Harrisonburg, Virginia

“ If we should draw a circle around this ancient city, with a radius of less than fifty miles, we should find within that narrow compass the birthplace of George Washington, of Thomas Jefferson, of James Madison, of James Monroe, of Zachary Taylor, of Chief-Justice John Marshall, of the Lees of the Revolution, of Patrick Henry, of Henry Clay, of Matthew Maury and of Robert E. Lee. ”

“ It was James Madison, of Orange county, a Virginian, born a few miles below Fredericksburg, at Port Conway, in King George [Pg 302] county, who gave that wonderful instrument, the Constitution of the United States, to the country, that has been described as the “grand palladium of our liberty, the golden chain of our union, the broad banner of freemen, a terror to tyrants and a shining light to patriots.” ”

“ Fredericksburg, from its earliest days, possessed educational advantages, greatly in advance of many larger towns of the colonies. Soon after its establishment by the House of Burgesses, schools of a high order were established here by the best of educators and it is highly probable that the leading men of the State—those who conducted public affairs in colonial times, and who were the first to oppose and resist British tyranny and who inaugurated and conducted the movement for separation and independence—were educated in those schools. ”

“ From the terraced banks of the Rappahannock, sixty miles north of Richmond, to the shining reaches of the James, where the capital of the Confederacy stands high on her seven hills, the lowlands of Virginia are clad with luxuriant vegetation. The roads and railways run through endless avenues of stately trees; the shadows of the giant oaks lie far across the rivers, and ridge and ravine are mantled with the unbroken foliage of the primeval forest. ”

“ The fact that the "Surgeon of the Colony" had moved to Middle Plantation was a convincing argument in favor of its healthfulness. Surveys were quickly made and new homes erected so that there grew up around "Harop" a village which was later given the name of Williamsburg, where in 1693 the College of William and Mary was founded under royal patronage.
Williamsburg, first the habitation of Dr. Pott, became the capital of Virginia in 1698, and here her lawmakers assembled until the exigencies of the Revolution made it advisable to transfer the seat of government to Richmond, in 1779. ”

“ It is not stated in what part of the town the first poor house was located, but for many years before the Civil war it was located on the Lang property, near Gunnery spring, and afterwards the poor were quartered in a brick house near the western limit of Princess Elizabeth street, which was rented for the purpose and which is now owned by the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad Company.
After the war, for about eighteen years, the poor were maintained at the private houses, with such families as would agree to take them. ”

“ Choice fell on a young man whose name was destined to a permanent place in the country's history. William Henry Harrison was the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the scion of one of Virginia's most honored families. ”

“ Williamsburg does not contain above a hundred and fifty houses, and is the only town we have yet seen in Virginia worth mentioning not situated on the banks of any river. What makes the situation of this place valuable, is the neighbourhood of James and York rivers, between which grows the best tobacco in the whole State, and for this reason it seems to have been built where it is: I do not think, nevertheless, that it will ever be a place of any great importance; the towns of York, James, Norfolk, and Edenton, being more favourably situated for trade, will undoubtedly eclipse it. ”

“ HARRISON, THOMAS, D.D. (fl. 1658) , nonconformist divine, born at Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, was taken by his parents while a youth to New England, and there trained up to the ministry. He became chaplain to the governor of Virginia, an enemy of the puritans. The governor, with the connivance of Harrison, expelled from Virginia certain ministers who held extreme views, and their expulsion was followed by a disastrous rising among the Indians. ”

“ Our country being much intersected with navigable waters, and trade brought generally to our doors, instead of our being obliged to go in quest of it, has probably been one of the causes why we have no towns of any consequence. Williamsburgh, which, till the year 1780, was the seat of our government, never contained above 1800 inhabitants ”

“ The governor, supported by the great families, retained the same House of Burgesses for sixteen years lest a new one might not be submissive. The increasing mass of the population dwelt along the western border or on the less fertile ridges which make up the major part of the land even in tide-water Virginia. These poorer people—who were not, however, “poor whites”—developed an abiding hostility towards the oligarchy. They desired a freer land-grant system, protection against the inroads of the Indians along the border, and frequent sessions of an assembly to be chosen by all the freeholders. ”

“ He had talents to perceive the right and firmness enough to pursue it however violently opposed."
At the close of 1777 Mr. Harrison resigned his seat in Congress and returned to the bosom of his family. No one member had performed more labor than him—no one was more highly esteemed and honored. [Pg 146] He was emphatically a working man—a colossus in the cause of liberty and human rights. He returned home to enjoy repose. This was of but short duration. He was immediately elected to the Virginia Legislature and made Speaker, which station he ably filled for five consecutive years. ”

“ The Common Council that took charge of municipal affairs in 1870 had many grave and difficult questions to meet and determine. Debts had accumulated against the city, while the taxable values had greatly diminished by the destruction of property during the war and the emancipation of the slaves. A large portion of the inhabitants had recently returned home—the women and children from refugeeing and the men from the army—almost penniless, to find their homes in ruins or badly damaged and despoiled of what had been left in them. Nearly everybody had to commence life anew. ”

“ Yet, even though there was such rout and revel at Williamsburg and kindred towns, it was in the houses of the great planters that one saw the true Virginia social existence, that one found the Virginia woman of the time in her truest apparition. Under the influences of the coming of the Cavaliers and the Huguenots--for the descendants of the latter perpetuated the restless gaiety of their forsaken land rather than the austerities of the faith which had been the cause of their exile--there had arisen in Virginia something of a cult of the social function. ”

