education, young, handsome, and well recommended. A wife in the first lot sold gen erally for one hundred pounds of tobacco, but as the value of the new article became known in the market, the price rose, and a wife would bring a hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco. A debt for a wife was of higher dignity than other debts, and to be paid first. As an additional inducement to marriage, married men were generally preferred in the selection of officers for the colony. Domestic ties were forined, habits of thrift ensued, comforts were increased, and happiness diffused; the tide of emigration swelled: within three years fifty patents for land were granted, and three thousand five hundred persons found their way to Virginia.

In the month of August of this year an event occurred which stamped its impress 1620. upon the constitution of Virginia, and indeed of the whole southern portion of America so deeply, that it will be difficult to erase it save by the destruction of society. This was the introduction of twenty African slaves by a Dutch vessel, which availed itself of the freedom of commerce, which had been released from the shackles of the company's monopoly in the early part of this year, to rivet forever the bonds of slavery upon a portion of their fellow-creatures and their descendants. The indented and covenanted servants which had been long known in Virginia, and whose condition was little better than that of slavery, was a small evil and easily removed, because they were of the same color and country with their masters; when they were emancipated they leaped at once from their shackles to the full dignity of freedom. No one scorned to associate with them, and no one spurned their alliance; if honorable and worthy in other respects, they were equal to their masters, and might even rise to distinction. But not so the poor African. Nature has fixed upon him a stamp which cannot be erased or forgotten, the badge of his bondage is borne with him, when his fetters have crumbled to the dust.

The overbearing disposition of King James created a powerful popular party in England, which being unable to establish a liberal government at home, was determined to secure for free principles a safe asylum in the colonies. The accomplishment of this determination was accelerated by the disposition of the king to intermeddle with this very subject. He was exceedingly jealous of the company, in which the patriot party prevailed, and suspicious of the liberal principles discussed in its meetings with uncontrolled freedom: he feared it as the school of debate, and nursery of parliamentary leaders. Upon the resignation of Sir Edwin Sandys of his office as treasurer, the king determined to try the extent May 17, 1620. of his influence in the election of a successor to this first office in the company. He accordingly sent in a nomination of four individuals, to one of whom he desired the office to be given; but he proved unsuccessful in his attempt at dictation, and none of his nominees were elected, but the choice fell upon the Earl of Southampton.

The company having thus vindicated its own privileges, proceeded next to guaranty freedom to the colonists, by a constitution remarkably liberal for the time and circumstances. This charter of freedom, the principles of which the Virginians never could be brought subsequently to relinquish, has been preserved to posterity in "Summary of the ordinance and constitution of the treasurer, council and company in England, for a council of state, and another council to be called the General Assembly in Virginia, contained in a commission to Sir Francis Wyatt (the first governor under that ordinance and constitution) and his council," dated July 24, 1621.

The council of state was to be chosen by the treasurer, council

and company in England, with the power of removal at pleasure; their duty was to advise and assist the governor, and to constitute a portion of the General Assembly. This General Assembly was to be called by the governor once a year, and not oftener, unless on very extraordinary and important occasions; it was to consist, in addition to the council of state, of two burgesses, out of every town, hundred, or other particular plantation, to be respectively chosen by the inhabitants; in which council all matters were to be decided, determined, and ordered, by the greater part of the voices then present, reserving to the governor always a negative voice." And this General Assembly was to have full power, to treat, consult, and conclude, as well of all emergent occasions concerning the public weal of the said colony, and every part thereof, as also to make, ordain, and enact such general laws and orders, for the behoof of said colony, and the good government thereof, as from time to time might seem necessary."

The General Assembly and council of state were required to imitate and follow the policy of the form of government, laws, customs, and manner of trial, and of the administration of justice, used in the realm of England, as near as might be, as the company itself was required to do, by its charter. No law or ordinance was to continue in force or validity unless it was solemnly ratified in a general quarterly court of the company, and returned under seal; and it was promised that as soon as the government of the colony should once have been well framed and settled, that no orders of court should afterwards bind the colony, unless they were ratified in the same manner by the General Assembly.

