Comic History of the United States | Page 7

gibes and bon-mots made at that sad time?
They are gone.
All over that little republic, so begun in sorrow and travail, there came in after-years the dimples and the smiles of the prosperous child who would one day rise in the lap of the mother-country, and, asserting its rights by means of Patrick O'Fallen Henry and others, place a large and disagreeable fire-cracker under the nose of royalty, that, busting the awful stillness, should jar the empires of earth, and blow the unblown noses of future kings and princes. (This is taken bodily from a speech made by me July 4, 1777, when I was young.--THE AUTHOR.)
Pocahontas was married in 1613. She was baptized the day before. Whoever thought of that was a bright and thoughtful thinker. She stood the wear and tear of civilization for three years, and then died, leaving an infant son, who has since grown up.
The colony now prospered. All freemen had the right to vote. Religious toleration was enjoyed first-rate, and, there being no negro slavery, Virginia bade fair to be the republic of the continent. But in 1619 the captain of a Dutch trading-vessel sold to the colonists twenty negroes. The negroes were mostly married people, and in some instances children were born to them. This peculiarity still shows itself among the negroes, and now all over the South one hardly crosses a county without seeing a negro or a person with negro blood in his or her veins.
[Illustration: NEGROES STILL HAVE FAMILIES.]
After the death of Powhatan, the friend of the English, an organized attempt was made by the Indians to exterminate the white people and charge more for water frontage the next time any colonists came.
March 22, 1622, was the day set, and many of the Indians were eating at the tables of those they had sworn to kill. It was a solemn moment. The surprise was to take place between the cold beans and the chili sauce.
But a converted Indian told quite a number, and as the cold beans were passed, the effect of some arsenic that had been eaten with the slim-neck clams began to be seen, and before the beans had gone half-way round the board the children of the forest were seen to excuse themselves, and thus avoid dying in the house.
[Illustration: PREPARING THE FEAST.]
Yet there were over three hundred and fifty white people massacred, and there followed another, reducing the colonists from four thousand to two thousand five hundred, then a massacre of five hundred, and so on, a sickening record of death and horror, even worse, before a great nation could get a foothold in this wild and savage land; even a toe-hold, as I may say, in the sands of time.
July 30, 1619, the first sprout of Freedom poked its head from the soil of Jamestown when Governor Yeardley stated that the colony "should have a handle in governing itself." He then called at Jamestown the first legislative body ever assembled in America; most of the members whereof boarded at the Planters' House during the session. (For sample of legislator see picture.) This body could pass laws, but they must be ratified by the company in England. The orders from London were not binding unless ratified by this Colonial Assembly.
This was a mutual arrangement reminding one of the fearful yet mutual apprehension spoken of by the poet when he says,--
"Jim Darling didn't know but his father was dead, And his father didn't know but Jim Darling was dead."
The colony now began to prosper; men held their lands in severalty, and taxes were low. The railroad had not then brought in new styles in clothing and made people unhappy by creating jealousy.
Settlements joined each other along the James for one hundred and forty miles, and the colonists first demonstrated how easily they could get along without the New York papers.
Tobacco began to be a very valuable crop, and at one time even the streets were used for its cultivation. Tobacco now proceeded to become a curse to the civilized world.
In 1624, King James, fearing that the infant colony would go Democratic, appointed a rump governor.
The oppression of the English parliament now began to be felt. The colonists were obliged to ship their products to England and to use only English vessels. The Assembly, largely royalists, refused to go out when their terms of office expired, paid themselves at the rate of about thirty-six dollars per day as money is now, and, in fact, acted like members of the Legislature generally.
[Illustration: JAMESTOWN LEGISLATOR.]
In 1676, one hundred years before the Colonies declared themselves free and independent, a rebellion, under the management of a bright young attorney named Bacon, visited Jamestown and burned the American metropolis, after which Governor Berkeley was driven out. Bacon died just as his rebellion was beginning