University of Virginia Library

IV. PART IV

LOCAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS,
1763-1861

CHAPTER I

POPULATION, SLAVERY, EDUCATION AND
LITERATURE

Population. The census returns show a steady development
in the population of the State. In 1755 the population
was 295,672, of whom 120,156 were negroes, and in 1776, it
was 567,614, of whom 270,262 were negroes. In twenty years
the population nearly doubled. In this period there was an
immense importation of slaves and a steady flow of population
into the Shenandoah Valley, Western Virginia, and Kentucky,
which was then a part of Virginia. In 1790 the number of
people in this range of territory was 747,610; and in 1800 the
number was 880,200, an increase, despite the severance of
Kentucky. In the decades following the census showed: 1810,
974,622 of whom 392,518 were slaves and 20,154 free colored
persons; 1820, 1,065,379, of whom 425,153 were slaves and
36,889 free colored persons; 1830, 1,211,405, of whom 469,757
were slaves, and 47,348 free colored; 1840, 1,239,797, of whom
449,087 were slaves and 49,852 were free colored; 1850,
1,421,661, of whom 472,528 were slaves and 54,333 were free
colored; 1860, 1,596,318, of whom 548,907 were slaves and
58,042 were free colored.

This evidences a healthy increase, but not so great relatively
as many of the Northern States. This was due chiefly
to two causes: (1) Emigration to the South and West;
(2) Lack of immigration. These two factors were in their turn
determined by (1) the opening up of fresh and richer farm
lands in the South and West, attracting a people devoted to
agriculture; (2) the mode of cultivation, which, in the early
part of the period, impoverished the land in Eastern Virginia,

naturally thin and easily exhausted; (3) the sectional
laws which laid heavy burdens upon the Southern farmers,
causing thousands to leave for the West; (4) the existence
of a negro population, which produced a racial stratification
and drove off immigration. Slavery, though morally wrong,
was an organized system, and made the best of Southern
conditions, and never failed, when there was reasonably good
management, to bring profit to the farmer.

Despite all discouragement, the wealth of the Southern
States that went into secession was nearly proportionately as
great as that of the North in 1860. In that year the total
wealth of the eleven States that went into secession, excluding
the value of negroes, was $2,615,750,830, and the wealth of the
eighteen States that fought them was $6,621,699,797. The population
of the first group of States was about 8,600,000,
inclusive of negroes, and the population of the second group
was 18,854,046.

In this estimate none of the Western States created after
1860 is included, nor the States of Maryland, West Virginia,
Kentucky and Missouri, that helped both sides in the war that
followed.

Undoubtedly, the great factor in the numerical growth of
the North was European emigration, of which it had almost
the monopoly. In the factories the poor people coming from
Europe were exploited under conditions of hardship never
experienced by the negroes of the South, even in the days
before the American Revolution. That slavery had little to
do with any deficiencies of the South was proved by two
things. First, it was proved by the example of Edmund
Ruffin, who raised the value of his estate from $25,000 to
$200,000 by good farming and good management. (See his
Diary in the Library of Congress, 1855-1865.) In the same
way Germany, by organization, became materially and
otherwise, the strongest power in the world, though with
limited freedom in the subject. Second, in 1912, the census
shows that the same eleven Southern States had

$8,073,986,366, and the same eighteen Northern States had
$51,143,451,461. It follows that relatively the South was far
less rich in 1912 than in 1860. Ample time had elapsed for
recovery from war, and the figures do not show that the abolition
of slavery was a financial blessing to the South.

There were several high tides in this emigration from
Virginia that should be noticed. The first was the emigration
southward about 1756 to North Carolina,[1] by the side of which
all other factors in the settlement of that great State counted
very little. Another high tide occurred in the rush to Kentucky
and Ohio between 1783 and 1810.[2] Then followed the
emigration to Alabama about 1840, and the emigration to
California in 1849. I know of no figures showing the exact
extent of these shiftings of population in any case, but they
must have been very large.

Slavery. Virginia's attitude to slavery was more honorable
than that of any other State. Beverley Munford's
great work, "Virginia's Attitude to Slavery and Secession,"
affords a triumphant demonstration. In spite of the fact that
her wealth rested largely upon negro slavery; that three-fourths
of her people were pecuniarily interested, directly or
indirectly, in slaves,[3] and that slavery was the best means of
exploiting the lands, whenever there was any intelligent management;
Virginia had, from early days, manifested a repugnance
to the moral principle involved, which endured till the
abuse of the abolitionists arrested the feelings and converted
many persons, even in West Virginia, to the opposite opinion.

For a long time after their first introduction very few
slaves were imported. As late as the year 1715, there were
only 23,000 in a population of 95,000. In the sixty-one years,
however, immediately preceding the Revolution, they came in
ever increasing figures, till, in 1776, they numbered nearly half
as many as the white population.

As an evidence that the material status of slavery had
nothing to do with the moral status, Virginia, which had been
a very poor colony previous to 1715, became rich and wealthy
under this influx from Africa, because affording an abundance
of labor to the planters. There can be little doubt that comforts
of all kinds were more richly extended in Virginia than
in any of the colonies. Her imports and exports exceeded in
value that of all New England, and there was a leisure class
that, through the general cultivation of their minds, easily
took the lead in all American affairs.

Nevertheless, so great was the objection to the immorality
of slavery and the evil of introducing an alien race into the
colony, which never could be assimilated, that the Legislature
sought in every way possible to limit the trade in slaves.
They passed twenty-three acts having this object in view, but
most of these acts were disallowed by the authorities in
England. How to prevent them from protecting themselves
against the increase of the overwhelming evil was debated
by the King in council, and on the 10th of December, 1770,
he issued an instruction under his own hand commanding the
Governors in America upon pain of highest displeasure to
assent to no laws by which the importation of slaves should
be in any respect prohibited or obstructed. In protest, the
Virginia Assembly adopted a petition to the King in 1772
denouncing the importation of slaves as "a trade of great
inhumanity," as "retarding the settlement of the colonies
with more useful settlers," and "as dangerous to the very
existence of your Majesty's dominions."

When Thomas Jefferson came to write the Declaration of
Independence, it was the King's vetoes of the laws passed by

Virginia to suppress the slave trade that evoked the fiercest
arraignment in that historic document. Mr. Jefferson has left
on record that this portion of the Declaration was stricken
out in Congress before its formal presentation to the world,
by deference to the wishes of certain Southern and Northern
States. The biographers of Abraham Lincoln, Messrs. Nicolay
and Hay, declare in this connection: "Newport was yet a
great slave mart, and the commerce of New England drew
more advantages from the traffic than did the agriculture of
the South."

But the position of Virginia with respect to slavery at this
time was not left to Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia delegation
in Congress. As early as 1774 mass meetings in many
of the counties adopted resolutions denouncing slavery and
the slave trade. W. E. Dubois, the negro historian, declares,
"Virginia gave the slave trade a special prominence, and was
in reality the leading spirit to force her views on the Continental
Congress."

The Declaration of Rights, drawn by a Virginian, George
Mason, adopted on June 12, 1776, and the Declaration of
Independence, drawn by Thomas Jefferson, another Virginian,
adopted July 4, 1776, both declare that "among the
inalienable rights of man are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness," and slavery could not square with this great
canon. Henceforth, its existence in Virginia could only be
justified by the difficulties and dangers attending its abolition.

But the efforts of Virginia did not cease with the Declaration
of Independence. Virginia and other colonies had striven
to discourage the traffic in slaves by laying duties, but foremost
among the laws enacted by Virginia after the Declaration
of Independence was the celebrated Statute of 1778,
drawn by Thomas Jefferson, laying for the first time a penalty
upon any one importing slaves into the Commonwealth
by sea or land. Of this act Mr. Ballagh, in his "History of
Slavery in Virginia," says: "Virginia thus had the honor
of being the first political community in the civilized modern

world to prohibit the pernicious traffic." She antedated the
like action by Great Britain by thirty years.

