CHAPTER XIV.
SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION.
Tobacco and liberty.
A learned son of Old Virginia, who is fond of wrapping up a bookful of meaning in a single pithy sentence, has declared that “a true history of tobacco would be the history of English and American liberty.” This remark occurs near the beginning of Mr. Moncure Conway’s dainty volume printed for the Grolier Club, entitled “Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock.” When construed liberally, as all such sweeping statements need to be, it contains a kernel of truth. It was tobacco that planted an English nation in Virginia, and made a corporation in London so rich and powerful as to become a formidable seminary of sedition: it was the desire to monopolize the tobacco trade that induced Charles I. to recognize the House of Burgesses; discontent with the Navigation Act and its effect upon the tobacco trade was potent among the causes of Bacon’s Rebellion; and so on down to the eve of Independence, when Patrick Henry won his first triumph in the famous Parson’s Cause, in which the price of tobacco furnished the bone of contention, the Indian weed has been strangely implicated with the history of political freedom.
Furthermore, when we reflect upon the splendid part played by Virginia in winning American independence and bringing into existence the political framework of our Federal Republic; when we recollect that of the five founders of this nation who were foremost in constructive work—Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, and Marshall—four were Virginians,—it becomes interesting to go back and study the social features of the community in which such leaders of men were produced. The economic basis of that community was the cultivation of tobacco on large plantations, and from that single economic circumstance resulted most of the social features which we have now to pass in review.
Rapid growth of tobacco culture.
Attempts to check it.
We have seen in a previous chapter how important was the cultivation of tobacco in setting the infant colony at Jamestown upon its feet in 1614 and the following years. In the rapid development of the colony during the reign of Charles I. other kinds of agriculture thrived, there were good crops of wheat, and Indian corn was exported. But tobacco culture increased rapidly and steadily until in the latter part of the century it nearly extinguished all other kinds of activity, except the raising of domestic animals and vegetables needed for food. Long before this result was reached, the tendency was deplored by the colonists themselves. To use a modern political phrase, it was “viewed with alarm.” This is quite intelligible. “We know now that tobacco, though not strictly a necessary of life, is one of those articles whose consumption may be looked on as certain and permanent. In the seventeenth century, men could hardly be blamed if they regarded the use of tobacco as a precarious fashion.”[123] It was also felt that in case of war it would be dangerous for Virginia to be forced to rely upon importing the manufactured necessaries of life. Moreover, the absorption of the colony’s industry in the production of a single staple made it especially easy for the home government to depress that industry by stupid legislation, as in the reign of Charles II., when the Navigation Act so seriously diminished the purchasing power of tobacco. For these various reasons many attempts were made to check the cultivation of the Indian weed. The legislation of the seventeenth century was full of instances. It was attempted to establish rival industries and to produce silk, cotton, and iron; laws were made forbidding any planter to raise more than 2,000 plants in one year’s crop, and so on. All such attempts proved futile; in spite of everything that could be done, tobacco drove all competitors from the field.
Need for cheap labour.
Indented white servants.
This tobacco was generally cultivated upon large estates. The policy of making extensive grants of land as an inducement to settlers was begun at an early date, and all that was needed to develop the system was an abundance of cheap labour. English yeomanry, such as came to New England, was too intelligent and enterprising to furnish the right sort. English yeomanry, coming to Virginia, came to own estates for itself, not to work them for others. It soon became necessary to have recourse to servile labour. We have seen negro slaves first brought into the colony from Africa in 1619, but their numbers increased very slowly, and it was only toward the end of the century that they began to be numerous. In the early period the demand for servile labour was supplied from other sources. Convicted criminals were sent over in great numbers from the mother country, as in later times they were sent to Botany Bay. On their arrival they were indented as servants for a term of years. Kidnapping was also at that time in England an extensive and lucrative business. Young boys and girls, usually but not always of the lowest class of society, were seized by press-gangs on the streets of London and Bristol and other English seaports, hurried on board ship, and carried over to Virginia to work on the plantations or as house servants. These poor wretches were not, indeed, sold into hopeless slavery, but they passed into a state of servitude which might be prolonged indefinitely by avaricious or cruel masters. The period of their indenture was short,—usually not more than four years; but the ordinary penalty for serious offences, such as were very likely to be committed, was a lengthening of the time during which they were to serve. Among such offences the most serious were insubordination or attempts to escape, while of a more venial character were thievery, or unchaste conduct,[124] or attempts to make money on their own account. Their lives were in theory protected by law, but where an indented servant came to his death from prolonged ill-usage, or from excessive punishment, or even from sudden violence, it was not easy to get a verdict against the master. In those days of frequent flogging, the lash was inflicted upon the indented servant with scarcely less compunction than upon the purchased slave; and in general the condition of the former seems to have been nearly as miserable as that of the latter, save that the servitude of the negro was perpetual, while that of the white man was pretty sure to come to an end. For him, Pandora’s box had not quite spilled out the last of its contents.