American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia

This chapter examines how the Virginians settled into their new colony. Tobacco planters, who never reduced servants to slavery or imported enslaved Africans during the boom, decided to pursue “liberty and security that went with ‘the rights of Englishmen’” and create a community (133).

As the price of tobacco fell, the assembly tried to “legislate the boom back into existence” (134) by introducing new local government, the county. Counties, led by a commander, had their own criminal and civil authority. But the king wanted the colony to diversify the economy, so the assembly instituted a per-person tobacco production limit.

Still, the population increased, reaching 25,000 by 1660, up from 1,300 in 1625. Pasture farming became profitable, and cattle and swine were introduced. Other industries also emerged, but tobacco remained “too lucrative” to compete with other ventures (141).

By the 1650s, Virginians “began to look upon their raw new land as a home” (143). Virginia’s big farmers had more sway in the colony than the king and increased the House of Burgesses’s power by refusing the governor the right to levy taxes without their consent. Unlike the House of Commons in England, the House of Burgesses was a truly popular institution, with “no legal restrictions on voting in Virginia until 1670” (145).