Next in sequence of the great events linked with this subject
was the work of Virginia's statesmen in the preparation and
adoption of the ordinance for the government of the Northwest
territory. When, by the valor of her sons, Virginia had
won the land from the English and Indians, she on January
2, 1781, silenced the murmurings of her sister States, and
consummated the efforts for Union by formally relinquishing
this great domain for the common weal. The United States
did not accept the cession on the terms proposed, but stated
certain modified conditions, which the General Assembly
acquiesced in at its October session, 1783-84.

The day that Virginia's cession was accepted by the Continental
Congress, Mr. Jefferson reported an ordinance for its
government—the ordinance of 1784. It contained a clause
prohibiting slavery, not only in the five States created out of
the Northwest territory, but in the country south of them,
which was subsequently formed into the States of Kentucky,
Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. In its then form it did
not meet with the entire favor of Congress and failed to obtain
the votes of Mr. Jefferson's colleagues, Samuel Hardy and
Charles Fenton Mercer, and was rejected by the other Southern
States. After hanging in Congress for three years, the
ordinance was revised in another form embodying the best
part of the work of Jefferson. William Grayson, of Virginia,
the President of Congress, was the soul of the action taken,
and at his instance, Dame copied from Jefferson the prohibition
of involuntary servitude, as far as it applied to the Northwest
territory. The insertion of this clause was desired but
not even remotely contemplated by Dame, since of the Northern
States only Massachusetts was present.[4]

The South now went unanimously for the ordinance, and
the motives of the Southern States, with the exception of Virginia,
cannot be considered wholly disinterested. The Ohio

Company formed in Boston for the purchasing and colonizing
of a large tract of land in the Northwest stood knocking at the
doors of Congress, and the Southern States agreed to the
clause respecting slavery to prevent tobacco and indigo—the
products of negro labor—from being made on the Northwest
side of the Ohio.[5] The effect on the disposition of the North
towards the Mississippi was another influence operating upon
the South. In September, 1788, the old Congress passed resolutions
unanimously that "the free navigation of the Mississippi
was a clear and essential right of the United States."
Succeeding this, Grayson, who had been returned to the Virginia
Legislature in 1788, was one of a committee consisting of
Edward Carrington, James Monroe and Edmund Randolph,
besides himself, that successfully brought forward the bill by
which slavery was excluded from the empire north of the Ohio
River. As in passing this ordinance the State prevented her
own soldiers of the Revolution from carrying their slaves into
the territory reserved for their benefit between the Scioto and
Miami rivers, it is not an unreasonable assumption that
moral considerations weighed more with the State than the
economic and political considerations.

The supreme opportunity for suppressing the importation
of slaves, and thus hastening the day of emancipation, came
with the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The action of
the convention permitted the slave trade for twenty years and
was a bargain between New England and the far South. New
Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut consented to the
prolongation of the slave trade to please South Carolina and
Georgia, and in return, South Carolina and Georgia consented
to the clause empowering Congress to pass navigation acts
and otherwise regulate trade by a simple majority of votes.
This compromise was carried against the steady objection of
the Virginia delegates.

In the State convention which followed in 1788 the existence

of these clauses in the Federal Constitution was one of the
strongest objections taken against the ratification.

Despite Virginia's failure to secure the immediate suppression
of the foreign slave trade, her sons took the lead in
their efforts to restrict its growth, and at the earliest possible
moment, to drive the slave ships from the seas. In the first
Congress under the Constitution, April, 1789, Josiah Parker,
of Isle of Wight County, Virginia; sought to amend the tariff
bill under discussion by a clause levying an import tax of ten
dollars upon every slave brought into the country, and he was
a leading member of a committee which on March 23, 1790,
brought in a report recommending an act to forbid citizens
of the United States from engaging in the traffic with foreign
countries—a recommendation which was made into law by
Congress March 22, 1794.

The African slave trade had flourished so long under the
patronage and support of the leading States of Christendom
that, when the twenty years which the Constitution permitted
it, expired, it was found difficult to put an end to the traffic
by simple statutory enactment, but in the efforts to suppress
the evil, Virginians holding official places were most earnest
and energetic in their warfare against the trade. This was the
case with all the Virginia Presidents, Washington, Jefferson,
Madison, Monroe and Tyler. The luminous work of Jefferson
has already been mentioned, and his name is affixed in
approval to the act of Congress which finally forbade the slave
trade in 1808.

Madison, in his messages, brought the subject to the attention
of Congress and urged the passage of such amendments
as would suppress all violations of the law.

Under James Monroe the slave trade was declared piracy
in 1820, and in Congress, on motion of Hugh Nelson, of
Virginia, the House of Representatives fixed the death penalty
as the punishment of violating the law. During this administration,
under the leadership of Charles Fenton Mercer, of
Virginia, the acts of April 20, 1818, and March 3, 1819, authorized

Five Presidents

the President to send cruisers to the coast of Africa
to stop the slave trade. Subsequently, the same great statesman
in February, 1823, secured the adoption of a joint resolution
of Congress authorizing the President to enter upon or
prosecute from time to time with the maritime powers of
Europe and America negotiations for the ultimate denunciation
of the slave trade as piracy under the international law.
Mercer supplemented this, as chairman of a committee of the
House, in reporting a resolution that the President be authorized
to accept in his negotiations a mutual right of search of
vessels suspected of being engaged in the slave trade. This,
though defeated in the Senate, furnished a guide for the
actions of President Monroe, who on May 21, 1824, submitted
a draft of a treaty with Great Britain, by which both powers
agreed to recognize slave trading as piracy and yield the
mutual right of search. Unfortunately, the ratification of this
treaty was defeated in the Senate, and it was not until 1862
that the right of search between Great Britain and the United
States was established.

John Tyler, the last of the Virginia Presidents, had, when
a member of the Senate Committee of the District of Columbia
in 1832, prepared a code for the District which, while
repealing many of the antiquated laws imposing hardships on
the negroes, contained clauses prohibiting the importation or
sale of slaves in the District. As President, in the preparation
of the Ashburton Treaty, he secured the insertion of a
clause providing for the maintenance and cooperation of
squadrons of the United States and Great Britain off the
coast of Africa for the suppression of this trade.[6] And in his
message to Congress June 1, 1841, he declared that "the
highest consideration of public honor as well as the strongest
promptings of humanity required a resort to the most rigorous
efforts to suppress the trade."

The foregoing recital will serve to illustrate the uncompromising
attitude of hostility on the part of leading Virginians

to the slave trade. If their course on the question of
abolition was not as decisive, the excuse is found in the inherent
difficulties of the matter.

This subject was environed with so many entanglements
that even such men as Jefferson and Madison deemed emancipation
impracticable, without deportation. In this belief arose
the effort to deport free negroes to Africa, and the establishment
of the African Colonization Society and its State
branches. All the great statesmen of America believed in the
humanity of the movement, but this, like everything else, came
to be bitterly assailed by the abolitionists, who construed it
into a subtle design of slaveholders to quiet the conscience of
the country.

Deportation was urged by Lincoln himself in his messages,
and his final action of proclaiming emancipation in the slaveholding
States in secession was only taken as a war measure.
After declaring the policy of emancipation as "futile as the
Pope's bull against the comet" he made this reservation:
"Understand, I raise no objection against it on legal or Constitutional
grounds, for as chief of the army and navy in time
of war, I suppose I may take any measure which may best
subdue the enemy. Nor do I urge objections of a moral nature,
in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre
in the Southern States. I view this measure as a practical
war measure, according to the advantages or disadvantages
it may offer for the suppression of the Rebellion."[7]

Here then was a distinct recognition on the part of Lincoln
that insurrection and massacre were a possible consequence
of an emancipation proclamation and if these dreadful ills
of "insurrection" and "massacre" did not befall the South,
as a result of his turning a complete somersault, and ten days
later resorting to "the futile" measure, it can never be credited
to the humanity of Lincoln, who realized the peril. All
the credit assuredly goes to the humanity with which the terribly

reviled slaveholders treated their slaves.[8] But if
Lincoln had to admit the dangers of massacre, as a consequence
of emancipation, it ought not to be difficult to understand
why Virginians should have hesitated before the war
in bringing this peril upon the country by too precipitate
measures of abolition.

