John Fiske

“ Nothing could better illustrate than the pathetic fate of this little colony how necessary it was to destroy the naval power of Spain before England could occupy the soil of North America. The defeat of the Invincible Armada was the opening event in the history of the United States. It was the event that made all the rest possible. Without it the attempts at Jamestown and Plymouth could hardly have had more success than the attempt at Roanoke Island. An infant colony is like an army at the end of a long line of communications ”

“ Nowhere in the later experiences of white men with Indians do we find quite so powerful a charm as in the early years of the seventeenth century. No other such narratives are quite so delightful as those of Champlain and his friends in Canada, and those of Smith and his comrades in Virginia. There is a freshness about this first contact with the wilderness and its uncouth life that makes every incident vivid. ”

“ The settlers had come without wives and children, and each man worked not to acquire property for himself and his family but to further the general purposes of the colony. In planting corn, in felling trees, in repairing the fortifications, even in hunting or fishing, he was working for the community; whatsoever he could get by his own toil or by trade with the natives went straightway into the common stock, and the skilful and industrious fared no better than the stupid and lazy. ”

“ This is the deepest significance of the discovery of America; and a due appreciation of it gives to our history from its earliest stages an epic grandeur, as the successive situations unfold themselves and events with unmistakable emphasis record their moral. In the conflict of Titans that absorbed the energies of the sixteenth century, the question whether it should be the world of Calderon or the world of Shakespeare that was to gain indefinite power of future expansion was a question of incalculable importance to mankind. ”

“ In a letter handed to her in November, 1577, the writer begs to be allowed to destroy all Spanish ships caught fishing on the banks of Newfoundland, and adds, "If you will let us first do this we will next take the West Indies from Spain. You will have the gold and silver mines and the profit of the soil. You will be monarch of the seas and out of danger from every one. I will do it if you will allow me; only you must resolve and not delay or dally—the wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers of death." ”

“ The choice of Shakespeare's friend instead of Sandys made no difference whatever in the policy of the Company. From that time forth its ruling spirits were Southampton and Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar, the deputy-treasurer. The name of this young man calls for more than a passing mention. Better known in ecclesiastical than in political history, he was distinguished and memorable in whatever he undertook, and among all the thronging figures in England's past he is one of the most sweetly and solemnly beautiful. ”

“ When one thinks of the resounding chorus of gratulations with which the four hundredth anniversary of the Discovery of America was lately heralded to a listening world, it is curious and instructive to notice the sort of comment which that great event called forth upon the occasion of its third centenary, while the independence of the United States was as yet a novel and ill-appreciated fact. In America very little fuss was made. ”

“ On the other hand, even if we could suppose a commercial company to go on year after year managing a colony with so much intelligence and sympathy as the London Company showed in its last days, such a situation would not be permanently wholesome for the colony. What men need is not fostering or coddling, but the chance to give free play to their individual capacities. If coddling and fostering could make a colony thrive, the French in Canada ought to have dominated North America. From all points of view, therefore, it seems to have been well for Virginia that the Company fell when it did. ”

“ Before England could plant thriving states in America she must control the ocean routes. The far-sighted Raleigh understood the conditions of the problem. When he smote the Spaniards at Cadiz he knew it was a blow struck for America. He felt the full significance of the defeat of the Armada, and in spite of all his disappointments with Virginia, he never lost heart. ”

“ Neither this evil nor the evils flowing from communism were remedied during Lord Delaware's brief rule, but the first evil was entirely removed. In such a rude settlement a system by which a council elected its president annually, and could depose him at any time, was sure to breed faction and strife; strong government had been attained only when the strong man Smith was left virtually alone by the death or departure of the other councillors. Now there was no council, but instead of it a governor appointed in London and clothed with despotic power. ”

“ By midsummer a few were picking berries in the woods, others were quartered among the Indians, some were living on oysters and caviar, some were down at Point Comfort catching fish, and it was these that were the first to hail the bark of young Samuel Argall, who was coming for sturgeon and whatever else he could find, and had steered a straighter course from London than any mariner before him. ”

“ The Dutch Netherlands had perhaps somewhat fewer people than England, but surpassed her in wealth. These two allies were pitted against the greatest military power that had existed in Europe since the days of Constantine the Great. To many the struggle seemed hopeless. For England the true policy was limited by circumstances. She could send troops across the Channel to help the Dutch in their stubborn resistance, but to try to land a force in the Spanish peninsula for aggressive warfare would be sheer madness. The shores of America and the open sea were the proper field of war for England. ”

“ When Argall arrived in Virginia, he found that a new industry, at which sundry experiments had been made under Dale, was acquiring large dimensions and fast becoming established. Of all the gifts that America has vouchsafed to the Old World, the most widely acceptable has been that which a Greek punster might have called "the Bacchic gift," τὸ βακχικὸν δώρημα, tobacco. No other visible and tangible product of Columbus's discovery has been so universally diffused among all kinds and conditions of men, even to the remotest nooks and corners of the habitable earth. ”

