Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/213

VIRGINIA. collapse of the Commonwealth, the loyal Assembly elected Berkeley Governor before Charles II. was crowned. Charles encouraged the servant and slave traffic, burdened the colony with navigation acts (1663-72), and granted it in part to Court favorites and wholly in 1673 for thirty-one years to Lords Arlington and Culpeper. These acts, restriction of the suffrage to freeholders, and Berkeley's refusal to protect the frontier from Indians precipitated a popular rebellion. (q.v.) asked for a commission to go against the savages in 1676, and when it was refused, made a successful campaign without authority. Berkeley evasively answered a second popular demand for Bacon's commission, and upon his advance against the Indians proclaimed him and his forces rebels. A contest for the possession of Jamestown ensued. Bacon won, established a government, burned Jamestown to defeat Berkeley, and, preparing to pursue him to Accomac, suddenly died from previous hardships. Rumors of his poisoning are discredited. Berkeley regained power, and took severe measures against his opponents, of whom 23 were executed, eliciting from Charles II. the remark, “That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the murder of my father.”

After this war on Berkeley and the Crown, and reconstruction by English commissioners, royal Governors (Jeffreys, Chicheley, and Culpeper) by incompetence or rapacity increased popular dissatisfaction. In 1677 a lasting Indian peace was secured, and in 1692 William and Mary College, the second oldest college in America, was chartered. A striking exception among royal Governors was Alexander Spotswood (1710-22). He led the ‘Knights of the Golden Horseshoe’ over the Blue Ridge in 1716, established iron manufactures, aided the Carolina colonists in their struggle with the Tuscarora Indians, and sent out an expedition which killed the notorious pirate John Teach (‘Blackbeard’) and captured his men. The first newspaper in the colony (the Virginia Gazette) was established in 1736, and Postmaster-General Spotswood organized a postal system in 1738. The population had steadily increased, and by 1700 was fully 70,000, chiefly of English descent. In 1699 the Huguenot immigration was large, and under Queen Anne a number of German Palatines came over. After 1732 large numbers of sturdy Scotch-Irish and Germans from Pennsylvania filled the Valley and Piedmont Virginia with dissenters, liberty-loving freehold farmers, restive under British oppression. Colonel William Byrd's project (1733) for founding Richmond and Petersburg instances expanding English settlement. The great article of export from the colony was tobacco, the returns from its sale enabling the wealthier planters to surround themselves with luxuries of every kind and the refinements of European civilization.

The charter of 1609 had fixed the limits of the colony at 200 miles north and 200 miles south of Point Comfort and west and northwest from sea to sea. Under this vague description Virginia claimed that the northwest line was the upper one, and hence her territory increased as it went westward. Maryland and Pennsylvania had included territory that she claimed, but her title

to the northwest was undisputed until French colonization expanded. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century English occupation of the territory began. The Ohio Company (chiefly Marylanders and Virginians) was formed in 1749, for the exploration of the territory which the French also claimed by Marquette's discovery. (See .) George Washington was sent by Governor Dinwiddle in 1753 to ask the removal of the French forts, but to no purpose. The (q.v.) followed. The Virginians saved Braddock's army from utter annihilation, and the pioneers organized by Washington held the Virginia frontier against the Indians and the French. Settlements were constantly made beyond the Alleghanies in spite of the King's proclamation in 1763. From 1750 to 1769 Walker, Gist, and Boone explored here. Kentucky was made a separate county of Virginia through the influence of George Rogers Clark in 1776.

On the announcement of the policy of Parliamentary taxation of America Virginia became a leader in resistance. The colonists' claim of the rights of Englishmen and full representation, and pride in the colony's relative position, made her taxation without representation impossible. (q.v.) and the jury in the ‘Parsons' Cause’ defied the King. Henry's famous speech in opposition to the Stamp Act, delivered (1765) in the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg, was quoted everywhere, and three of his five resolutions were adopted denying Parliament's right to tax. They were heralded as the first important protest against this tax. “Virginia gave the signal to the continent,” said General Gage. The Burgesses memorialized King and Parliament against the tax act of 1767, and in 1769 passed resolutions against this Parliamentary ‘tyranny’ and transportation of offenders to England for trial. They proposed colonial correspondence, and circulated an invitation for colonial concurrence. Dissolved by Governor Botetourt, they met in revolutionary convention at the Raleigh Tavern and signed and circulated Mason's nonimportation agreement. After the rude and unscrupulous Lord Dunmore succeeded Botetourt, the Assembly in 1773 appointed a standing legislative Committee of Correspondence (Jefferson, Lee, Carr, and others) for colonial concert. When the news of the Boston Port Bill arrived the Assembly passed sympathetic resolutions and was promptly dissolved (1774) by Dunmore. Its members met at the Raleigh Tavern, and proposed a Virginia convention for August and a general congress of the colonies. Committees of safety were organized and forces raised in every county. Dunmore attempted disarmament by seizing the magazine and removing the gunpowder, but was driven by a mob (June, 1775) to take refuge on shipboard. George Washington was elected commander-in-chief of the Continental armies, Patrick Henry of the Virginia forces, and in the colony a remarkable group of leaders was developed, Jefferson, Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, Edmund Pendleton, and others, who pushed Virginia toward independence. Colonel Woodford defeated the British at Great Bridge, and Dunmore burned Norfolk, but was driven from Virginia by Andrew Lewis (1776). A State convention met in May, 1776, and passed