Between 1777 and 1800, all the New England States had
abolished slavery, but, as they had few negroes and slavery
did not pay in that stony country, the New Englanders deserve
but little credit for their action. The slave trade flourished
with them as actively as ever, and New England ships brought
thousands of Africans to this country. Nor did all the negroes
in New England receive the benefits of the emancipation, as
either in defiance of the laws or in anticipation, upwards of
one-half were shipped and sold in the South.[9]

But if some New Englanders made the cause of emancipation
very difficult by increasing enormously the number of
slaves in the South, others made the idea almost desperate to
the South by engaging in a crusade of abuse and incendiarism
that has no parallel in history. Unlike the antislavery men of
former days, the new school attacked not only the institution of
slavery but the morality of slaveholders, and their sympathizers.
Their rise in the North was contemporary with discussion
in the Virginia Legislature in 1832 regarding the
abolition of slavery. We have seen in another place that action
regarding abolition was only defeated in this Legislature by
73 to 58, and the very free discussion which there ensued
showed that the Virginian mind was up to that time open to
argument, if not to conviction.

But while never fully extinguished, this disposition was
largely suppressed by the abolitionists, who justified and instigated
murder and slave insurrection, and drove thousands in
Virginia and the South into silence or into the ranks of the
apologists for slavery.

"What have we done to her," said the Rev. Nehemiah
Adams, of Boston, "but admonish, threaten and indict her
before God, excommunicate her, stir up insurrection among
her slaves, endanger her homes, make her Christians and ministers
odious in other lands?"

It was the stock reply of the sectionalists of the North, who
boasted loudest of their nationalism, that it was the invention
of the cotton gin which encouraged the production of cotton
and increased the value of the slaves, that induced so many in
the South to stand for the perpetuation of slavery. But the
answer to this consists in the fact that relative to other property,
the value of slaves was no greater than just before the
Revolutionary period, when hostility to slavery in Virginia
was a prominent feature.[10]

The other stock argument that the South seceded in order
to "extend slavery" is shown by like facts to be without
reasonable value. The question about the Territories had
gotten to be in 1860 a mere abstract one. Kansas was lost
to the South and no one believed that slavery was possible
in any of the remaining domain of the United States not
admitted to Statehood—the odds by reason of immigration
and unfitness of the soil and climate being so greatly
against it.

South Carolina seceded because her abstract rights were
denied by the dominant party and its president. She fought
for independence and control of her own actions, but she did
not fight to "extend" slavery. So far from doing so, by
secession she formally relinquished all claim to the national
territory, and the constitution of the Confederacy provided
against the importation of slaves from abroad. Virginia made
the occasion of her secession the proclaimed resolve of
Lincoln to use the army to coerce the South. But as we have
seen, the deeper meaning lay in the incompatibility of the

union between the North and South, which had been made
manifest from the very beginning. The laws suited to one
section injured the other.

A final word as to the treatment accorded by the planters
to the slaves. Their owners were governed largely by public
opinion, and at no time in the history of Virginia does this
treatment appear to have been cruel or severe. In fact the
treatment became progressively more lenient. In the eighteenth
century, when negroes were principally savages freshly
imported, they had few comforts. So bare were their huts
of furniture that the inventories of estates are silent as
to the quarters, while enumerating every item in the manor
house. A bare plank was their couch and they seldom had
anything for their meals but cracked corn and vegetables,
though in these regards they were not much worse off than
the white servants imported in the seventeenth century. But
after the Revolution, the condition of the slaves immensely
improved. Their houses had comfortable beds, sometimes
very good furniture, and their fare was varied and wholesome.
Instead of meat twice a week, which was all that the
most favored white servants had in the seventeenth century,
the negroes of the South before the war had meat every day,
and plenty of it.

The best evidence of the mildness of their service was
afforded by their conduct during the war. Despite the violence
of the Northern press, that did not in some cases stop short
of recommending the entire extermination of the white people
of the South,[11] despite the direct instigation to massacre
afforded by Lincoln's proclamation of freedom in time of war;
and despite the numerous John Browns, who, when war was
once declared, made themselves busy in the open, the slaves of
Virginia and the South refused to rise; and, though without
the aid of the negroes in the Federal army, the war would
have proved a failure, as Lincoln himself declared, even this
aid was largely a forced one. Lincoln had about 200,000

negroes from the South as soldiers, but most of them were
slaves taken from the plantations and forced into the Federal
army.[12]

Education. In a letter[13] to Joseph C. Cabell in 1820 Jefferson
wrote that "the mass of education in Virginia before the
Revolution placed her with the foremost of her sister coloonies."
This education was afforded by (1) Private Schools;
(2) Charity Schools; (3) Tutors; (4) the College of William
and Mary; (5) the Academies and Colleges of England. There
was no public system for general education, but the
County Courts and the church wardens of the different parishes
were authorized and directed by the Legislature to
bind out all the poor children, and children of parents who
neglected them, with the requirement that they be taught by
their masters reading, writing and arithmetic. During the
American Revolution, Mr. Jefferson in 1779 reported from
the Revisors a bill for a general system of education, which
has served since as the basis for the whole United States.

Under this bill the curriculum of the College of William
and Mary was to be developed into that of a University, capping
the general plan of primary schools and secondary
schools or academies. The Legislature was slow to act, and
Mr. Jefferson, being elected Governor the same year, did not
wait but used his influence, as a member of the College Board,
to reorganize its curriculum as far as possible according to
the meaning of his bill. In connection with James Madison,
President of the College, he induced the visitors to abolish
the Grammar School, in which Latin and Greek were taught,
and the two Divinity Schools, and in their places to introduce
a school of Modern Languages, one of municipal law, and one
of medicine. By this arrangement the College became a University,
the first to be organized in the United States; and
it became also the first to have a chair of Modern Languages,
under Charles Bellini, and the first to have a chair of law,

under George Wythe, while a chair of medicine, under
Dr. James McClurg, was only second in time to that at the
College of Philadelphia. The cardinal features of the new
system at William and Mary College were (1) freedom of
selection by the student of his subjects of study, and (2) the
Honor System, which discountenanced all espionage by the
professors and trusted in the character of the student, in and
out of the class room.

Mr. Jefferson's report was not taken up by the Legislature
till 1796, when the bill in relation to the common schools was
enacted into law, but it proved ineffective by reason of an
amendment which left to each County Court to say whether
it should go into operation; and none of them consented, as
the justices would have been the chief taxpayers. This was
true of the justices in western Virginia as well as in those
where negroes formed a large element in the population.

The next step in the educational history was the establishment
of the Literary Fund by act of February 2, 1810. The
act ordered that "all escheats, confiscations, fines, penalties
and forfeitures and all rights accruing to the State as derelicts,"
shall be set aside for the encouragement of learning.
In 1826 the Literary Fund amounted to $1,210,550, the greater
part of which consisted of advances made by the State in
repelling the British invasion in 1813, and reimbursed to the
State by the Federal Government. By gradual accretions it
had reached the figure of $1,795,016.76 in 1860. It was then
used for the defence of the State, and some of it was invested
in Confederate bonds and lost. But in 1871 it amounted to
$1,596,069, and in 1922 it amounted to $4,621,867.97.

