Early Virginia Research Articles

The American Dream of Captain John Smith

Here is a study of character, writings, and ideals of Captain John Smith, popularly recognized as greatest English explorer and colonizer of his time - perhaps of all time. Reading closely facts of Smith's life and, especially, Smith's own words, J. A. Leo Lemay offers fullest appreciation to date of Smith's contributions to American colonization and culture. The result is a new interpretation and appreciation of man who, more than any other of his time, saw potential of America for creating a new society unencumbered by feudal vestiges of Old World. Smith fulfilled heroic roles of both European Renaissance and American frontier. Before sailing for Jamestown in 1607, he fought in two major European theatres of war, finally serving as captain of a Christian cavalry company in Balkans fighting against Turks. In America, Smith became early Virginia's most famous and feared Indian fighter. Powhatan himself testified that if a twig but breake every one cryeth there commeth Captaine Smith. According to Lemay, Smith was also one of 17th century's greatest political and social egalitarians and visionaries. His American Dream prefigured and contributed to ideals that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Joel Barlow, James Madison, and other founders of American republic built into their aspirations for a new nation and new society. The author describes Smith as an explorer whose skill was unmatched in his time. His maps of Chesapeake Bay area and New England coast provided essential information for colonization of Virginia, Maryland, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay colonies and remained most reliable guides to those areas until nearly end of century. Lemay also shows Smith to have been a skilled diplomat and trader who treated Indians fairly and with respect. He was, in author's words, the best friend among whites that Indians ever has as governor in early Virginia. He sympathized with Indians' situation and appreciated their point of view, although he conceded that in end progress would prevail.

The Dining Room in Early Virginia

The Dining Room in Early Virginia

John Smith Satirized: The Legend of Captaine Iones

T SHE credibility of Captain John Smith as reporter of his deeds has fluctuated drastically over the centuries. Some of Smith's contemporaries questioned his version of events in early Virginia, and thirty years after Smith's death biographer Thomas Fuller cast aspersions on his accounts of eastern Europe as well.1 But by and large, Smith's veracity survived until i867, when Henry Adams promoted his own reputation as historian by challenging Smith's.2 For almost century thereafter, Smith was often assumed to have been, as Samuel Eliot Morison quipped in I 930, a liar, if you will; but thoroughly cheerful and generally harmless liar.3 In the I950S and i96os the pendulum swung again. Smith's first major biographers, Bradford Smith (with crucial assistance from Laura Polanyi Striker) and especially Philip L. Barbour, presented evidence of the captain's veracity that convinced all but the most cynical.4 If, however, popular seventeenth-century doggerel, The

Private Emotions and a Public Man in Early Nineteenth-Century Virginia

Private Emotions and a Public Man in Early Nineteenth-Century Virginia

Stability and Class, Theory and History: The South in the Eighteenth Century

In the past two decades the study of early American society has gained from a marvelously intense crop of monographs. But with the exception of a few books, such as Peter Wood's treatment of South Carolina slavery, Ronald Hoffman's analysis of revolutionary Maryland, and Edmund S. Morgan's account of the agony of early Virginia,1 this writing has been concerned almost wholly with places from Pennsylvania northwards. Now, however, the balance is being redressed. The conference on the southern back-country during the Revolution held in April 1982 in Washington will eventually produce as stimulating an anthology as any that has appeared on early America.2 More immediately, three new books have appeared discussing, respectively, Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Each steps into a gap that has been empty too long. One, Rhys Isaac's The Transformation of Virginia, is a brilliant breakthrough in method, content and presentation. The second, Jerome Nadelhaft's analysis of South Carolina's revolution, is a solid contribution to the emerging paradigm of the Revolution as a social process. The third, A. Roger Ekirch's Poor Carolina,

Environment, disease and mortality in early Virginia

Early Virginia (1607-24) was a nightmarish world of disease and death, perhaps uncurpassed in the annals of English colonization. Typhoid fever and dysentery visited Jamestown in recurrent epidemics killing 30 per cent or more of the colonists with each onslaught. Yet Jamestown endured because the leaders of the Virginia Company misapprehended the nexus between the estuarine environment and water-borne, non-immunizing diseases. Each summer, death stalked the town as invading salt water pushed up the estuary and concentrated pathogens in the town's water supply. The prevention of disease and death required the abandonment of Jamestown and relocation into healthier niches, which occurred with the dissolution of the Virginia Company in 1624.