“ In the year 1777, the county was duly organized, according to the act of the Virginia legislature. Among the names of the first officers in the new county, we recognize those of Floyd, Bowman, Logan, and Todd.
Harrodsburgh, the strongest and most populous station in the country, had not hitherto been assailed by the Indians. Early in the spring of 1777, they attacked a small body of improvers marching to Harrodsburgh, about four miles from that place. Mr. Kay, afterwards General Kay, and his brother were of the party. The latter was killed, and another man made prisoner. ”

“ In the bleakest period of winter, under leaden skies and with sombre landscapes, the country which they had reached would have been delightful to them, but clothed in the verdure of the Virginian May, when the greenness of the foliage and the tints of the wild flowers have their deepest and softest coloring, it was quite natural that visions of an earthly Paradise should have arisen before their eyes, accustomed for so long a time to the heaving plains of the Atlantic. ”

“ A fair proportion only of those who were imported into Virginia as laborers acquired handsome estates and became prominent and influential citizens. Many Assemblies, after 1632, contained burgesses who had begun their career in the Colony by binding themselves out for a set period of time. In the early sessions of the legislature, the members who had at one time been servants or apprentices had been brought in as employees of the Company, and, through the grants of land which they received on the expiration of their terms, had acquired immediate importance in the community. ”

“ On the morning of the 21st, the people of Williamsburg learned what the Governor had done during the night and were vastly excited. An incredible wave of fury spread through the Colony and everywhere men took up arms. All the pent up passion of the past months was turned against the unfortunate Governor.
April 28, 1775. At the height of the excitement over the powder magazine affair, news came from the northward that colonials had engaged British regulars at Concord and Lexington. ”

“ The existence of a weak executive, dependent on the people for his authority, inevitably brought about a dispersal of power and authority from the center to the outer edges of settlement. [47] The explosive force of expansion was no longer limited by the strong hand of a royal Governor, and each increment of population in the colony and power in the hands of the local authorities added fuel to the combustion.
One of Virginia's frontiers at this time was the Eastern Shore. It was a frontier community because the law of the colonial government in Jamestown rarely extended to it. ”

“ The records concerning the town reach back only to the close of the Revolutionary war. If Major Lawrence Smith, who constructed the fort and governed the settlers by military law or “as a county court might do,” ever kept any records of his acts, we have been unable to find them, and the same is true of the Trustees who had the management of the town from the time it was “laid out by law,” until it was chartered by the Legislature of Virginia. ”

“ Martha W. Hiden, How Justice Grew. Dr. Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia under Charles I and Cromwell, takes issue with most Virginia historians by coming to the defense of Governor John Harvey who was kicked out of Virginia because of his despotic rule, abuse of the courts, and disregard of law.
Among the special studies relating to the political history of Virginia are Philip A. Bruce, The Institutional History of Virginia (1910) ; Julian A. C. Chandler, The History of Suffrage in Virginia (1901) ; Oliver P. Chitwood, Justice in Colonial Virginia (1905) ”

“ The people of Eastern Virginia and the inhabitants of the valley have each been benefited by the other; each section has its virtues and its faults, its advantages and its disadvantages, and Virginia does not derive its character from either one, but the elements of both are mixed up in her. This is not the result of chance, or the mere work of man, but the order of a superintending Providence that presides in human affairs.
The government of Virginia now devolved upon John Robinson, Sr., president of the council, but he dying in a few days, Thomas Lee succeeded as president. ”

“ Thus, in Virginia, the most Anglican, oldest, and most loyal of the colonies, a spirit of freedom and independence infused itself into the minds of the planters. The ocean that separated them from England lessened the terror of a distant sceptre. The supremacy of law being less firmly established, especially in the frontier, a wild spirit of justice had arisen which was apt to decline into contempt of authority. Added to this, the colony contained malecontent Cromwellian soldiers reduced to bondage, perhaps some of them men of heroic soul, victims of civil war, ripe for revolt. ”

“ In 1716 an expedition of Governor Alexander Spotswood over the mountains advertised to the world the rich back-country, now known as the Valley of Virginia; a migration thither from Pennsylvania and from Europe followed which revolutionised the province. The majority of blacks over whites soon gave way before the influx of white immigrants, and in 1756 there was a population of 292,000, of whom only 120,000 were negroes, and the small farmer class had grown so rapidly that the old tide-water aristocracy was in danger of being overwhelmed. ”

“ The children of Virginia, naturally of beautiful persons, and generally of more genius than those in England, were doomed to grow up unserviceable for any great employments in church or state. As a principal remedy for these ills, the establishment of towns in each county was recommended. It was further proposed to erect schools in the colony, and for the supply of ministers to establish, by act of parliament, Virginia fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge, with an engagement to serve the church in Virginia for seven years. ”

“ The recruiting ground for the American army in Virginia was the up-country among the Scottish-Irish and the Germans who had long fought the older section of the colony. In 1779 Norfolk was again attacked, and great damage was also done to the neighbouring towns. In January 1781 Benedict Arnold captured Richmond and compelled governor and legislature to flee beyond the Blue Ridge mountains, where one session of the Assembly was held. ”

“ Small gold and silver bodkins were used by the wives of the planters for the purpose of keeping the headdress in place.
Plantation life towards the end of the century, as at an earlier date, gave few opportunities even for the most moderate display. There were no towns where, as at Williamsburg in the following century, the families of the leading citizens of the Colony might gather at certain seasons and show off in considerable state the contemporaneous fashions. ”