Some of the interest on this fund was given from time to
time to the University of Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute,
and the other colleges, and in 1822-24 the sum of
$180,000 was taken from its principal to aid the University in
erecting its buildings. This sum, though ostensibly a loan,
came to be regarded as a gift and was never returned to the
Literary Fund.[14]

But the main use of the Literary Fund was to educate the
children of the poor, and despite criticism it did a valuable
work in this respect. In 1855 it imparted aid to 65,370 poor
white children, of whom 31,486 were in actual daily attendance.
The Governors of Virginia constantly called attention
to the inadequacy of the system, but the nearest the state
before 1860 got to the ideal of Jefferson was under the act of
1845-46.

Under this act a general free school system was adopted,
but it was made to apply to the counties and not to the State
as a whole. Each county had to decide by a two-thirds vote
whether it would have free schools or not, and in case the
necessary vote was secured, the schools were to be supported
by funds apportioned from the Literary Fund and local taxation.
Nine counties only accepted the provisions of the act.

But while elementary education in Virginia was thus left
in an unsatisfactory condition, the higher education and the
secondary education accomplished much better results. Going
back to Jefferson's bill of 1779, we remember that he contemplated
making a State University of the College of William
and Mary, but with its Episcopal President and inherited
prejudices, he found it impossible to make the desired headway.
The other denominations were hostile, and finally he
decided to use another means and another location. In 1798
Jefferson, in writing to Doctor Priestly, had expressed the
hope that a new University planned on "a broad, liberal and
modern scale" would be erected "in the Upper Country and,
therefore, more centrally for the State." Following this a
movement occurred in the House of Delegates at the session
of 1805-06, which had for its object the erection of the
"University of Virginia" to be established "in some county
that was below the Southwest mountains, in a central situation,
recommended by the salubrity of the climate and cheapness
of the provisions." The ostensible leader of this movement
was James Semple, afterwards Professor of Law in
William and Mary College. Whether or not Mr. Semple had

any immediate connection with Mr. Jefferson is not known,
but he was a son-in-law of Judge John Tyler, who in the Legislature
in 1779 had given his ardent support to Mr. Jefferson's
reforms. Beyond leave accorded by the House to a committee
of which Mr. Semple was chairman, to bring in a bill
for the erection of the University, nothing further was done
at this time.[15]

After the establishment of the Literary Fund in 1810 and
the transference to this Fund at the session of 1815-16 of the
debt due Virginia by the United States, Charles Fenton
Mercer, chairman of the Finance Committee, to whom Joseph
C. Cabell had shown a letter Mr. Jefferson had written to
Peter Carr, which gave in detail his views as to the System of
Public Education to be set under way, framed a bill which
took in the most important features of Jefferson's plan. It
passed the House by a large majority and failed in the Senate
by a tie vote.

Mercer's bill was more elaborate than Mr. Jefferson had
planned, and on the request of Joseph C. Cabell, he put his
scheme for education in shape, and had it introduced by
Samuel Taylor of Chesterfield, but on February 11, 1818, it
failed of passage. The bill was then considered and amended,
so as to authorize the instruction of the poor and the establishment
of the University at a site to be selected by a commission,
and in this mutilated form passed the General
Assembly. Forty-five thousand dollars from the interest on
the Literary Fund was to be annually appropriated for the
instruction of indigent children, and $15,000 for the support
of the projected University.

Under the same prevailing influence of Mr. Jefferson,
Central College at Charlottesville, of which Jefferson was the
patron, was recommended by the commission as the site of
the University, and an act of the Assembly January 25, 1819;
confirmed the decision, and laid down with minuteness the
necessary prescriptions for the number of the Visitors, their

appointment, their powers and duties, the courses to be taught
and the number, salaries and accommodations of the
Professors.[16]

The higher education thus formulated in an institution
which in its plan, scope, organization and work has given
fame to the State, was further promoted by the establishment
in 1839 of the Virginia Military Institute, second only to West
Point as a military educational center. These agencies were
augmented by several new institutions founded by the various
religious denominations—Randolph-Macon College, founded
by the Methodists in 1830; Richmond College, founded by the
Baptists in 1832; Emory and Henry College, founded by the
Methodists in 1838, and Roanoke College, founded by the
Lutherans in 1853. These were in addition to the older institutions
already mentioned, namely, William and Mary College,
Hampden-Sidney College and Washington College.

A unique school in its way was the Institution for the
Deaf, Dumb and Blind, established at Staunton by the
Legislature in 1838. It had a predecessor in a private school
taught by John Braidwood, son of John Braidwood who
founded a school in London for the instruction of the deaf
and dumb. The son came to "Cobbs" in Goochland County,
to teach afflicted children in the family of Thomas Bolling,
and as a result established there the first school in America
for the deaf and dumb. The school had six or seven scholars
but was abandoned in a few years on account of Braidwood's
bad habits, from which Mr. Bolling found it impossible to
retrieve him. Braidwood died in 1819 or 1820, the victim of
intemperance.

The census of 1850 shows that Virginia had more young
men in college, in proportion to its population, (slaves excluded)
than any other State. In actual numbers she outranked
Massachusetts, Virginia having 1,343 at College and
Massachusetts 1,043.

The secondary schools in Virginia before 1861 were private,

not public. The Academy was the type of school that
spread through Virginia and served as a means of education
of the majority of the children of the state. These schools,
while they taught the classics, higher mathematics, and the
sciences (physics, chemistry and botany) also played the part
of primary schools, which was a necessary preparation for
this secondary instruction. The State had no other connection
with these academies than the matter of chartering them or
passing acts enabling them to conduct lotteries for the purpose
of raising funds to erect buildings or to add to their
endowment. Between 1800 and 1860, 175 academies were incorporated
in Virginia, of which sixty-nine were for the education
of girls. Many of these occupied buildings entirely of
brick. It is safe to say that many other academies of less
significance in the State did not apply for incorporation.[17]

It would thus appear that Virginia was especially strong
in the secondary and higher education, but weak in her elementary
schools. In a white population in 1860 of 1,047,411,
74,055 persons twenty years of age and upwards could not
read and write, but even this was a much lower average of
illiteracy than prevailed in most of Europe at this time.

Literature. Books are the natural products of large cities,
where easy access can be had to large public libraries and
ready sale effected to offset the cost of publication. Virginia
was a State of counties and none of her cities exceeded 40,000.
And yet during this period covered by this book (1763-1860)
her light in this particular was not hid under a bushel.

In polemic and political literature Virginia easily held
first place among the states. This took the form of communications
to the newspapers, editorials, pamphlets, State documents
and private letters of public men. If all was published
together it would make an enormous library of books. The
Virginia Gazette, the Richmond Enquirer, the Richmond
Whig, the Norfolk Public Ledger, and the other newspapers
of Virginia abound in such literature. Every member of

Congress, and many of the Legislature, thought it a duty to
address their constituents on the public questions interesting
the people at the time. Among official documents there were
the state papers of governors and Virginia presidents and
the different heads of departments in state and federal government,
the reports of committees and resolutions of the
Legislature and of Congress, wherever Virginians had a hand.

The Revolution was ushered in by a literature of this kind
that easily takes precedence. As examples might be cited the
pamphlets written by John Camm, Richard Bland, and
Landon Carter on the Two Penny Act (1759-1764); "An Enquiry
into the Rights of the British Colonies" (1766) by Richard
Bland; the "Monitor's Letters" (1767) by Dr. Arthur
Lee; the "Summary View," (1774) by Thomas Jefferson; The
Resolves of the Virginia Assembly against the Stamp Act
(1765); the Resolves against the Revenue Act (1768, 1769);
the Declaration of Rights (1776) by George Mason; the Declaration
of Independence (1776) by Thomas Jefferson; the
acts of the Virginia Legislature, many of which, especially
those drawn by Jefferson (for instance the celebrated Act
for Religious Freedom) exhibit forcible ideas presented in a
lucid and vigorous expression.

