Give Me Liberty: The Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia

by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

Though Gooch thus frankly avowed his dislike of democracy, he promoted its growth by encouraging the westward expansion of settlement, not only in the Piedmont, but in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1736 he wrote the Lords of Trade: "Great numbers, as well of his Majesty's natural born subjects as foreigners, ... have removed into this colony on the west side of our mountains." This he pointed out would be a protection to the older parts of the colony by heading off any attempt of the French at penetration.

Perhaps it had not occurred to Gooch that expansion would divide the colony into two parts—the democratic up-country, and the aristocratic tidewater. Spotsylvania, Brunswick, Goochland, Amelia, Caroline, and other counties in the Piedmont were filling up with small farmers from the east, Frederick with poor Germans and Swiss. It is true that some well-to-do planters established "quarters" managed by overseers above the Fall Line, and later invaded parts of the Valley, but even as late as the French and Indian War frontier conditions persisted in the regions on either side of the Blue Ridge. The influence of the west grew steadily as each new county sent its two representatives to the House of Burgesses. Whereas in 1727 when there were 65 members of the House, only 10 were from the west, in 1752, when the members numbered 104, 46 were from the western or southwestern counties. The time was not distant when the up-country members would count a majority. A bewigged Carter, or Harrison, or Wormeley, in his broadcloth suit with silver buttons, may have been resentful when a roughly clad delegate from Albemarle or Frederick took a seat beside him, but he dared not show it.

But in the first test of strength the newcomers lost because the east still dominated the Council. In 1749, after the burning of the Capitol in Williamsburg, the western Burgesses proposed that the seat of government be moved to a site on the Pamunkey, in Hanover County, which would save them many miles of travel in attending meetings of the Assembly. The feeling on each side ran high. Mr. John Blair, a member of the Council, in conversation with one of the Burgesses, pointed to the Speaker, saying: "There goes the man who is at the bottom of this hellish scheme." The House was deeply offended, and was appeased only when Blair apologized. After much hesitation the bill for the removal was passed by a vote of forty to thirty-eight, but it was promptly rejected by the Council.[17] So the Capitol was rebuilt on the old foundations, but with the proviso that this would not fix the seat of government permanently in Williamsburg. It did, however, fix it there until the Revolution, when, in response to the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the people, it was moved to Richmond.

During most of Gooch's administration the two Houses worked in harmony. But occasionally there was friction. At the close of the session of 1728 the Burgesses passed a resolution to pay their own salaries out of the fund raised by the duty on liquors in order to lessen the hated poll tax. But the Council refused to concur. The Burgesses then voted that they be paid from funds in the hands of the Treasurer. Again the Council demurred. They argued that the salaries of the Burgesses was the concern of the counties. "It would be an unequal distribution of the public money to allow the same share of it to a county which has a thousand tithables as one that has three thousand."[18] This reasoning was based on the assumption that a Burgess represented only the interests of the county which elected him and not those of the colony as a whole, an assumption contradicted by the whole history of the House. Yet the Burgesses, though with some bitterness, were forced to yield for the time being.

Gooch was much concerned over the dispute, for he was convinced that it was not ended. He was right. At the very next session a bill was passed to pay the Burgesses out of the money in the Treasurer's hands, provided this should not reduce the fund below £1,500.[19] The Council consented, under Gooch's urging, because the bill allowed the Burgesses only ten shillings a day instead of thirteen as formerly, and nothing when not actually in attendance, but "at home about their private affairs or perhaps in pursuit of their pleasures." Gooch wrote the Lords of Trade congratulating himself on having reduced salaries, but this does not obscure the fact that the act was a victory for the House.[20]

In fact, the House of Burgesses, like the House of Commons, was becoming the dominating body, and the Council, like the House of Lords, was growing weaker. With the multiplying of the number of wealthy planters through the use of slave labor, the twelve men who made up the Council ceased to be the sole representatives of their interests. Many aristocrats were honored to have a seat in the Lower House. One has only to glance down the list of Burgesses to find many of the proudest names in colonial Virginia—Page, Harrison, Fairfax, Randolph, Burwell, Carter, Ball, Wormeley, Digges, Spotswood, Lee, Byrd, Claiborne, etc. So the aristocrat as well as the small farmer, the wealthy easterner as well as the pioneer of Orange or Albemarle, or the German of Frederick looked to the House to protect their interests.

While the leadership of the House continued to be aristocratic, the rank and file grew more democratic. The open spaces of America fostered a spirit of independence. When men had gone into a wilderness, cleared openings in the forest, built their simple houses, laid out crops, fought the Indians, they became impatient of control by a group of eastern aristocrats, or by a government three thousand miles away in which they had no voice.

Nor was democracy confined to the west, for the small farmer class of the east persisted despite the importation of thousands of slaves. It is true that many, finding it difficult to compete with slave labor, sold their little holdings, packed up their few household goods, and set out for the West or for one of the northern colonies. But others kept their heads above water by producing only the highest grades of tobacco, for which the blacks at first were not suited. "I must beg you to remember that the common people make the best," Gooch wrote in 1731.

But this reprieve was only temporary, for in time the wealthy planter taught the Africans to produce even the high priced Orinoco. Then the poor planter had to join the class of slaveholders by making a few purchases, or sink into abject poverty. That thousands did buy slaves we know from an examination of the tax lists. In 1716, in Lancaster County, of some 200 slave-owners, 165 had from one to four only. The only large owner was the wealthy Robert Carter who had 126.[21]

The replacing of the Virginia yeomanry, the men who cultivated their holdings with their own hands, by small slaveholders was in many ways a development to be deplored, but it saved the small farmer class from extinction, and democracy from a fatal blow. Without it all the eastern part of the colony and part of the Piedmont would have become a land of wealthy proprietors and their slaves, and ignorant, degraded, poverty-stricken whites.