Woodrow Wilson named the first volume of his _History of the United
States_ "The Swarming of the English." We might go further and compare
the colonization and expansion in the New World to a fissioning process
in which individual atoms are torn loose from a former pattern of
coherence and fused into new and strange patterns. The United States,
indeed, is still in the process of fusion following the earlier fission
process. It has not yet reached the stability that comes to some nations
in history, and which is marked by a fixed pattern of population growth,
land use, day-to-day habits, and philosophic beliefs. It is, rather, a
country in which every generation can look back to a strangely different
era that existed before it came of age.
The period 1625-1660 in Virginia history is an important one for the
study of the fission-fusion process in America. During those years
Virginia's population increased perhaps twenty-five or thirty fold, and
the settlements spread from a thin belt along the James River to the
whole of Tidewater Virginia. Human atoms were propelled outwards in
every direction in an uncontrolled and only feebly directed expansion.
The years 1607 to 1625 had created a base for this expansion. Those had
been crucial years and difficult ones. Settlements had resembled
military camps and individual colonists had been commanded like
soldiers. Rigorous administration of justice, fear of the Indians, and
the strict economic regulations imposed by the London Company had served
to restrain the potentially expansive nature of the colonists.
The year 1625 saw Virginia under a new King and under a new form of
government. The charter of the London Company was made void, and the
colony passed from the control of a commercial company to the direct
control of King Charles I.
The official census of the non-Indian population of Virginia in 1625
showed 1,232 persons in the colony. Nine hundred and fifty-two were
males, twelve of them Negroes. Two hundred and eighty were females,
eleven of them Negroes. Although the colony had been in existence for
eighteen years the fissioning process had hardly begun. But it was
beginning. Five years later the population had more than doubled to
approximately 3,000. In 1640 the population jumped to 8,000, and by 1670
to 40,000, of whom 2,000 were Negroes. Every aspect of Virginia
life--political, physical, economic, social, and moral--was to be
affected by this explosive and uncontrolled growth.
Virginia did not develop any cities or even towns during the period
1625-1660. Indeed, the towns, such as Jamestown and Henrico, that had
earlier been established, declined in population or were totally
abandoned. The immigrants who were funneled into the colony through
Jamestown were soon attracted to the ever widening frontier. During the
first twenty years colonists had lived in organized farming communities,
separated from other such settlements, but strictly supervised by local
"plantation commanders." The separate settlements were variously called
"colonies," "plantations," "hundreds," and "particular plantations," and
sometimes contained hundreds of planters. Frequently the "plantation"
was located within a loop of the James River. The members of the
settlement planted their crops within the loop, and set up palisades and
forts at the open end for their common defense. Sentinels and guards
were provided cooperatively to man the defenses. As the settlers
increased in numbers and the power of their governors and of the Indians
to restrain them decreased, however, they tended to leave the organized
communities and to carve out for themselves individual plantations in
the wilderness. Thus, even while the population of the colony grew by
leaps and bounds, the population of Jamestown and other areas where
population was once concentrated declined. It was a process, one might
call it, of de-urbanization.
What was it that reversed the process of urbanization that was going on
in the mother country? The attraction was, of course, the land and its
fruits. England, with her five or six millions, was not overpopulated by
modern standards. Nor was she overpopulated by comparison with the great
nations of the Orient such as China which could even in that period
count its population in the hundreds of millions. But her few millions
seemed at times to oppress the English soil. On the other hand, America
was a relatively new home of the human species. Perhaps less than a
million Indians lived within the present bounds of the United States,
and the Indians with whom the English in Virginia came in contact
numbered less than 10,000. "In the beginning all the world was America,"
wrote John Locke, and the English townsmen, villagers, and yeomen who
came to America found it natural to revert back to the time when Adam
went forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was
taken. It would be more truthful to say, however, that the English went
not so much in sorrow as in confidence, as the sons of Abraham to whom
God had promised all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.
Tobacco was the richest fruit of the land. Despite the moral opprobrium
in which the "vile, stinking weed" was held by men in England, including
King James himself, the public soon developed an insatiable appetite for
it. Having for the Europeans the attraction of novelty and utility, it
commanded an enormous price in the early years of the settlement. With
Spanish tobacco selling at eighteen shillings a pound in 1619, the
opportunities for gain from tobacco production seemed unlimited. Here
was the "gold" that Virginia had to offer, and soon all hands could
think of nothing else. The earliest settlers, hoping to emulate the
Spaniards in finding great treasures and living off the labor of the
Indians, had suffered bitterly from shortages of food. Later settlers,
though they did not hold to the expectations of the first arrivals,
still sought the avenue of quickest and greatest gain, and tobacco
provided that avenue. Throughout the 1620's many planters neglected to
grow corn or wheat, preferring to obtain their food supply by barter or
seizure from the Indians, or by purchase from planters who were willing
to divert their labor to such crops. Who would bother with grain when
tobacco sold for as much per pound as grain did per bushel? Frenchmen,
brought over to introduce vine-growing in the colony, neglected their
specialty to plant tobacco and had to be restrained by an act of
February 1632. An act of February 1633 similarly required all gunsmiths,
brickmakers, carpenters, joiners, sawyers, and turners to work at their
trades and not to plant tobacco or do other work in the ground.
Another booklet in this series deals with agriculture in Virginia. It is
enough to say here that as the total production of tobacco increased so
did the price decline. Our present-day farm surplus problem is not new.
Even when the price had plummeted to a penny a pound the planters were
not discouraged from planting. Attempts were made on both sides of the
Atlantic to fix prices and to control the amount of production in order
to restore prosperity to the tobacco farmers. The important questions
were whose interests would be served, and how would they be served best?
The death of James I and the dissolution of the Virginia Company
occurred almost at the same time. Charles I, his son, assumed the throne
in 1625 and promptly assured the planters that though the form of
Virginia's government had changed, the individual planters could be sure
that their rights and property would be respected. Charles informed the
colonists, however, that he would take over the buying of their tobacco
as a royal monopoly and give them such prices as would satisfy and
encourage them. Agreement with the planters, nevertheless, was difficult
to obtain. The Virginians were solidly united as a special interest in
favoring the highest prices and the greatest production. Their
representatives, both in the House of Burgesses and on the Council, were
their ardent spokesmen, themselves planters, whose interest lay in
fighting the battle of all Virginians. On the other hand the King, and
the English merchants and associates through whom he dealt, desired to
buy Virginia's tobacco at the lowest possible prices and in moderate
quantities. The tug of war between the two sides continued for many
years without any clear-cut resolution.