As to the political literature of the post-Revolutionary
period, it would take too much space to go into any detail, but,
as examples only, mention may be made of Madison's twenty-nine
articles of the Federalist and his Report on the Resolutions
of 1798, Jefferson's inaugural message (1801), Monroe's
message (1823) on the "Policy" bearing his name, and
Tyler's last annual message (1844), to which should be added
his address on the "Dead of the Cabinet."[18]

In the private letters of Washington, Madison and Jefferson,
published during this period, political matters are discussed

in a style worthy of those great men. Books discussing
constitutional questions appeared from John Taylor of Caroline:
"An Enquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government
of the United States" (1814), "Construction Construed
and the Constitution Vindicated" (1820); "Tyranny
Unmasked" (1822), and "New Views of the Constitution of
the United States," (1823). Abel P. Upshur acquired fame as
the author of a "Review of Judge Joseph Story's Commentaries
on the Constitution" (1840). It was applauded throughout
the South as a complete answer to the Nationalists, and
was long a text book in Southern colleges and schools.

In history the State was represented by John D. Burk
(1804), R. R. Howison (1847) and Charles Campbell (1849),
worthy successors of Robert Beverley, whose History of the
Colony (1705), is described by Dr. J. Franklin Jameson as
the first production of its kind having a real American spirit.
In this category may be placed Jefferson's "Notes on
Virginia" (1782), which passed through many editions; General
Harry Lee's "War in the Southern Department of the
United States" (1812), and Bishop Meade's "Old Churches,
Ministers and Families of Virginia" (1856).

There were many biographies, chief among which may be
mentioned William Wirt's "Life of Patrick Henry," which, in
spite of its inaccuracies, still appeals to readers; Marshall's
"Life of Washington" (five vols., 1804-1807), Richard Henry
Lee, Jr's. "Life of Richard Henry Lee" (1825), and "Life of
(Dr.) Arthur Lee" (1829); George Tucker's "Life of Jefferson,"
Hugh A. Garland's "Life of John Randolph" (1850)
and William C. Rives' "Life and Times of James Madison"
(1859). These are necessary books for any Virginia library.
In the "Life of Washington," by Parson Weems, Virginia can
claim a biography that went through more editions and was
read by more people than any dozen other biographies written
in the United States. It remained for many years one of the
books of the people, and, if popular favor is a proof of literary

excellence, Parson Weems' statue is entitled to a very high
niche in the temple of patriotism.

In books on agriculture John Taylor blazed the way with
his "Arator" (1810), to be succeeded by Edmund Ruffin with
his work on "Calcareous Manures" (1835), which had an
enormous popularity, and was praised by men in all parts of
the Union. In physical science the name that overshadowed
all others was that of Matthew Fontaine Maury, whose "Physical
Geography" was long used in the schools.

In theology, one of the most distinguished of the early
writers was Dr. Archibald Alexander, a native of Rockbridge
County, and for some time Professor of Theology in Princeton
College. His "Evidences of Christianity" (1825), and
"Canon of Scripture" occupy a very high rank. Other
prominent writers in theology were Dr. John H. Rice and Dr.
R. L. Dabney, of the Presbyterian Church, and Dr. J. B. Jeter
of the Baptist.

In law, St. George Tucker compiled an "Annotated Edition
of Blackstone's Commentaries" (1804), which was the
first American law book to be used as a text book in colleges;
and excellent manuals and digests appeared from
John T. Lomax, Conway Robinson, Judge N. B. Tucker,
James P. Holcombe, Henry St. George Tucker, and many
others. The opinions of Virginia judges, as they appear in
the works of the law reporters, have also a place in this general
catalogue of law literature. Many of the judges excel in
their clear and vigorous use of the English language, and two
especially may be mentioned, namely, John Marshall and
Spencer Roane.

Virginia fiction may be said to have begun with William
A. Caruthers, who wrote "Cavaliers of Virginia" and
"Knights of the Horseshoe," the one dealing with Bacon's
Rebellion and the other with Spotswood's march to the mountains.
A little later appeared "George Balcomb" and "The
Partisan Leader," by Judge N. B. Tucker. The last was
published in 1837, but the writer laid the scene of his plot in

the future, when President Van Buren was in his third term.
This singular book was something like a prophecy, for it represented
the country at war because of the usurpation of the
North. A Novel by St. George Tucker, Jr., entitled "Hans
ford, A Tale of Bacon's Rebellion," was quite popular. But
perhaps the most successful writer who continued his work
after the war for Southern Independence was John Esten
Cooke, who wrote "Leather Stockings and Silk," "The Youth
of Jefferson," "The Virginia Comedians" and "The Last of
the Foresters."

In poetry Virginia during this period produced no great
poet of native birth, but two made Virginia their home. They
were widely separated in time. One was Goronwy Owen, who
was master of the grammar school at William and Mary College
from 1758 to 1760 and minister of St. Andrew's Parish,
Brunswick County, from 1760 to his death in 1770. His poems,
some of which were written in Virginia, have procured for
him the fame of "premier poet" of Wales, but as they are
written in the Welsh language they are hardly known in Virginia
today. The other of these master spirits was Edgar
Allan Poe, who, though born in Boston, while his mother, an
actress, was temporarily there, was brought up in Richmond
and studied at the University of Virginia. Both of these poets
were wild, ungovernable men, given to drink, and very little to
be admired as far as their behavior went, but their poetry
is not tainted with their bodily failings and soars to heights
attained by few. Poe's fame has grown with time and his
poems and prose works are perhaps the most popular of all
writings in the United States and among the most popular in
the world.

But while not entitled to be ranked with these master
spirits, Virginia did have in this period some men native born
who were real poets, such as William Munford, James Barron
Hope, John R. Thompson, St. George Tucker, Jr., and Robert
Tyler. Munford, the first of these, wrote a number of poems,
but his chief claim to remembrance rests on his translation of

the Iliad, published in 1848, long after his death. Competent
critics have pronounced it superior in verse to Pope's famous
translation. James Barron Hope published "A Collection of
Poems" in 1859. Thompson was editor of the Southern Literary
Messenger, and contributed to it both excellent prose and
beautiful verse. Tucker wrote a strong address in verse which
was read at William and Mary College in 1859, and his war
song, "The Southern Cross," written after the election of
Lincoln, was very popular in the South generally. Robert
Tyler, who was an intimate friend and associate of Francis
Scott Key, the author of "The Star Spangled Banner," and
John Howard Payne, the author of "Home Sweet Home,"
wrote "Ahasuerus" (1842), and "Death, or Medorus'
Dream" (1843), which were highly praised by such critics as
George D. Prentice, Hugh S. Legaré, Joseph B. Chandler and
Charles Hoffman.

Besides these, many Virginians wrote excellent pieces,
which, while not entitling their authors to be called poets, went
to swell the mass of the State's poetic literature. As
specimens we may cite Philip Pendleton Cooke's "Florence
Vane," James McClurg's "Belles of Williamsburg," and
Judge St. George Tucker's "Days of My Youth." The last
produced such an impression on President John Adams that
it is said he declared that he would rather have written it than
any lyric of Milton or Shakespeare.

Various Literary Magazines were published at different
times in Virginia, most of them for a short period. Probably
the earliest of these was a magazine by Hugh L. Girardin, entitled
"Graphicae Amoenitates," with half a dozen other
descriptive words (1805). It was a quarto, and its first number,
which was also its last, contained a colored picture of the
Jamestown tower and five other colored plates, all engraved
by Frederick Bossler. Others of these short lived affairs
may be cited, but we must use our remaining space to notice
two of a more permanent character. Beginning in January,
1818, The Virginia Literary and Evangelical Magazine for

Matthew F. Maury

ten years afforded reading matter, religious and secular, to
the Virginian public. The editor was John Holt Rice, who was
born in 1777 and died in 1831 in Prince Edward County, where
for eight years he had been head of the "Union Theological
Seminary." The mere list of titles of articles published in this
magazine on the status of Virginia, politically, educationally
and in a literary way, is interesting by itself, but it is made
doubly so when it is remembered that the North American
Review was established in 1815 and Blackwood's Magazine in
1817.

