# Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century/Chapter 21

​CHAPTER XXI
CONCLUSION
In casting a brief retrospective glance over the period of time to which this inquiry has been confined, it is seen that by far the most momentous fact in the history of Virginia in the seventeenth century was the discovery, through Rolfe’s experiment in 1612, that the soil of the Colony was adapted to the production of a quality of tobacco which was destined to prove valuable in the European markets. From the very beginning, this discovery thwarted one of the principal objects of the colonization of the new country; it deprived the people of England of all hope of obtaining from the Colony the commodities which they were importing from the Continent at an enormous outlay. Its most vital influence, however, bore directly upon the fate of the people of Virginia themselves. It shaped that fate absolutely. The manner in which this result was effected is soon described. Tobacco had not long been cultivated in the Colony before the virgin land was discovered to be necessary to its production in perfection, since there were no artificial manures in that age for retaining or restoring the fertility of the ground. As soon as the soil gave signs of exhaustion, it was allowed to relapse into coarse grasses and finally into forest; a new field was created by the removal of trees over an area selected in the primæval woods, which covered the greater part of every plantation, and this field was in turn abandoned when it became ​ and the old course was again adopted for a new area of forest land. The whole effect of tobacco culture was to extend the clearings with the utmost rapidity in the ever recurring need of a virgin soil. In this need, the system of large plantations had its origin. The tobacco planter was compelled to own a broad extent of land in wood, upon which he might encroach from year to year as the ground under cultivation lost its fertility. The advantage of possessing a wide range for his cattle, which were thrown on their own resources to gain a subsistence, was an additional motive in his appropriation of the soil.
The economic and moral influences springing from the system of large plantations thus built up were radical and supreme. Looking at that system from an economical point of view, it will be seen that it produced a spirit of wastefulness, which was fully excused by the prevailing abundance of all the necessaries of life. The whole country, even where it was most thickly inhabited, bore the aspect of a wilderness but slightly changed by the application of the axe and hoe. The methods of agriculture in the midst of such a profusion of natural wealth were, as might have been expected, rude and careless, a thoughtful and calculating treatment of natural resources being unnecessary as long as these resources were unbounded. If the estates had been limited in area, an intensive system would have been introduced. Greater care would have been employed in the use of the soil, and the forests would not have been so ruthlessly destroyed. The isolation of life which the large plantation created and promoted, discouraged the growth of towns and villages, not only by diminishing all tendency towards cooperation among the people, but also by simplifying the interests of each community. Each plantation stood apart to itself. It had its separate population; it had its own distinct round of occupations; ​it had its own laborers, its own mechanics. It either produced its own natural and manufactured supplies or it imported them from abroad. There was no mutual dependence among plantations such as would have been observed if the estates had been small, which would have signified a division of labor.
The moral influence of the large plantation was equally extraordinary. It fostered habits of self-reliance in individual men; it assisted in promoting an intense love of liberty; it strengthened the ties of family and kinship at the very time that it cultivated the spirit of general hospitality. Descended from the race of Englishmen, indeed, in many instances born under English skies themselves, the Virginians of the seventeenth century led a life, in consequence of the independent and manly existence permitted by the plantation system, that confirmed all the ​great qualities which had formed a part of their moral inheritance as scions of the English stock. It was a life that allowed the individuality of each planter to expand without obstacle. It is not surprising that in a great crisis like the American Revolution, when sufficient time had passed for Virginia to produce a population racy of her own soil, and moulded by her own material conditions, there should have sprung up a body of men of exalted merit in those departments of human affairs in which her general system was most calculated to develop talent, the sphere of military action and the sphere of statesmanship. The large plantations, by giving birth to a class of great landowners, increased the importance of leaders in the community. It promoted the aristocratic spirit not the less strongly because there were no legally defined ranks in society. It created a rural gentry as proud as that of England.
The system of large estates was the result of the special conditions of tobacco culture alone. It did not spring from the existence of slavery, although that institution, by furnishing a cheaper laborer, gave a strong impulse to the expansion of the area included in the tract of each plantation. The plantation system of Virginia was founded upon a permanent basis many years before the number of slaves in the Colony had reached a thousand. That system would have flourished if not a single African had been introduced into Virginia. In its principal aspects indented service was a form of slavery; the servant was merely a slave for a fixed number of years instead of for life; he was for the time being absolutely at the disposal of his master, his physical powers being as persistently directed to the removal of the forest and the cultivation of the ground. The increasing substitution of new servants for old, whose terms had come to an end, gave, on each large ​plantation, a continuity to the labor system of white servants as unbroken as if it had been the labor system of slaves. The economic results were substantially the same; the moral and social influences of both were in many respects exactly similar.