“ It would have succumbed like Lane's colony, and White's, and Popham's; one more would have been added to the sickening list of failures, and the hopes built upon Virginia in England would have been sadly dashed. The utmost ingenuity on the part of Smith's detractors can never do away with the fact that his personal qualities did more than anything else to prevent such a direful calamity; and for this reason he will always remain a great and commanding figure in American history. ”

“ While there were many people who espoused Hakluyt's views, while preachers might be heard proclaiming from the pulpit that "Virginia was a door which God had opened for England," on the other hand, as in the case of all great enterprises, loud voices were raised in opposition. To send parties of men and women to starve in the wilderness, or be murdered by savages or Spaniards, was a proceeding worthy of severe condemnation for its shocking cruelty, to say nothing of its useless extravagance. ”

“ Then the story of Virginia, starting with Sir Walter Raleigh and Rev. Richard Hakluyt, is pursued until the year 1753, when the youthful George Washington sets forth upon his expedition to warn the approaching Frenchmen from any further encroachment upon English soil. That moment marks the arrival of a new era, when a book like the present—which is not a local history nor a bundle of local histories—can no longer follow the career of Virginia, nor of the southern colonies, except as part and parcel of the career of the American people. ”

“ The prodigious development of the English commercial and naval marine, to which the intercourse with the new and thriving American colonies greatly contributed, went far toward multiplying the opportunities for employment and diminishing the numbers of the needy and idle class. Many of the sons of the men who had been driven from their farms by sheep-raising landlords made their home upon the ocean, and helped to secure England's control of the watery pathways. Many of them found new homes in America, and as independent yeomen became more thrifty than their peasant fathers. ”

“ The accumulation of romantic adventures in the career of a single individual may sometimes lend an air of exaggeration to the story; yet in the genius for getting into scrapes and coming out of them sound and whole, the differences between people are quite as great as the differences in stature and complexion. John Smith evidently had a genius for adventures, and he lived at a time when one would often meet with things such as nowadays seldom happen in civilized countries. ”

“ We seem carried back to the times of John Smith when we encounter once more the grim figure of Opekankano alive and on the war-path. We have no need, however, with some thoughtless writers, to call him a hundred years old. It was only thirty-six years since Smith's capture by the Indians, although so much history had been made that the interval seems much longer. Though a wrinkled and grizzled warrior, Opekankano need not have been more than sixty or seventy when he wreaked upon the white men his second massacre, on the eve of Good Friday, 1644. ”

“ No more did White ever hear of his loved ones. Sixteen years afterward the settlers at Jamestown were told by Indians that the white people abandoned at Roanoke had mingled with the natives and lived with them for some years on amicable terms until at the instigation of certain medicine-men (who probably accused them of witchcraft) they had all been murdered, except four men, two boys, and a young woman, who were spared by request or order of a chief. Whether this young woman was Virginia Dare, the first American girl, we have no means of knowing. ”

“ Day after day he crouched under the beetling crags of Cintra, catching and sinking every craft that passed that lair, then swept like a tempest into the bay of Coruña and wrought similar havoc to that of Cadiz, then stood off for the Azores and captured the great carrack on its way from the Indies with treasure reckoned by millions. Europe stood dumb with amazement. What manner of man was it that could thus "singe the King of Spain's beard"? "Philip one day invited a lady of the court to join him in his barge on the Lake of Segovia. ”

“ A contrast was afforded by Massachusetts, which under its first charter, from 1629 to 1684, was a true republic, with governor, council, and assembly all elected within the colony, so that the administration could move on quite independently of any action in England. In the proprietary governments, of which Maryland was the first example, the lord proprietor stepped into the place of the crown, while a charter, which might be forfeited in case of abuse, made it impossible for him to become an absolute monarch. ”

“ Starting with such a charter, religious toleration in Maryland was a happy product of circumstances. In view of the regal powers wielded by Lord Baltimore it was not easy for the Protestant settlers to oppress the Catholics; while, on the other hand, if the Catholic settlers had been allowed to annoy the Protestants, it would forthwith have raised such a storm in England as would have overwhelmed the lord proprietor and blasted his enterprise. The situation thus created was improved to the best advantage by the strong common-sense and unfailing tact of Cecilius Calvert. ”

“ Your true communist is the man who likes to live on the fruits of other people's labour. If you look for him in these days you are pretty sure to find him in a lager beer saloon, talking over schemes for rebuilding the universe. In the early days of Virginia the creature's nature was the same, and about one fifth of the population was thus called upon to support the whole. Under such circumstances it is wonderful that the colony survived until Dale could come and put an end to the system. ”

“ It is pleasant to trace the various connections, near and remote, whether in blood-relationship or in community of interests and purposes, between the different personages of a great era that has passed away; for the more we come to discern in its concrete details the intricate web of associations running in all directions among the men and events of the vanished age, the more vividly is that age reproduced in our minds, the closer does it come to the present, the more keenly does it enlist our sympathies. ”