The Southern Literary Messenger, founded by Thomas W.
White, in 1834, and edited successively by James E. Heath,
Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Benjamin B.
Minor, John R. Thompson, George Bagby and Frank H.
Alfriend, had a life of thirty years and there was no magazine
superior to it in the United States. It contained many pieces
of prose and verse from the best writers of the North and
the South. Poe was not only editor but a frequent contributor.

Mention should be made of "the Virginia Historical Register,"
a small publication beginning in 1848 and intended as
the organ of the Virginia Historical Society, nor must we fail
to refer to the different farm journals, medical journals and
religious periodicals,[19] which sometimes contained articles of
excellent literary character.

This is, of course, only a brief statement of Virginian accomplishment.
The late Dr. Alfred J. Morrison, who made an
extensive study of Bibliography, and whose recent untimely
death was a great loss to Virginia, states that in the great revival
of effort along all lines that marked the decade from
1850 to 1860, it was not going too far to assert that sufficient
biographies made up of Southern names alone could be had to
fill six volumes equal in size to the six volumes of Appleton's
Encyclopedia of American Biography, containing Canadian

and South American names, as well as names properly applicable
to the United States (comprising 1,500 names). General
Wilson, the editor, and John Fiske, the assistant editor of
Appleton, let in a good many names on very slim evidence of
ability, and they left out a great many names that might have
been included.

These editors, sitting down to their task about 1880 or
1882, both of them fair minded men and of exceptional intelligence,
could not possibly know much about the significant
names in Southern achievement. And if they had come South
and made special enquiry, they could not have found out.
Something had happened.[20]

As a result of the war, which had brought about a confusion
such as the world has seldom known, that region had
been "stunned." The Southern people, absorbed in the struggle
for self preservation against negro rule, which their conquerors
ruthlessly forced upon them, and bent upon the material
rehabilitation of their country, had no time to consider
the past, and conformed themselves to the conditions, which
were offered to them by the more friendly portion of the
Northern people. In a sense they became Northernized, and
today, as victims of a propaganda without regard to truth, the
new generation of Southerners, satisfied with the management
of their local affairs and little inclined to dispute with the
North the management of national affairs, can have but little
understanding of the high aspirations of the old South which
was unwilling to accept a subordinate position in a Union
built upon the idea of equality.

CHAPTER II

AGRICULTURE, COMMERCE AND BANKING,
SCIENCE, LAW, MEDICINE, AND RELIGION

Agriculture. The old colonial method of tillage consisted
in using the land for corn or tobacco till the soil failed to
give a fair return. The farmer opened up a new field and
subjected this to the same exhaustive culture. The evil, however,
was not without its compensative advantages, so long as
there was any surplus of woodland on the estate, as it
enlarged the area for a future rotation of crops.

Probably, however, the facts have been to a certain degree
misrepresented. We have direct evidence from William Nelson,
President of the Council, in a letter to Samuel Athawes in
1770 that farmers were then employing manure and making
better crops than ever on their lands. He wrote:[21] "I am not
sorry to tell you that I expect that we shall make this year
80,000 hogsheads (of tobacco). * * * You make me smile
when you talk of the lands being too much worn and impoverished
to bring good tobacco as we formerly did, and I know
that a skillful planter can make it fine from any land, it being
his part and interest to improve any that he finds worn or
wearing out."

After the Revolution a three-shift system was practiced—
that is, first, a crop of Indian corn; second, wheat, rye or oats;
and third, "the year of rest," in which the stock was permitted
to glean scanty subsistence from the natural vegetation
that sprang up. This system was rather hard on the
land, but prevailed as late as 1835 in the region on the south
side of the James, from the seaboard to the mountains.[22]

In the meantime a much better system came in vogue in
the region north of the James, especially in what is known as
the Northern Neck. Here peas and red clover were early
used, and by their employment, united with deep plowing, and
the use of gypsum or plaster of paris and a more diversified
rotation of crops, the lands were enriched and yielded gratifying
returns. As early as 1792 Israel Janney brought the
first gypsum from Pennsylvania and tried it on his crops in
Loudoun County with success, and in 1804 John A. Binns of
the same county wrote and published a "Treatise on Practical
Farming" in which he praised the value of gypsum
and deep plowing. In 1796 Landon Carter, of "Cleve," in
King George County, expatiated in a letter to Washington on
the value of "Indian peas" in restoring corn land.[23]

In the Valley district also a good system of cultivation
was early pursued, and irrigation was practiced to a considerable
extent.

One step in advance was the greater attention paid in Virginia
after the Revolution to the growth of wheat and the
small grains. They gradually took the place in Tidewater,
Virginia, of tobacco, which was now banished to the Western
and Southwestern counties. But tobacco still remained a
favorite staple, and its intelligent production was much encouraged
by a book written by William Tatham, entitled "An
Historical and Practical Essay on the Culture and Commerce
of Tobacco," published in London in 1800.[24]

Interest in agriculture was shown by the existence of an
Agricultural Society in Culpeper County in 1794,[25] and perhaps

earlier. Probably there were other local societies. The first
State Society was formed in 1811, and continued in existence
till 1820. John Taylor, of Caroline, was its president. His
book, "Arator," (1810) was of great service in his day in
stimulating scientific farming. He died in 1824, and his labor
was taken up by Edmund Ruffin.

In the meantime, local societies were springing up in many
counties, and on January 12, 1820, the first general meeting of
delegates from the United Agricultural Societies of Virginia
was held at Parker's Tavern in Surry County, January 10-12,
1820. Delegates were present from Prince George County,
Sussex, Surry, Brunswick and Petersburg.

Edmund Ruffin was a delegate from the Society in Prince
George and acted as Secretary. Gen. John Pegram was President.
The Albemarle Society was not represented at this
meeting. It had been established in 1817 with James Madison
as President, late President of the United States.

For the years following 1819 only diligence and access to
files are necessary to bring out all the facts relating to Agriculture
in Virginia, since the American Farmer, the earliest
agricultural journal in America, began that year, and it is
replete with information regarding such movements in Virginia.
It is unquestionable that the period from 1819 to 1860
was one of steady improvement in the Agriculture of the
Middle Atlantic States. About 1829 Theodorick McRobert
published a farm journal called The Virginia Farmer, at
Scottsville, Albemarle County, which continued till after 1833.[26]

In that year (1833) Edmund Ruffin established The
Farmers' Register, which ran for ten years, and was esteemed
one of the best (if not the best) agricultural journals in the
United States. The publication the next year of his famous
work on "Calcareous Manures" combined with this Journal
to put new life into the farmer's profession. Most of the local
societies had come to an end, but in 1836 an agricultural convention
was held at Richmond, with James Barbour as president.

The farmers memorialized the Legislature to establish
a Board of Agriculture, and this was done in 1841, but the
act was repealed in 1843. James Barbour was the first president
of this short-lived board, and Edmund Ruffin was the
secretary. Two famous farmers were members of the Board,
James M. Garnett, of Essex County, and Richard Samson, of
Goochland County.

In 1845 the Virginia Society of Agriculture was reorganized
and Edmund Ruffin was chosen president, but, he declining
the post, the Hon. Andrew Stevenson was elected
president.

In the meantime, another agricultural journal had been
started, the Southern Planter, begun at Richmond in 1841,
and which still survives.

In 1849 Governor John B. Floyd was willing to recommend
in his message the appointment of a State Chemist, and
the endorsement of a State Agricultural Society, but the
Legislature would not act. A carefully worked out bill did
pass in 1851, authorizing the appointment of a State Chemist
and an Agricultural Commission, the Commissioners to draw
a salary of $2,500. But, it is said, nothing at all official came
out of this.

The same year the Virginia Society of Agriculture, in
unison with the general advance, took new life. The Constitution
was revised and new officers elected. Its members and
resources rapidly increased, and the Society had a field agent,
Gen. William H. Richardson, who knew how to get hold of the
people.