Nevertheless, it is a cause for lasting regret that the African slave gradually took the place of the indented English servant. From a political point of view, the chief merit of the system of white laborers was that upon the expiration of their terms they became at once citizens who were identified in race with members of the ruling class. They could in time rise to a high position in that class if they had energy and ability, or could, if they themselves were lacking in these qualities, transmit the right to rise to their descendants, either immediate or remote. The complete homogeneity of the community was not affected by the presence of the white servant; in that servant the community possessed the most admirable instrument for the eradication of the primæval forest, the supreme task of the colonial age, because he was just as thoroughly and directly in the power of his master as the negro slave himself; at the same time, the public interests foresaw in him a free man, who was destined to the highest possibilities as soon as he had taken his place in the ranks of the community at large.
In all the advantages of citizenship, there was no essential difference between the immigrant who took up a tract of land on his arrival in the country and the son or grandson of the indented white laborer, or the indented white laborer himself after the end of his term, if he was able to acquire an equal amount of property. The discipline which the indented white servant was brought under, the very hardships to which he was exposed, and which he was compelled to endure, formed a school which was most ​admirably adapted to prepare him to make his way successfully when he had become free. If the system of indented white laborers had prevailed down to the Revolution without the introduction of a single negro upon the soil of Virginia, there would have been found, after the establishment of the national independence, a community composed entirely of a homogeneous English stock. All the influence, of the system of large plantations, to which the great personalities of Virginia in that momentous era are principally due, would have been in operation, because the system of white indented laborers, as the early history of the seventeenth century shows, would have promoted, equally with the institution of slavery, the expansion in the area of the separate estates.
It is impossible to speculate without interest upon the probable condition of Virginia after the Revolution if the planters had had only the white laborer to depend on. Would the importation of indented servants from England have continued? Hardly in the same volume, although the dearness of labor in the State, as in the Colony, would have led to the offer of strong inducements by the planters to procure foreign laborers, among whom the English would doubtless have been preferred. Under the new political régime, it was quite improbable that indented labor as known in the seventeenth century would have prevailed, because of its inconsistency with the spirit of the new institutions. The modern system of free labor would no doubt have sprung up, and this might have been a cause of serious embarrassment to the owners of great estates. The system of large plantations, a soon a artificial manures began to be used in the cultivation of tobacco, would probably have yielded to the influences of disintegration attendant on free labor; Virginia might have grown into close sympathy with the economic ​conditions of the Northern States long before the present day had been reached.
We may acknowledge that the negro would in all probability have been introduced into the Colony in the seventeenth century, even if the soil had been incapable of producing the tobacco plant, but without that plant it is not likely that the institution of slavery could have obtained a permanent foothold in Virginia. In time it would have died out and the African population have remained an insignificant part of the community. The extension of tobacco culture signified the importation of African slaves in large numbers as soon as the facilities for procuring them had been increased. What that culture required was the cheapest form of labor, and this the negro furnished because he was a bondsman for life, for whom only a provision of bare subsistence had to be made. It was not until the end of the century that the means of importing slaves grew to be equal to the demand for them, The white indented servant and not the negro was the principal factor in the labor system in operation in the Colony in that age; and yet as far as slavery existed then, it had all the features of the same institution as observed down to the late war between the States. It cannot be said, however, that it had an important effect upon the economic conditions in the Colony; on the contrary, if not a single negro had been introduced into Virginia in the seventeenth century, the peculiar character of that community during this period would hardly have been altered, for the very simple reason that the chief influence forming and controlling it sprang from the special needs of tobacco culture, which were satisfied by the system of indented labor, that system, as has been pointed out, being merely one of temporary slavery.