Fighting "Fire" With Firearms: The Anglo-Powhatan Arms Race in Early Virginia

In 1628 Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation expressed his fear and outrage that local Indians were equipped with European muskets. 0, the horribleness of this villainyJ he wrote. How many both Dutch and English have been lately slain by ... these barbarous savages thus armed with their own weapons. With powder, bullet-molds, and even replacement parts for their firearms, the Indians were, according to Bradford, ordinarily better fitted and furnished than the English themselves.' The militant first decades of seventeenth-century English America produced well-armed Indian forces among the Algonquians of coastal New England and the Iroquois further west, but a similar, if less well-known, phenomenon occurred in tidewater Virginia. Much sooner than most early American scholars have realized, the Powhatans desired, acquired, and used firearmswith lethal effect-against the English invaders of the James River basin. While Geronimo's Apache riflemen of the late 18805 have been recognized as the epitome of heavily-armed Indian warriors, few persons would associate the Native Americans' quest for equality in weaponry with the early Jamestown years. But in fact, no sooner had the English invaded the fertile lowlands of tidewater Virginia than the Powhatans adopted new technology and tactics

William Wirt's familiar essays: Criticism of Virginia oratory

Through his familiar essays, William Wirt attempted to reverse the decline of eloquence in early nineteenth century Virginia. In Wirt's opinion, orators were inadequately educated to perform their ...

Mortality and Family in the Colonial Chesapeake

Mortality and Family in the Colonial Chesapeake Colonial Chesapeake society is currently receiving a vigorous reexamination. After a decade of important demographic studies written about New England communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,1 social historians have begun to explore the largely neglected areas of population growth, life expectancy, and family structure in early Virginia and Maryland. Some of the research is unpublished, but the intensity and quality of recent work on early Chesapeake society suggest that the findings of these social historians will be of major importance to students of colonial America. When completed, this reassessment of the Chesapeake should underscore the differences between the social history of early New England and the colonial South.2

A Quaker in Seventeenth-Century Virginia: Four Remonstrances by George Wilson

F OR a time in the early i66os Virginia's magistrates, from the governor to the justices of the peace, tried systematically to rid the Old Dominion of Quakers. Their efforts represented a renewal of a long-standing attempt by the colonial government to suppress the Friendly heresy. The story of the sect's troubles forms an integral if unpleasant part of Virginia's early religious history, and the persecutions of Quakers are generally interpreted as having derived from the magistrates' desire to drive a disruptive element from the colony.' Quaker missionaries had first come to Virginia in the i650S.2 The Friends' challenge to the Anglican establishment, their defiance of authority, their unwillingness to take oaths, their refusal to serve in the militia, and their secret meetings soon made them suspect in a society that possessed few means of calling its citizenry to account. Consequently, as the numbers and missionary activity of the Quakers increased, the authorities took steps to eliminate the threat they perceived in these unwelcome immigrants. Local justices of the peace began to enforce existing statutes against nonconformity, and the General Assembly enacted stiffer laws aimed at stamping out the sect.3 Until the threat subsided, as many of the children of light as could be caught were arrested, fined, jailed, and deported.

Richard Beale Davis. <italic>Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608–1840</italic>. (Southern Literary Studies.) Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1973. Pp. xxiv, 332. $12.95

Richard Beale Davis. Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608–1840. (Southern Literary Studies.) Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1973. Pp. xxiv, 332. $12.95 Get access Davis Richard Beale. Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608–1840. (Southern Literary Studies.) Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1973. Pp. xxiv, 332. $12.95. Robert E. Spiller Robert E. Spiller University of Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 80, Issue 3, June 1975, Page 711, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/80.3.711 Published: 01 June 1975

Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608-1840

Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608-1840

Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608-1840

Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608-1840

Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608-1840.

Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608-1840.

Ethnocentricity or Racism: Some Thoughts on the Nature of Early Indian-White Relations

Although it is true that in recent years much has been done to expand and clarify the history of Indian-white relations, it is also true that much remains to be done. By far the greater part of the work completed to date deals with relations in the late colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods.' This is of course important work, but if a total picture, in so far as is possible, is the goal of history, then the period before the mid-seventeenth century must also have something to contribute. It is precisely because this period is often dismissed with little more than a nod of acquaintance that there appears to be some conflict or, at least, disagreement among the various interpreters of the activities of that time. It is my contention that a closer look at this early period in Indian-white relations, taking into account recent research in other disciplines, can do much toward resolving apparent disagreements in interpretation. Before taking this closer look though, it is necessary to see exactly where some of the disagreement among scholars lies, particularly in some of the writings of Wilcomb Washburn and Nancy Lurie, whose work in this area is deservedly well known. The early Virginia settlers, among others, writes Washburn, reported that in the first contacts with the Indians, the latter demonstrated an impressive hospitality toward the new-comers. Indeed, in many of the early chronicles, there are frequent mentions of the warmth of the receptions given the first colonists.2 This evidence has led Washburn to characterize this early period as one in which the hospitable noble savage gave and gave way until he was driven to a point beyond which lay only violent reaction.3 Nancy Lurie, on the other hand, writes that as early as 1907, James Mooney made the ob-

Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608–1840

Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608–1840

Prostitution and virtue in nevada

Some of the most direct, vicious and persistent attacks by one class of American women against another occurred in the guise of crusades aimed at punishment and abolition of prostitution. Respectable women's antagonism against shady ladies was particularly visible in late nineteenth-century frontier boom towns, where prostitutes often outnumbered married women. Prostitutes were the first female settlers in many such towns, and the arrival of upright women produced many tensions and overt conflicts, some of which led to passage of laws limiting and regulating prostitution. Between 1860 and 1875, Virginia City, Nevada, the great Comstock boom town, grew from a crude shanty town of 2,500 to a relatively sophisticated city of 25,000, making it imperative that a system of social control develop in a short time. The whole pattern of legal development from informal social control, to semi-formal vigilante rule, to formal law making and enforcement occurred in less than a decade, reflecting the arrival of powerful new social groups bringing new definitions of deviance. Rapid changes in Virginia City's demographic composition and economic organization affected the community's ethos and its labeling of behavior. The arrival of relatively large numbers of upright matrons brought the iron Victorian distinctions between good and bad women into focus, where they previously had been blurred because of the absence of females other than prostitutes. As Virginia City developed a differentiated status structure and imported culture from established cities, the hard-working, tenacious frontier woman faded as a social ideal, to be replaced by the delicate, passive lady. Ladies seldom labored outside the home, and women who did often had their moral standards both questioned and assaulted. Thus the classifications of women as either good or bad were strongly (though not entirely) class related. In this sense, the Virginia City campaigns against prostitution were female class wars, and laws resulting from them affected working men's prostitutes who lived in cribs and wretched houses rather than the mistresses of rich or middle-class men. The presence of this large, visible group of poor women thought to be irrevocably tainted served as both impetus and weapon for the upperand middle-class woman's fight to sustain her own precarious social and economic position at the expense of her less fortunate sisters. Information on prostitution in early Virginia City is somewhat sketchy--few prostitutes left the letters or diaries commonly providing information about respectable women of the era. Instead, painted women's lives must be pieced together, from various sources such as histories of the period, personal documents, city council minutes and even coroner's reports. A random sample of 30 Virginia City Territorial Enterprises published between 1860 and 1875 proved helpful in this respect, as did census records listing sporting women in categories such as housekeepers, courtesans, hurdy girls, prostitutes, and prostitutes of the lowest order. In order to understand the roots of this conflict between matrons and prostitutes, it is essential to understand Victorian definitions of female sexuality which constrained in different ways the lives of all women of the period.

The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Early Virginia

The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Early Virginia

The Pure Theory of Government Finance: A Suggested Approach

The Pure Theory of Government Finance: A Suggested Approach

Indian Policy in Early Virginia

No one who takes the trouble to go through the basic records of the early colonies can fail to recognize that the problem of Indian relations loomed much larger in the life of our colonial forebears than the space allotted to the subject modern writers would suggest. At the very outset, projectors of American settlement were confronted with the same question of right and title that has challenged more modern imperialists. first objection is, declared the Rev. Robert Gray in a sermon of 1609 blessing the new Virginia project, by what right or warrant we can enter into the land of these Savages, take away their rightfull inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their places, being unwronged or unprovoked them.' The question, of course, had to be answered, and no answer could have met the test without a more or less definite statement of the principles which were to guide English settlers in their relations with the native inhabitants. Some statement of policy was in the very nature of the situation required. And in the absence of a full discussion of the many-sided and highly complex problem of Indian relations, there may be some point in offering a running account of the deviating course of Indian policy in early Virginia from this point of origin to the early years of the Restoration era. The answer to the question posed Gray was not only unoriginal with the English, but has continued to our day to serve successive movements of European overseas expansion. The frequent use in its earlier forms of Biblical citations, in which the Old Testament proved an especially helpful aid, should not be allowed to becloud the issues or taken to mean that the men of this day were either more or less hypocrital than have been their modern successors. Sir George Peckham's discussion in 1583 and that of William Strachey, secretary of the Virginia colony an appointment of 1609, are particularly full and enlightening.2