The State Society thus active held its very successful first
fair at Richmond in the fall of 1853, and the custom was maintained
for eight years regularly, through the fall of 1860.
After that there was no fair until the fall of 1869.

In March, 1854, this vigorous State Society appointed its
own Commissioner of Agriculture, Edmund Ruffin, who served
till 1855. After that there was no Commissioner of Agriculture
in the State on any footing until July 1, 1877, as under

the act of March 29 of that year. March 5, 1888, a Board of
Agriculture was superimposed upon the Commissioner, and
the structure was complete.[27]

The influence of Edmund Ruffin upon Agriculture in Virginia
during three decades must not be slighted. His work
on "Calcareous Manures" was the beginning of what one may
call "a new era" in Virginia farming. The book went through
four editions, increasing in size with each edition till from
118 pages it attained in 1852, 490 pages.

In another pamphlet he pressed the necessity of an Agricultural
College, and was the first in the United States to
outline a course of study for such an institution. In newspaper
articles, and as editor of the Farmers' Register, he urged the
use of legumes and marl as fertilizers of poor soil, drainage,
and blind ditching and the five-fold rotation of crops, and by
following his own suggestions and by the judicious employment
of negro labor, he not only increased his own estate
eightfold, but set an example which was copied by his neighbors
and the farmers throughout the State. The enormous
increase in the value of farm lands and stock between 1850 and
1860, due in large measure to his salutary labors, is shown by
the census for those years.

In 1850 the value of farms in Virginia was estimated at
$216,401,543, and in 1860 it had increased to $371,761,661.
Farming implements increased from $7,021,772 to $9,392,296.
The value of all live stock in 1850 was $33,656,659 and in
1860 was $47,803,649. This percentage of increase in the value
of farm lands exceeded that of any of the old Thirteen States,
except North Carolina, which increased from $67,891,766 to
$143,301,065.

As indicative of the incompatibility of the States, the
value of farm lands in Massachusetts in 1850 was only
$109,076,347 and in 1860 was $123,255,948, and yet her total
wealth in 1850, principally in the shape of capital and manufactures,
was $573,342,286. On the other hand, the total wealth

of Virginia in 1850, consisting principally of farms and live
stock, was $430,701,082. In 1860, Massachusetts had in property,
principally in capital and manufactures, $815,237,433
and Virginia $793,249,687, showing a considerable gain on
the part of Virginia on Massachusetts.[28]

In this connection, it is of interest to read a letter or two
from Tidewater, Virginia, giving some idea of the wonderful
wheat farming during this time of progress (1845-1860). In
July, 1846, Benjamin Ogle Taylor reported that there had
been great improvement in farming methods below Fredericksburg.
Later in 1847 Robert B. Bolling wrote from
"Sandy Point," Charles City County, that he had averaged
twenty-three bushels of wheat on 500 acres, and that Hill
Carter, of "Shirley," and John Selden, of "Westover," in the
same county, and William Harrison, of "Brandon," in Prince
George County, had averaged thirty-one bushels on fields of
100 to 200 acres.[29] Naturally these were the days when the
Richmond Mills were so conspicuously in the South American
trade.

Commerce and Banking. In Colonial days a great many
ships were built in Virginia, though not to compare with
Massachusetts in numbers. Ships of 300 tons burden were
built, and there were a number of shipyards in the rivers.
The colony carried on a great trade with the West Indies in
Virginia made sloops.[30]

Transportation for the most part, however, was in British
vessels and the chief exports were tobacco and Indian corn, and
the chief imports consisted of groceries and English manufactures.
But most of the people in moderate circumstances went
clad in Virginia cloth made of cotton grown on the plantations.

Of this kind of cloth 250,000 pounds were manufactured
annually about 1770.[31]

Upwards of 50,000 or 60,000 hogsheads of tobacco were
exported annually at that period, giving employment to 17,000
tons of shipping. A few years later the exports of tobacco
reached the figure of 80,000 hogsheads.

The census shows that, in 1772, Virginia and Maryland
exported £528,404 worth of goods and imported goods to
the value of £793,910. The four colonies of New England,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire
exported £126,265 and imported £824,830.

During the War of the Revolution commerce was suspended.
After the treaty of peace in 1783, trade revived and
the custom house receipts of Virginia in 1788 amounted to
$266,000. During this time Virginia had control of her own
trade, had her own custom houses, her own marine hospitals,
and her own revenue cutters, bearing her own flag.
Trade was free with all parts of the world. The sum of
$266,000 was collected under an average tariff of two and one-half
per cent and represented an import trade of over
$10,000,000. And assuming that the imports were chiefly
based upon exports, the amount of the two must have been
not far from $20,000,000.[32]

The transference of the power to regulate trade to the Federal
Government shut out British shipping, and the high
tariffs afterwards imposed subjected Virginia to the exploitation
of New England. The effect was seen almost immediately.
In 1791 the exports from Virginia were $3,130,865 and
the exports of Massachusetts $2,519,651. In 1853 the exports
of Virginia amounted to $3,302,561, and the exports of Massachusetts
were $16,895,304. The same year the imports of
Virginia were $399,004 and the imports of Massachusetts
$41,367,956.[33] Virginia found herself compelled to conform to

a condition of things wholly in favor of New England. Many
towns in Virginia that had once a large foreign trade fell into
ruins and were deserted, such as Falmouth, Yorktown and
Dumfries. Norfolk and Alexandria ceased to grow.

She vainly attempted to escape from this vassalage, and
many conventions were held at Norfolk and Richmond to
encourage a direct trade with England and France, but not
much success attended these efforts. Better success attended
trade with the South American States in flour shipped from
the Gallego and Haxall Mills in Richmond. According to
the preliminary report of the Eighth Census, by Joseph C.
G. Kennedy, the largest mill in 1860 was at Oswego, New
York, which produced 300,000 barrels of flour. The next two,
in Richmond, made 190,000 and 160,000 barrels of flour
respectively. The value of the annual production of each
ranged from $1,500,000 to $1,000,000 and the whole value of
flour and meal produced in Virginia in 1860 was $15,212,050.

There were nail and iron works at Richmond whose products
in 1860 were considerable. The value of iron founding in
the State was placed at $809,955 as compared with $409,836,
the value in 1850. Petersburg, Richmond and Wheeling were
centers of tobacco factories, cotton seed and oil mills, flour
mills, paper factories and woolen factories. The year 1860
saw, despite all impediments, a considerable increase in manufactures
over 1850. The value in 1850 was estimated at
$29,602,507, and in 1860 at $50,652,124.

Connected with trade were the banks, of which Virginia
had a very efficient State system in 1860. During Colonial
times and for some time after it, business of this kind was
conducted by goldsmiths and private companies, who had not
been incorporated. They accepted deposits, discounted paper
and issued currency notes. In 1804 the Legislature began
passing a series of acts intended to force these unchartered
persons to cease doing business, and by 1820 they were pretty
well extinct as business concerns.

In 1804 the Legislature chartered the Bank of Virginia

and its branches, with a capital of $1,500,000. It had branches
at Norfolk, Petersburg, Lynchburg, Fredericksburg, Danville,
Charleston, Buchanan, Portsmouth and Union. The bank was
given authority to issue notes, but they were not to exceed
$4,500,000 above the amount of its deposits, and its notes
were to be received in payment of all taxes due to the State.
The bank went into immediate operation and had a career of
unbroken success until destroyed by the War for Southern
Independence.

