defined the limits of its territory in a very vague way and increased its power over its colonists. In 1612 he gave another charter, which took in the Bermuda Islands and allowed the shareholders of the Company to hold general meetings in London. Twelve years later, when the king’s Puritan opponents had got control of these meetings and used them for political purposes, he caused the charter to be annulled by a decree of court, which was a legal though not a justifiable act. The records of the Company were preserved in a romantic way,[^[23]] and are now in the possession of the government at Washington.

27. Growth of Virginia.—Meanwhile the colony had had various ups and downs under several governors,—Lord Delaware, Sir Thomas Dale, the tyrannical Samuel Argall, Sir George Yeardley, and Sir Francis Wyatt,—but had on the whole become firmly established. Dale was strict, but successful in controlling the rougher elements; he also encouraged the policy of allowing settlers to become individual proprietors of land. Argall was speedily recalled for his misconduct. Liberal sentiments then prevailed in the colony, and its inhabitants were allowed, during Yeardley’s administration, to hold a yearly representative assembly, or legislature (1619), the first of its kind in America. This long step toward self-government, together with the increasing importance of the tobacco crop, gave Virginia a decided impetus, which the contemporaneous introduction of slavery, in the persons of twenty blacks landed and sold at Jamestown by a Dutch ship in 1619, did not at first affect. The presence of white slaves in the persons of indentured servants—a class recruited from convicts, vagabonds, and kidnapped children—produced some confusion. But colonists of position and means soon began to exert an influence opposed to disorder, and through Sir Francis Wyatt the Company promised to stand by its grant of free institutions.