When Sir Francis arrived, he found that negligence and security among the colonists, which is the inevitable consequence of a long peace. Old Powhatan had died in 1618, honored by the esteem and respect of all who knew him-his own people holding in grateful remembrance his prowess and policy in youth, and his mildness in age-and his English friends and brethren admiring his firm support of his dignity, his paternal affection, his mild simplicity, and his native intelligence. He was succeeded in his power by Opechancanough, his younger brother, who was cunning, treacherous, revengeful, and cruel. He renewed the former treaties, with every assurance of good faith, and wore the mask of peace and friendship so successfully as completely to lull the whites to security. But this crafty prince had always viewed with peculiar jealousy and hate the progress of the colony. He had given much trouble, and engaged in frequent hostilities, while he was king of Pamunkee, and it was not to be supposed that he would patiently submit to the continued and rapid encroachments of the whites upon his lands, to the entire extermination or banishment of his people, now that he possessed the empire of his brother. But to meet them in the field was impossible, the disparity in arms was too great, and the numbers in fighting men now equal; the attempt would be madness and desperation, and lead to that extermination of his race which he wished to avoid. His only resource was to strike some great and sudden blow which should annihilate the power of the colony at once. He had applied to a king who resided on the Eastern Shore, to purchase a subtle poison which grew only in his dominions, but this king being on good terms with the whites, and wishing to enjoy their trade, refused to gratify him. His next resource was in a general massacre, to take effect upon all of the scattered plantations on the same day. The situation of the whites favored this design; they not only placed confidence in the words of the savages, which had now been so long faithfully kept, but in their weakness and cowardice. They had extended their plantations over a space of one hundred and forty miles, on both sides of James River, and made some settlements in the neighborhood of the Potomac; in short, wherever a rich spot invited to the cultivation of tobacco, there were they established, and an absence of neighbors was preferred. The planters were careless with their arms,

never using their swords, and their fire-arms only for game. The old law making it criminal to teach a savage the use of arms was forgotten, and they were fowlers and hunters for many of the planters, by which means they became well acquainted with the use of arms and the places in which they were kept. One great object with the settlers, and with the company, in whose instructions we find it perpetually enjoined, had been the conversion of the Indians to the Christian religion. To promote this pious object, they had always been received in the most friendly manner; they became market people to the planters, and they were fed at their tables, and lodged in their bedchambers as friends and brothers.

Opechancanough had renewed the treaty with Governor Wyatt, and took every other means in his power to avoid suspicion. He told a messenger, about the middle of March, that the sky should fall ere he would violate the treaty of peace; only two days before the fatal 22d, the English were guided in safety and kindness through the forest by the unsuspected Indians; and a Mr. Browne, who had been sent to live among them to learn their language, was sent safely to his friends ;-nay, so well was the dread secret kept, that the English boats were borrowed to transport the Indians over the river to consult on the "devilish murder that ensued;" and even on the day itself, as well as on the evening before, they came as usual unarmed into the settlements with deer, turkeys, fish, fruits, and other provisions to sell, and in some places sat down to breakfast with the English. The concert and secrecy of this great plot is the more astonishing, when we reflect that the savages were not living together as one nation, and did not have for most purposes unity of action, but were dispersed in little hamlets containing from thirty to two hundred in a company; "yet they all had warning given them one from another in all their habitations, March 22, 1622, though far asunder, to meet at the day and hour appointed for the destruction of the English at their several plantations; some directed to one place, some to another, all to be done at the time appointed, which they did accordingly some entering their houses under color of trading, so took their advantage; others drawing them abroad under fair pretences, and the rest suddenly falling upon those that were at their labors." They spared no age, sex, or condition, and were so sudden in their indiscriminate slaughter that few could discern the blow or weapon which brought them to destruction. Their familiarity with the whites led them with fatal precision to the points at which they were certain to be found, and that "fatal morning fell under the bloody and barbarous hands of that perfidious and inhuman people, three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children, principally by their own weapons." Not content with this destruction, they brutally defaced and mangled the dead bodies, as if they would perpetrate a new murder, and bore off the several portions in fiendish triumph. Those who had treated them with especial kindness, and conferred many benefits upon them, who confided so much in them that to the last moment they could not believe mischief was intended, fared no better than the rest. The ties of love and gratitude, the sacred rights of hospitality and reciprocal friendship, oaths, pledges, and promises, and

even the recent and solemn profession of fidelity to an ail-merciful and omnipotent God, were broken asunder or forgotten in obedience to the command of their chief, for the execution of a great but diabolical stroke of state policy. With one, and only one, of all who had been cherished by the whites, did gratitude for their kindness and fidelity to his new religion prevail over his allegiance to his king and affection for his people. A converted Indian who resided with a Mr. Pace, and who was treated by him as a son, revealed the plot to him in the night of the 21st. Pace immediately secured his house and rowed himself up to Jamestown, where he disclosed it to the governor, by which means that place and all the neighboring plantations, to which intelligence could be conveyed, was saved from destruction; for the cowardly Indians when they saw the whites upon their guard immediately retreated. Some other places were also preserved by the undaunted courage of the occupants, who never failed to beat off their assailants, if they were not slain before their suspicions were excited. By these means was Virginia preserved from total annihilation in a single hour, by this well-conceived, well-concealed, and well-executed plot of her weak and simple adversaries. The larger portion of the colony was saved: for a year after the massacre it contained two thousand five hundred persons; but the consternation produced by it, caused the adoption of a ruinous policy. Instead of marching at once boldly to meet the adversary, and driving him from the country, or reducing him to subjection by a bloody retaliation, the colonists were huddled together from their eighty plantations into eight, the college, manufactories, and other works of public utility were abandoned, and cultivation confined to a space almost too limited, merely for subsistence. These crowded quarters produced sickness, and some were so disheartened that they sailed for England.

