Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

“ The relentless law of the survival of the fittest worked upon them with telling force and thousands that could not stand the severe test imposed upon them by conditions in the New World succumbed to the fever of the tobacco fields, or quitted the colony, leaving to stronger and better hands the upbuilding of the middle class. On the other hand, the fertility of the soil, the cheapness of land, the ready sale of tobacco combined to make possible for all that survived, a degree of prosperity unknown to them in England. ”

“ His daily life, his habits of thought, his associations tend to make him hostile to all that glittering fabric of romance reared in the Middle Ages. He abhors battles and wars, for they are destructive to his trade. He may be honest, but he cares little for the idealistic honor of the days of knighthood. He ascribes to woman no place of superiority in society. We have already seen that the Virginia aristocracy had its origin largely in the emigration of English merchants to the colony, and we should naturally expect to find the planters of the 17th century lacking in the spirit of chivalry. ”

“ This gave rise to that fringe of rough humanity upon the frontier, that spread continually westward as the colony grew. Many of the servants that escaped from their masters fled to the mountains, seeking refuge among the defiles and woods of the Blue Ridge or the more distant Alleghanies. The descendants of these wretched people still exist in the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky, exhibiting in their ignorance, their disregard for law, their laziness and even in their dialect the lowness of their origin. ”

“ The colony itself could furnish but a limited supply, for few were willing to work for hire when they could easily own farms of their own. The native Americans of this region could not be made to toil in the fields for the white man, as the aborigines of Mexico and the West Indies were made to toil for the Spanish, for they were of too warlike and bold a spirit. Destruction would have been more grateful to them than slavery. Their haughtiness and pride were such that in their intercourse with the English they would not brook the idea of inferiority. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the Virginia gentleman of the time of Washington and Jefferson, in his self-respect, his homage to womanhood, his sense of [142] honor, his power of command, in all that made him unique was but the product of the conditions which surrounded him. And although the elegance and refinement of his social life, the culture and depths of his mind can, to some extent, be ascribed to the survival of English customs and the constant intercourse with the mother country, these too were profoundly influenced by conditions in the colony. ”

“ Those members of the middle class who were unable, through poverty or incapacity, to share the prosperity of the early years of the 18th century were injured by the general use of slave labor in the colony. Since they could not purchase negroes, they were in a sense thrown into competition with them. The enormous increase in the production of tobacco brought down the price and made their single exertions less and less profitable. They were deprived of the privilege of working for wages, for no freeman could toil side by side with negroes, and retain anything of self-respect. ”

“ This system gave to the planters far greater leisure than they had possessed in the earlier part of the colony's existence, and they made use of this leisure to cultivate their minds and to diversify their interests. It is only in this way that we can fully explain why the aristocrat surrounded himself with a large library, indulged in the delicate art of music, beautified his home with handsome paintings, and revelled in the dance, in races or the fox hunt. ”

“ Moreover, the fact that so many servants, after the expiration of their term of indenture, entered this class, tended to humble the poor planters, for they realized always the existence of a bond of fellowship between themselves and the field laborers. When the negro slave had supplanted the indentured servant upon the plantations of the colony a vast change took place in the pride of the middle class. Every white man, no matter how poor he was, no matter how degraded, could now feel a pride in his race. ”

“ It has been the study of its professors to cultivate at the same time the intellect, the principles, and the deportment of the student, labouring with equal diligence to infuse the spirit of the scholar and the spirit of the gentleman. As such we receive and treat him and resolutely refuse to know him in any other character. He is not harrassed with petty regulations; he is not insulted and annoyed by impertinent surveillance. Spies and informers have no countenance among us. We receive no accusation but from the conscience of the accused. His honor is the only witness to which we appeal ”

“ And if for one short period, the selfishness of the English government, the ambition of the governor of the colony and the greed of the controlling class checked the progress of the commons, the people soon asserted their rights in open rebellion, and insured for themselves a share in the [215] government and a chance to work out their own destiny, untrammelled by injustice and oppression. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the middle class was a numerous, intelligent and prosperous body, far superior to the mass of lowly immigrants from which it sprang. ”

“ So when he found himself an extensive landholder, he thought of himself as an English squire. He too would build a fine residence, decorate his walls with family portraits, have a formal garden, accumulate a library, and dress in the latest English fashion.
Virginia in the colonial period was linked to England by government, commerce, religion, reading, education. The mother country sent over governors who set the fashion in courtly living. It was the planter's agent in London or Bristol who usually selected his furniture, his silverware, his clothing, and often even his books. ”

“ Having examined the various types of men that entered Virginia as indentured servants, it now remains to determine to what extent these types survived and became welded into the social life of the colony. The importation of starving laborers and even of criminals was of vital importance only in proportion to the frequency with which they survived their term of service, acquired property, married and left descendants. The law of the survival of the fittest, which is so great a factor in elevating the human race, operated with telling effect in Virginia. ”

