The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Part 4: Transplanters: The Virginians

Chapter 17:  English gentlemen, American style

• effort to transplant English institutions
• model of 17th and 19th century rural England
• American difference (until 1700)
• better opportunity to rise to ranks of gentry
• fluidity of social classes
• freezing of Virginia society
• suffrage became substantially what the qualifications were in England
• by 1680, Negro slaves were being imported in large numbers
• replaced white indentured servants
• made large plantations profitable
• small planter being squeezed out
• by early 1700s, Virginia had become merely a port of entry for poorer white immigrants
• development of a Virginian aristocracy
• best families intermarried
•  not more than 100 families controlled the wealth and government of colony
• successful planter worked long hours and in close supervision, while his wife took on duties she would have never thought to do in England

Chapter 18.  From country squire to planter capitalist

• keeping alive the spirit of business agriculture
• tobacco agriculture
• small percentage of land sued for tobacco
• landholdings constantly increasing and shifting location
• lack of large towns
• every large planter had his own dock
• system of interrelationships due to topography of area
• deep, navigable rivers (fingers of bay)
• network of smaller rivers
• no commercial capital, such as Boston or Philadelphia
• ease of river transportation provincialized thinking of many planters
• until late 18th century, commercial life remained diffused among the larger planters
• tobacco as a cash crop
• plantation life was forerunner of modern company town
• planters members of a small, privileged class
• social gulf between gentlemen planters and everyone else (1750 peak)
• small plantation owners practically devastated by competition
• "Virginia Dynasty"

Chapter 19:  Government by gentry

• colony took its politics seriously
• power carried with it a duty to govern
• while Virginia had a restrictive suffrage, it also had a law of compulsory voting
• House of Burgesses
• list of leading planters
• increased in power during colonial years until it dominated governor and council
• political workship of a ruling aristocracy
• became an amazingly harmonious and single-minded body
• required all members to be present at first session
•  Robinson affair
• John Robinson
• speaker of the House of Burgesses
• treasurer of colony
• hardly a Virginia family of prominence had not been helped through Robinson's generosity with public funds
• public treasury had become a community chest for the ruling clique
• his career reveals a community where power belonged to a privileged few
• Election of burgesses
• freeholders made their choices from among the gentry
• little campaign oratory or debate of "issues"
• only solicitation of votes acceptable was gastronomic
• candidates expected to be present at voting place
• choices announced publicly, as in a box score
• candidate always knew where he stood
• coudl round up last-minute supporters if need be

Chapter 20:  A republic of neighbors

•  independence of burgesses
• once elected, seldom looked for approval of voters
• security of social position led to a forum of vigorous deliberation and discussion
• voters' delicate balance
• had power to prevent irresponsibility of representatives
• could not cure their servility
• compared to a modern state legislature, House of Burgesses was a meeting of the gods on Olympus
• persuasive argument was of first importance
• demagoguery was useless
• an exclusive club where gentlemen seriously discussed public problems
• land
• foundation of all the governing families and fortunes
• power laid in hand of Burgesses
• pathway to power ("inside track")
• uncharted wilderness tracts
• corridors of government buildings in Williamsburg
•  weaknesses of Virginia's representative government in golden age
• realism
• practicality
• too easy equivalence of economic and political power
• rich grew richer, poor whites found it impossible to reach second rung of ladder, and Negroes had no chance to rise above servitude
• since the people seemed to acquiesce (giving no overt signs of discontent), the burgesses had no reason to think ill of their way of life
• Virginians admired the ideal of the English gentleman and followed an unswerving course of Moderation