It was not until the eighteenth century that the ​impression of slavery upon existing institutions grew to be profound; and yet that this impression was not essentially different from that which the early system of indented service produced, is shown in the general identity of the Virginian communities during the whole of the eighteenth century with the same communities previous to the middle of the seventeenth, when the number of slaves amounted only to a few hundred. Indeed, there is nothing in the history of the Colony in the seventeenth century more striking than the similarity between the conditions prevailing then under the system of indented labor, and those prevailing under the institution of slavery as soon as it became universal, down to the hour of its destruction, although two hundred years had passed, and a radical change of government had taken place. The explanation lay wholly in the fact that the requirements for the production of tobacco had during this long period remained practically the same. Although artificial manures had been introduced, the planters still preferred that virgin soil which could only be obtained by clearing away the forest. It was this fact still that maintained the system of large plantations in undiminished vigor.
No system of land tenure could have been adopted more admirably calculated to ensure the rapid settlement of the Colony than that which was in operation there throughout the seventeenth century. There were in that age no such facilities in ocean transportation as exist at present to diminish the outlay entailed by emigration from Europe to America. To-day, the expenses of the passage are so small that even the peasant can meet the unavoidable charges, and, in consequence, from all parts of the Old Country, men belonging to the lower ranks of life have flocked into the far West and taken up land. So costly was the voyage in the seventeenth century, that unless the importer of ​laborers had been offered fifty acres for every one he introduced, but an insignificant proportion of that class which formed the principal basis of the head right would have found their way to Virginia, and in the absence of that class, the destruction of the forest on a great scale would have been deferred for many decades. The head right ensured an enormous immigration of agricultural laborers, the tract of fifty acres being looked upon as a partial compensation at least for the expense of bringing in the servant. The West was settled by an influx of population which, under the homestead law, became at once a community of small landowners, but in Virginia in the seventeenth century, the mass of the inhabitants were men and women who had no interest in the soil. In spite of the fact that the average size of the patent sued out was not very considerable, the face of the country was in possession of only a section of the people.
The valuable inducements held out to men of means to become landowners in Virginia led to the emigration of a large number of Englishmen who represented the most refined elements of the mother country, and who were therefore anxious to introduce into their now communities all of those economic conditions to which they were accustomed on their native soil. They were compelled to follow a new system of agriculture, because they had not only to overcome the obstacle of a heavy growth of forest, but also to adapt their action to the needs of the tobacco plant, but in all the other departments of their economic affairs they adhered as far as possible to the methods and customs of England. This was especially observable in the interiors of their dwelling-houses and in the general conveniences of their daily lives.
It is doubtful whether there was ever a new community that obtained its supplies, whether natural or manufactured, ​with more ease and in greater abundance than Virginia in the seventeenth century. The Colony was very fortunate in the early years of its history in possessing a staple like tobacco, which, although it fluctuated in value and often sank in price below the cost of production, was nevertheless practically in constant demand in the foreign market. The Virginians, unlike the people of New England, were not compelled to seek purchasers for their main product; foreign shipmasters, with vessels loaded down with the greatest variety of merchandise, sailed directly up to the plantation wharves and there exchanged their goods for tobacco, or they placed these goods in the hands of factors who distributed them among the people in return for that commodity.
There have been few people enjoying a greater variety and abundance of food than the Virginians in the same age. The natural supplies which were not dependent upon their own production were to be found in greater profusion at that period than at any subsequent period, because the course of destruction had not been so prolonged. Beasts, birds, and fish were to be obtained in almost incredible quantities. There has never been a soil more admirably adapted to every species of vegetables than the soil of Virginia, even at the present day, after being under cultivation for nearly three hundred years. Although little attention was paid to fruits in the seventeenth century, there was nevertheless an abundant supply for use. The various cereals flourished also to an extraordinary degree.
An absence of great personalities was one of the most remarkable features of the history of Virginia in the seventeenth century after the dissolution of the Company. Nathaniel Bacon alone stands out upon that vast background in the proportions of an extraordinary man, but he was an Englishman and not a Virginian. It should be ​remembered that great men of action are the products of critical times alone, for they require a motive and a stage. There was but one heroic tumult in the course of that long period; if no native Virginian took supreme control of affairs then, it was nevertheless the spirit of the native Virginian which sustained the youthful Bacon in his memorable enterprise. The highest powers of the most capable men of the age were directed to the accumulation of property. The country was new and was covered with forest: it required a concentration of thought and energy on the part of individuals to secure material success in the midst of such conditions, and a certain degree of such success was necessary if a foothold was to be won, and when won, maintained. In the beginning it was to be expected that the instincts of the people should be entirely fixed upon the improvement of their fortunes, and it followed that the leading men were those who were most successful in increasing their estates. The principal figures in the history of Virginia in the seventeenth century were men of the stamp of Samuel Mathews, George Menefie, Robert Beverley. Adam Thoroughgood, Ralph Wormeley, William Fitzhugh, Edmund Scarborough, and William Byrd, men who were important, not because they filled high offices, but because they had gathered together great properties by planting and trading.
