Towards the close of the seventeenth century the practice of engrossing lands gained increased momentum. African slavery was rapidly superseding white indentured servitude as the principal source of labor supply. The price of tobacco had steadily declined owing to overproduction, the burdens of the Navigation Acts, and the effects of European wars. As a result of these conditions, the margin of profit from the leaf had so decreased that the cheaper labor of slaves and large-scale production had now become virtually essential to economic survival. After he had served his indentureship, the white servant could no longer establish himself as an independent farmer as he had once done, and the small yeoman now usually felt obliged to sell his lands to his wealthier neighbor and either become his tenant or migrate to some other section or colony. Political developments likewise favored the accumulation of large estates. Through repeated intermarriage certain families had acquired a very extensive influence. Members of these families were active in the Governor's Council or the House of Burgesses and held other high offices as a matter of course. Their official position often aided them as private individuals in acquiring lands. Through the presentation of "head right" certificates, compensation for military services, purchase from private proprietors, and other ways they obtained domains comprising thousands of acres. Some carved out what resembled small principalities. William Fitzhugh of Stafford County owned over 50,000 acres, and by 1732 Robert or "King" Carter of Lancaster County held some 333,000 acres.
The estates of such men, far from consisting of one compact property, generally comprised many separate and sometimes widely scattered tracts, perhaps in half a dozen or more counties. They ranged in size from a few hundred to thousands of acres. The individual owner acquired his holdings over a period of years, in what often appeared a haphazard manner. Not infrequently, a planter, foreseeing the depletion of his Tidewater lands, engrossed large tracts in the Piedmont and Valley sections.[1]
Life in the Tidewater during the Golden Age was dominated, to a remarkable extent, by families possessing vast estates. Not everyone, it is true, owned such princely domains as the Carters or Fitzhughs, but men in their station were imbued with a deep sense of their obligation to society. They sat as justices in the county courts, served as sheriffs and as colonels of the militia in their counties, and acted as vestrymen and church wardens in their parishes. They accepted seriously their duty to preserve the peace and watch over the less fortunate classes. Because of their wealth and position, their education, resourcefulness and keen sense of public responsibility, they were able to influence and to impress their ideals and tastes upon the community in a measure rarely equalled by a similar aristocracy.
The great landed proprietors operated their estates in either of two ways or a combination of the two. They might take full responsibility themselves, planting tobacco and secondary crops; they could lease tracts to others to cultivate; or they might do both. Sometimes a man leased more of his arable lands than he reserved for his own use. Though disturbed conditions in Europe and the burdens imposed by the British regulatory system led to repeated attempts to develop other staples for export, tobacco continued to be the mainstay. Aside from money crops, however, the great landowners had to supply numerous foodstuffs and other commodities needed on their plantations.
A proprietor customarily resided on what was generally known as the "manor plantation."[2] This seat usually served as the nerve center of the activities of his entire estate, with the other units subordinate to it. Not infrequently some of the outlying properties were devoted to producing commodities needed by the manor plantation and by such other plantations as were engaged in raising tobacco and other marketable staples. Overseers or stewards managed the units over which the owner found it difficult to exercise personal supervision. These men reported to him at regular intervals to receive instructions and give an account of their stewardship.
Though the basis of life was agricultural, the great landowners discharged a wide variety of other economic functions. They served as factors for their neighbors, buying their crops, selling them supplies, and providing them with credit facilities. Many sent vessels regularly up and down the Chesapeake and the Virginia rivers, purchasing the produce of others for later marketing. In like fashion they brought manufactured goods from overseas for sale in the plantation stores. When European conditions interfered with the import trade, enterprising men frequently set up grist mills, textile factories, foundries, and other manufactories on their plantations, to supply their own and their neighbors' needs.
The great Tidewater proprietors of the Golden Age were, then, no perfumed courtiers spending their days in idleness and diversion and consciously seeking to avoid all "taint of trade." In a very real sense they were capitalists, acute men of business, seriously concerned with managing their estates, tilling their lands and disposing of their produce, and eager to reap a profit through trading with their neighbors. Their ledgers and their correspondence reveal their energy, shrewdness, and enterprise. In a similar way the constant stream of letters they wrote the factors who served them in London, Bristol, and other ports of the mother country show their vital interest in conditions in the world market.
The planters' preoccupation with such matters does not signify that they lacked grace of living, nor that they were deficient in aristocratic ideals. They were determined they should not revert to barbarism in the wilderness. At no time did they allow themselves to forget that they were inheritors of British civilization.[3] Taking the English gentry as their model, they tried, insofar as colonial conditions would allow, to follow the ways of the country gentlemen of the homeland. On that pattern they fashioned their manners, their homes, their diversions; and with a similar aim they sought to acquire, and instruct their sons in, every branch of knowledge useful to a gentleman.
That it was a constant concern of these planter-businessmen to see that their children should acquire "polite" accomplishments is clearly revealed in their papers. In a letter in 1718 Nathaniel Burwell of "Carter's Grove" deplored his son's inattention to his studies, not only because an ignorance of arithmetic would hamper him in "the management of his own affairs," but also because, lacking a broad basis of knowledge, he would be "unfit for any gentleman's conversation and therefore a scandalous person and a shame to his relations, not having one single qualification to recommend him."[4] In a like spirit William Fitzhugh of "Bedford" in Stafford County asserted in 1687 that his children had "better be never born than illbred."[5]
Though a parent sometimes specified that his sons be taught languages, philosophy, dancing, fencing, and other such "polite" subjects, practical studies were not neglected. Such subjects as mathematics, surveying, and law prepared a youth for managing the estate he would one day inherit and for discharging the obligations to society imposed by his position. The goal was not professional specialization, but, rather, an education which would develop fully every side of a gentleman's character. George Washington expressed this ideal in referring to plans for the education of his ward, young "Jacky" Custis, in 1771. Admitting that "a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built," he explained that he did not think "becoming a mere scholar is a desirable education for a gentleman."[6] Thus, also, Robert Beverley, father of Harry Beverley of "Hazelwood" in Caroline County, directed in his will that his son's guardians should continue the boy's education until he should be taught "everything necessary for a gentleman to learn."[7]