Chapter 21.  "Practical Godliness":  An Episcopal Church

• Virginia (religious) differences from other American colonies
• not founded by religious refugees
• religion of early colony was not utopian or purified
• the going religion of England was to be transplanted and became the religion of Virginia
• fabric of Virginia society held together by ancient and durable thread of religion
• like Puritanism in Massachusetts, Anglicanism in Virginia became more practical and compromising than it was in England
• institutional changes from Church of England to Church of Virginia (Episcopal)
• church of bishops vs. no bishops
• church of hierarchy vs. a church of independence and self-government
• sole tie across ocean was a vaguely empowered official called a commissary
• hazards and expense of travel (to educate clergy in England) produced an American church quite different from the English one they had set out to imitate
• fixed character of church of Virginia (mid-18th century)
• group of independent parishes
• governed in secular matters by House of Burgesses
• no central authority in doctrinal matters
• responsibilities of leading lay members
• supervision of clergy
• definition of religious practices
• absence of pluralism and absenteeism
• each parish chose its own minister and kept him for as long as they wished, usually on a year-to-year contract basis
• in colonial Virginia, even the lowly clergy had the status of gentleman
• Vestry
• elected body of church
• responsible for temporal matters
• not over 12 to each parish
• elected by parishioners, supposedly
• no regular elections held
• allowed to stay in office until death or resignation
• vestrymen then chose successors
• a self-perpetuating power the planters were reluctant to give up
• duties
• levied taxes
• assessed property
• defined boundaries of landed property
• called attention to cases of extreme poverty
• provide for poor by boarding them at public expense in homes of willing citizens
• Church and civic duties were one

Chapter 22.  "Practical Godliness":  Toleration without a Theory

•   The subtle effect of the vast American spaces
• accomplished in Virginia what required decades of theological controversy in England
• purification of the church
• atmosphere of hierarchy
• excessive reliance on ritual
• Virginians were not passionate about religious dogma since they knew nothing about it
• Virginians had founded their community not through religious fanaticism, but as admirers of an England they wanted to preserve in their new surroundings
• by mid 18th century, dissenting sects (Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers) had acquired a recognized place
• Virginians looked on their church as a loose practical affiliation of those whose Christianity, in different and inarticulate ways, helped them become good Englishmen and decent Virginians
• No one knew for sure what one had to believe to be a church member in good standing
• The weakness of intellectual life helped save colony from theological divisions
• College of William and Mary
• founded in 1693
• "for the breeding of good ministers"
• became a bulwark of the moderate, catholic, and secular culture which was the life of Virginia in the 18th century
• Diversity in their own community had taught Virginians not to be horrified at diversity in religious beliefs

Chapter 23.  Citizens of Virginia

•  expression of strength of traditionalism (loyalty to the working ways on ancient England)
• American revolution
• defense of rights of the Englishmen
• strength of localism (loyalty to habits of their parish and county and to their friends and neighbors)
• autonomy of the parish
• federal spirit
• constitution
• devotion to states' rights
• strength as transplanters
• willingness to transform as they transplanted
• flavoring the distant past with the local present
• Williamsburg
• political center
• never became a metropolis
• lack of cities left parish meetinghouses, county courthouses, and rural residences as natural focus of social gatherings and community interests
•  Cohabitation Act of 1680
•  sought to create towns through legislative action
• remained a plan on paper
• A man entered politics in Virginia because he was involved personally in every aspect of life in his particular place and time and wanted a voice in it
• Virginia planters allowed themselves to be dominated by tobacco crop
• Revolutionary War
• suicide of Virginia aristocracy
• effects
• turmoil of war
• destruction wrought by British troops
• disestablishment of commerce
• decline of tobacco culture
• resulted in decline of aristocracy and its institutions
• When U.S. ceased to be a greater Virginia, the Virginians ceased to govern the U.S.
• Localism became sectionalism, each man's special interest to his own pettiness

Book review
What Makes Us Tick, by Wesley Frank Craven.  (The New York Times, 11/9/1958)

Mr. Boorstin writes in protest against the influence of what may be described perhaps as the European school of American historians -- those who place the emphasis on our European origins and the continuing importance of our identification with the European community. It is his belief, as he has argued elsewhere, "that American democracy is unique," that is possesses "a 'genius' all its own," and that its special character is attributable to the peculiar circumstances which governed the European settler's response to the extraordinary opportunities he found in America. It is also Mr. Boorstin's belief, as the present volume makes abundantly clear, that the American character of our society was very largely determined by the colonial experience which preceded the Revolution.

Related posts:
The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel Boorstin,  Part 1.  A City Upon a Hill:  The Puritans of Massachusetts.  (12/8/2014)
The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Part 2. The Inward Plantation: The Quakers of Pennsylvania.  (12/10/2014)
The Americans: The Colonial Experience. Part 3: Victims of Philanthropy: The Settlers of Georgia.  (12/13/2014)