In England this disastrous intelligence, so far from dispiriting the company, excited their sympathies to such a degree, that it aroused them to renewed exertion, and a more obstinate determination to secure, at all hazards, a country which had cost so much blood and treasure. Supplies were promptly dispatched; and even the king was moved to the generosity of giving some old rusty arms from the tower, which he never meant to use, and promising further assistance, which he never meant to render.

Serious discussions now took place in the courts of the company as to the course proper to be pursued with the Indians, and some advocated their entire subjection, in imitation of the example of the Spaniards,-which policy would surely have been more merciful than that war of extermination which was carried into effect, whether by deliberate design or a system of temporary expedients does not appear. Smith offered the company to protect all their planters from the James to the Potomac, with a permanent force of one hundred soldiers and thirty sailors, with one small bark, and means to build several shallops; and there is no doubt but that he would have accomplished it, by which means the planters could have employed themselves much more successfully in attending to their crops, than when they had to keep perpetual watch, and occasionally to take up arms to defend themselves or make an attack upon the enemy. Smith received for answer that the company was impoverished, but that he had leave to carry his proposal into effect, if he could find means in the colony and would give the company half the booty he should acquire: upon which answer he observes, that except some little corn, he would not give twenty pounds for all the booty to be made from the savages for 20 years. The colonists, although they could not be soon again lulled to their former security, speedily recovered from their recent panic, and on July of the same year sallied

forth with three hundred men to seize the corn and inflict other punishment on the Indians. But they suffered themselves to be deceived by false pretences until the corn was removed from their reach, so that they got but little; they succeeded, however, in burning many of their villages and destroying much of their property, by which they said they were likely to suffer much during the ensuing winter. We find that a law was passed on the following session, by the General Assembly, requiring that on the beginning of July next, the inhabitants of every corporation should fall upon the adjoining savages, as had been done the last year; and enacting that those who were hurt should be cured at the public charge, and such as were maimed should be maintained by the country, according to their quality. We find it also further enacted in 1630, "that the war begun upon the Indians be effectually followed, and that no peace be concluded with them; and that all expeditions undertaken against them should be prosecuted with diligence." This state of fierce warfare continued to rage with uninterrupted fury until a peace was concluded in 1632, under the administration of Gov. Harvey. In the course of this warfare the Indians were not treated with the same tenderness with which they had generally been before the massacre, but their habitations, cleared lands, and pleasant sites, when once taken possession of, were generally retained by the victors, and the vanquished forced to take refuge in the woods and marshes.

While these events were transpiring in the colony, an important change in the character of their government was about to 1623. take place in England. The company had been unsuccessful the fact could no longer be denied. They had transported more than nine thousand persons, at an expense exceeding a hundred thousand pounds; and yet, in nearly 18 years, there were only about two thousand persons in the colony, and its annual exports did not exceed twenty thousand pounds in value. The king took advantage of the present unfortunate state of affairs, to push his plans for the dissolution of the company. He carefully fomented the dissensions which arose, and encouraged the weaker party, which readily sought the aid of his powerful arm. He had long disliked the democratic freedom of their discussions, and had of late become envious of their little profits on the trade of the colonists, which he felt every disposition to divert into his own coffers; and he determined to make good use of the present state of despondency in most of the company, and unpopularity with the public, to effect his designs. Wishing, however, to gain his end by stealth, and secret influence with their officers, rather than by open vio1623. lence, he again tried his strength in the nomination of four individuals from whom the company were to choose their treasurer. But he was again signally defeated, and the Earl of Southampton re-elected by a large majority, the king's candidates receiving only eight votes in seventy.

Failing in this, it was manifest that the company was not to be browbeaten into submission to his dictation, and he only considered how the charter of the company might be revoked, with the least violation to the laws of England. To effect this with plausible decency some allegation of improper conduct was to be made, and some proof ferreted out. The first of these objects was effected by two long petitions by members of the royal faction in the company, setting forth at full length every evil which had accrued to the colony, from its earliest establishment to that hour, and charging all upon the mismanagement of the company. For many of these charges there was too much truth, and the faults of