Ok all you history buffs! I'm sure it's painful to read a rusty English teacher's take on American history. If you want, you can send me a reading of Don Quixote holding your nose. It would serve me right. Sorry to make light of this very serious subject but... it gets less and less funny as we go. Seriously.
On to Jamestown. Wow... what a holy mess that almost turned out to be! To get people and explorers to forget all the "you're going to die a firey death on the open seas.." or "pirates will rip your tongue out" kind of stuff, investors pooled their resources in a joint stock company. Investors were giddy with the thoughts of accumulating untold wealth by financing these ventures. This was one of the first examples of capitalism. Labor forces were pretty scarce, so respect for immigrants was much better than it was in Europe. And because of the "supply and demand" of laborers, immigrants had a much better chance of owning property, which was quickly tied to political and voting rights. To entice immigration, the Virginia Company offered 100 acres of land which was unheard of in England. They could come to America and gain property, respect, and freedom from royal retribution. Religious toleration would soon follow and bingo! You've got yoursef a pretty nice start.
Where were we? Oh yea... Jamestown. Those elitist kings! They crack me up. So narcissistic. I'm SO glad we don't have any of those nut jobs in our government! Anywho....King James set up a charter for the Virginia Company, the London Company, and the Plymouth Company to settle various colonies; one being Jamestown, Virginia. They traveled fifty miles up the James River to hide from the Spanish vessels, but it was a malarial swamp! The forest was very dense and hard to clear. There were few buildings resembling a fort but little else. The immigrants on board were aristocrats, gentlemen, and distinguished hootzy tootzies. Most of these guys had never planted a seed, dug a hole, pruned a bush or worked a day in their life. (Hmmm... ok I take it back, we do have these guys in our government....) They were appalled that they were expected to work the land and stock the fort. So guess what happened? They starved. Hellooooooo!! Local Indians such as the Monacan and Chickahominy, traded with them but that was not enough. They tried to "hire" the Indians to work for them, but the Indians would just run away. I love that, for some reason. You go Indians! Captain John Smith, the commander of the company finally had to rule in military style. His edict was "He who will not work, will not eat." I realize that is hard to understand that someone would be so heartless as to force one to feed oneself, but it's true. This edict proved so ruthless, that only 15% of the people died that year as opposed to 60% the previous year. Out of the 600 initial immigrants, only 60 remained. Disease also took its toll on the colonists of Jamestown. Poor nutrition and malaria decimated the settlement. Just when it looked like all was lost, the remaining settlers were miraculously saved when ships full of supplies and provisions arrived.
Indentured servants were immigrants who had their passage paid through a joint stock company. In return, the immigrant was obligated to work off his debt for seven years. Sounds fair, huh? But... sometimes the payee would change his mind and require more time from the servant. For instance, remember how labor was scarce? So... the guy might just tack on a few years to your debt. What could you do about it? Zippo. You're stuck. Now the really bad part about this is that it eventually turned to slavery; just plain claiming that you were his property forever. A big reason for this was John Rolfe who learned how to harvest tobacco. Boy, did this take off? I guess they didn't have a surgeon general to warn them about the effects of tobacco.... because his effects were huge wads of money! Soon tobacco plantations dotted the east coast from Virginia to South Carolina to Florida. Land owners desperately needed cheap labor. Hence, slavery. This is a horrible part of our heritage. The part you probably never hear is that whites and blacks traded whites and blacks. Raced-based slavery did not take hold until 1619.
It's 11:30 p.m. and I have drool on my jammies. Nighty night!
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