“ I had an opportunity to see a good deal of the country and many of the first people in the province and I must say they far excel in good sense, affability, and ease any set of men I have yet fallen in with, either in the West Indies or on the Continent, this, in some degree, may be owing to their being most of them educated at home (England) but cannot be altogether the cause, since there are amongst them many gentlemen, and almost all the ladies, who have never been out of their own province, and yet are as sensible, conversible, and accomplished as one would wish to meet with. ”

“ Before the end of the 17th century it was rare indeed to find freemen in the colony living in poverty. There were none whose condition was at all comparable for misery and want to the vast body of paupers that crowded the English cities and eked out an existence as laborers upon the farms. Robert Beverley, who wrote in 1705, called Virginia the best poor man's country in the world. ”

“ It could not be concealed in England that the early settlers had perished of starvation, disease and the tomahawk, and those that had been led to believe that Virginia was an Eldorado, turned with a shudder from the true picture of suffering and death told them by those that returned from the colony. Moreover, the London Company soon learned that no profit was to be expected from a colony settled by dissipated gentlemen, and began to send over persons more suited for the rough tasks of clearing woods, building huts and planting corn. ”

“ But as time went on a decided change took place in the nature of the Virginian's pride. During the 18th century he gradually lost that arrogance that had been so characteristic of him in the age of Nicholson and Spotswood. At the time of the Revolution are found no longer [59] men that do not hesitate to trample under foot the rights of others as Custis, Byrd, and Carter had done. Nothing could be more foreign to the nature of Washington or Jefferson than the haughtiness of the typical Virginia planter of an earlier period. ”

“ Hugh Jones wrote, "No country is better watered, for the conveniency of which most houses are built near some landing-place; so that anything may be delivered to a gentleman there from London, Bristol, &c., with less trouble and cost, than to one living five miles in the country in England; for you pay no freight from London and but little from Bristol; only the party to whom the goods belong, is in gratitude engaged to ship tobacco upon the ship consigned to her owners in England." ”

“ The gradual loss of the mercantile instinct, the habit of command acquired by the control of servants and slaves, and the long use of political power, the growth of patriotism, eventually instilled into him a chivalric love of warfare not unlike that of the knights of old. ”

“ The Virginian of the later period had a most exalted conception of what a man should be, and they respected themselves as exemplifiers of their ideals, but they were always ready to accord to others the same reverence they paid themselves. The change that had taken place is shown in the lack of pretence and self-assertion in judges, councillors, in college presidents and other dignitaries. Thomas Nelson Page, in speaking of the fully developed Virginia gentleman, says, "There was the foundation of a certain pride, based on self-respect and consciousness of power. ”

“ The earliest immigrants established on the banks of the James a civilization as similar in every respect to that of the mother country as their situation would permit. Had it not been for economic and climatic conditions there would have grown up amid the wilderness of America an exact reproduction of England in miniature. As it was, the colonists infused into their new life the habits, moral standards, ideas and customs of the old so firmly that their influence is apparent even at the present day. ”

“ In making his selections for high offices, Berkeley had recourse at times to men that had recently settled in the colony, hoping, doubtless, to secure persons submissive to his will. "It has been the common practice," it was stated, "to putt persons that are mere strangers into places of great honor, profitt and trust who unduly officiating therein, do abuse and wrong the people." These men proved parasites upon the colony and many enriched themselves at the public expense. ”

“ The London Company in its efforts to send to the colony desirable settlers induced a number of men of good family and education to venture across the ocean to seek their fortunes in the New World. Since the Company numbered among its stockholders some of the greatest noblemen of the time, it could easily arouse in the influential social classes extraordinary interest in Virginia. It is due largely to this fact that among the first settlers are to be found so many that are entitled to be called gentlemen. ”

“ With the greater leisure of the 18th century this spirit changed entirely, and we find an inclination among the aristocrats to go to the bottom of every matter that came to their attention. Thus John Randolph was not only a practical statesman and a great orator, he was a profound thinker; although Thomas Jefferson was twice president of the United States, and was the author of the Declaration of Independence, it is as the originator of a political creed that he has the best claim to fame ”

“ This fact is nowhere more apparent than in the development of the Virginia aristocracy, and we find that its distinctive character had not been fully formed until after the Revolution. Pride, however, is a failing so natural to humanity that its development may be a matter of a few years only. Conditions in the colony could not fail to produce, even in the first generations of Virginians, all the dignity and self esteem of an old established aristocracy. William Byrd I, Daniel Parke, "King" [55] Carter were every whit as proud as were Randolph, Madison or Jefferson. ”

“ Owing to the demand for servants and the cost of transporting them to the colony, it was seldom that any other than wealthy planters could afford to secure them. The wills of the first half of the 17th century show that few of the smaller planters even when they had attained a fair degree of prosperity made use of servant labor. Thus there was in Virginia at this period a class of men who owned their own land and tilled it entirely with their own hands. ”

“ One of the most fertile sources of error in history is the tendency of writers to confound the origin of institutions with the conditions that brought them into life. In nothing is this more apparent than in the various theories advanced in regard to the development of chivalry during the Middle Ages. ”