To the generation of Virginians now living, the history of their community in the seventeenth century should be peculiarly interesting, for this was the period in which the foundation was laid for those conditions that the new régime will in time wholly destroy. All that is great in the annals of the Colony and the State was accomplished during the existence of these conditions; the character of the most illustrious soldiers and statesmen of Virginia were moulded by the old economic system, and her ​contributions to the wealth of the world were made under its operation. The era upon which the commonwealth has entered will, no doubt, as time goes on, be found, in all of its principal aspects, antipodal to that long period, which, beginning in 1607, only ended in 1865. The most powerful influences of the seventeenth century, the formative age in the history of Virginia, tended directly, as has been seen, to the creation of great estates in land. At the present day, the most powerful influences tend directly to the disintegration of the system of large plantations, and this is observed even in those parts of the State where the population is compelled to rely principally upon tobacco for a subsistence. A virgin soil is no longer necessary to the production of that plant in perfection, artificial manures being now used in preparing land for its culture. Unforeseen influences, independent of those springing from the destruction of slavery, have hastened the drift towards the subdivision of the soil. The extension of the area under cultivation in the West, by lowering the prices of all agricultural products, including tobacco, has rendered hired labor unprofitable except where the soil is extremely fertile. In the present age, it is the landowner who works with his own hands who can in the long run follow the pursuits of farming and planting without a loss, and there is little reason to expect a reversion of this condition. Virginia in the twentieth century seems destined to present in its holdings a condition precisely the opposite of what was observed in the seventeenth, in the eighteenth, and in the greater part of the nineteenth. It will doubtless become a community of small landowners. That appearance of waste and neglect which accompanied the system of large plantations scents likely gradually to disappear as the area under cultivation comes to include practically the entire face of the country.
​All the influences of the seventeenth century, as has been seen, were hostile to the building of towns and cities, and this can also be said of the system of large plantations as long as it lasted in its primitive vigor. All the influences of the new régime are promotive of the growth of centres of population. The influences of the old régime, as founded in the seventeenth century, were such as to exalt the importance of the individual; the influences of the new are such as to raise the importance of the mass. The isolated life of the large plantations of the past fostered very marked traits in the character of each person, and in the character of each community; the subdivision of the land, by increasing the population enormously and bringing the people into the closest and most constant intercourse, will tend to reduce the inhabitants to a more uniform type, and this process will be daily hastened by the ever-growing facilities of communication with the country at large.
It is safe to predict that under the new economic system, Virginia will no longer produce the same class of men as she did under the old. Her illustrious citizens in the past sprang from the rural gentry. A rural gentry is impossible under prevailing conditions; the remnant which has survived to the present day is so small as to be unworthy of consideration from a numerical point of view, and in a few years it will be altogether gone. All that is highest and noblest in the civilization of the State will find its representation in the town and not as of old in the country.
Virginia, which was once imperial in extent, has shrunk into the confines of a narrow State, and the time may come when the name will be used to designate a geographical entity of the past. This result cannot be reached until there has been a complete subversion of all those principles that her people have cherished and revered, the seeds ​of which were planted in the western soil by their forefathers in the seventeenth century, and nourished by all the influences of the plantation system founded in that age. The simplicity of life, the manliness of spirit, the love of home and family, and devotion to liberty, promoted by that system, are the strongest pillars upon which the honor and safety of government can rest. It will be happy indeed if the future of the State shall show that all these virtues can flourish under the new economic order as fully as they flourished under the old, and that growth in her material wealth and the concentration of her population in cities shall not mean a decline in the character of her citizens as compared with the character of that extinct race of country gentlemen which produced Washington and Lee, and a long line of statesmen and soldiers, hardly less illustrious, whose achievements have, in the eyes of the world, conferred imperishable distinction upon the American name.