Tempted by the success of this bank, other persons got
a charter in 1812 for the Farmers' Bank of Virginia, with its
branches. It had equal success and continued in the confidence
of the Virginia people till, having invested its money in Confederate
bonds like the other bank, it experienced a similar
fate of bankruptcy. This bank was followed by the Northwestern
Bank and the Bank of the Valley, both chartered in 1817.
By 1860 banks were to be found in every village and town in
Virginia. In general, it may be said of them that they were
conservative and safe. In spite of financial panics which
struck the country at times the Virginia banks were noted for
their soundness. In 1860, in a white population of 1,047,411
capable of making contracts, the banks had a capital of
$15,884,543 and $9,612,560 of circulating notes for currency.
The banks were scattered through the entire community,
mainly agricultural, so that there was an abundance of currency
and available capital for the use of the people. Banking
privileges were very free, and to this Mr. Royall, who made
the subject a study, attributes the prosperity of these institutions
and the ability to weather the financial storms that
struck the whole Union from time to time.[34]

Science. During most of the Colonial period, science pursued
lines of observation, and Natural History was the favorite
study. Beginning with John Banister, who made a catalogue
of Virginia plants about 1673, the list of scientists,

who made Virginia their home or paid it a considerable visit,
recorded the names of Rev. John Clayton of Jamestown,
Mark Catesby, Robert Beverley, William Byrd, Dr. John
Mitchell, John Clayton, Clerk of Gloucester County; Dr. William
Small, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics
at William and Mary College, and Governor Francis Fauquier,
who wrote no book but loved to talk of science.

With Watt's development of the steam engine in 1763 a
new era began—the era of invention. With Watt, Virginia
had a link in Dr. William Small, who after a stay at William
and Mary College of six years (1758-1764), returned to England,
and it was on his advice that Watt in 1773 left Glasgow
and went to Birmingham, where he formed a partnership with
Matthew Bolton, the proprietor of the Soho Engineering
Works, to make steam engines. Under the expanding wing of
this new departure, a Philosophical Society, was formed at
Williamsburg in May, 1773, known as "The Virginia Society
for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge," of which John
Clayton, the celebrated botanist, was president, and John
Page, of "Rosewell," was vice president. The society bore
prompt fruit. Page led the way and invented an instrument
by which he measured the fall of dew and rain to the 300th
part of an inch, being the first instrument of its kind in
America; and at his residence on the York River he calculated
an eclipse of the sun. This was followed by the invention of a
thresher, the first in America, by John Hobday, to whom the
Society presented a gold medal, still preserved.

There is evidence that this Society was in existence in
1787, but its dissolution did not stop the spirit of invention in
Virginia.

Virginian names largely exceeded those of any other State
among the early United States patentees of threshing machines.
William Thompson took out a patent August 2, 1791.
In 1794 William Hodgson and James Wardrop patented
threshing machines, and Wardrop's machine was introduced
into England in 1796. In 1797 William Booker took out a

patent, and in 1803 a patent was granted to Samuel Houston
of Virginia, and in 1807 another to B. B. Bernard.[35] Colonel
John Taliaferro, John Murphy and John M. Syme were also
early inventors of threshing machines.[36]

Foremost, however, among these early inventors was
James Rumsey, who, though a native of Maryland, was a citizen
of Virginia and spent the active part of his life in that
Commonwealth. He lived at Shepherdstown on the banks of
the Potomac River and was the first in this country to construct
and navigate a boat by steam. He privately tested his
boat in 1786 and gave a public demonstration at Shepherdstown
of its value in 1787. Though Rumsey's steamboat never
came into successful use, he paved the way for Fulton, whom
he met in London, and several of his other inventions survive
in one modified form or another, as for instance the tubular
boiler, so superior to the old tub or still boiler in the presentation
of fire surface and in capacity for holding rarefied steam.

One of Rumsey's patrons was Thomas Jefferson, who succeeded
Franklin as President of the American Philosophical
Society. He took great interest in natural science and invented
a plow, a hemp brake, a pedometer and a copying press.
Dr. James Madison, President of William and Mary College,
excelled in physics and astronomy, and his enthusiasm threw
a peculiar charm over his lectures on natural philosophy.

A contemporary of Doctor Madison was Dr. James Greenway
of Dinwiddie County, an ardent botanist, who wrote a
number of interesting letters to the American Philosophical
Society upon the fertilizing value of the pea, the nature of a
certain poisonous plant found in Virginia, and an extinct volcano
in North Carolina. William Tatham, who lived in Virginia
at this time, was a very resourceful man and wrote many
valuable treatises on different subjects.

The patent office at Washington preserves the names of

many Virginia inventors in the latter part of the period
covered by this book, but space forbids mention of but two,
more eminent than any of the rest. The first in birth was
Matthew Fontaine Maury, born in Spotsylvania County, Virginia,
January 14, 1806. He suggested a system of reforms in
the navy department, which, adopted by Congress in 1842, introduced
order where chaotic conditions formerly prevailed.
President Tyler appointed him head of the Bureau of Nautical
Charts, which became the National Observatory. As such, he
made a profound study of the varying depths, winds and currents
of the sea, and by his works, "Sailing Directions," and
his "Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology,"
which last is said to have passed through more editions than
any modern book of its kind, won for himself the name of
"Pathfinder of the Seas." He suggested all the principles of
the modern weather bureau operations, instituted a system of
deep sea soundings, and showed that the bottom of the sea
between New Foundland and Ireland was a plateau admirably
adapted for a telegraphic cable. He suggested to Cyrus W.
Field the character of the cable to be employed, and how it
should be laid. In generous recognition, Mr. Field said "I
am a man of few words; Maury furnished the brains; England
gave the money; and I did the work."

As chief of the water defences of the South he was father
of the torpedo and mining systems, employed so generally in
the late European War.

He was covered with honors and medals by all the European
governments, and was urged by the French government
to take charge of their great observatory at Paris, and invited
to Russia by a personal letter from the Grand Duke Constantine.
Instead of accepting he preferred to live a plain Virginia
citizen, having charge at his death of the chair of
meteorology at the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington,
Virginia. By many he was regarded as the greatest of all
American scientists.

The second of these great scientists of world wide influence

Cyrus H. McCormick

was Cyrus Hall McCormick, son of Robert McCormick, born
February 15, 1809, in Rockbridge County. His father invented
a reaper which did not work, but Cyrus experimented
and perfected it, and, as the result of his labors, accomplished
a world wide revolution in agriculture. Not only did it vastly
increase the area of grain cultivation but it was the stimulus
to the development of every manner of farm implement. It
had a profound influence upon the success of the war against
the South; for William H. Seward attributed to it, and not to
the armies of the North, the subjugation of the South. "The
reaper is to the North what slavery is to the South," he said.
"By taking the place of regiments of young men in the
western harvest fields, it releases them to do battle for the
Union at the front, and at the same time keeps up the supply
of bread for the nation's armies. Thus, without McCormick's
reaper, I fear the North could not win, and the Union would
be dissolved."[37]

At no time in history has there been any lack of individual
talent for science in Virginia. Hugh Jones, remarking upon
the character of the Virginian as far back as 1724, said: "The
climate makes them bright and of excellent sense and sharp
in trade, an idiot or deformed native being almost a miracle."[38]
But the lack of towns and great centres of population placed
Virginia, as far as science went, at great disadvantage. Those
born in Virginia had generally to go to the great cities of Boston,
Philadelphia and New York for preferment. Such was
the case of Henry Draper, of Prince Edward County, born
March 7, 1737, who as a professor of the University of New
York became well known for his discoveries and work in selective
photography. He discovered oxygen in the sun by
photography and advanced a new theory of solar spectrum.

Such also was William B. Rogers, who, after serving as
Professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy in William

and Mary College and in the University of Virginia, as State
officer made the first report on the geology of Virginia, a work
which has no superior, and is full of original suggestions.
After thirty-five years' service in Virginia he moved to Boston,
where, in 1860, he founded the famous Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and died in that city in 1882, having
seen his pet project crowned with success.

Legal Profession. During most of the 17th century the
business of the Colony of Virginia was very simple, and there
was little encouragement for trained lawyers, and the causes
were pleaded by merchants and planters acting for the parties
in suit. As elsewhere in America the people generally were
jealous of these persons and made their high fees a pretext to
enact hostile legislation against them. But in this there
was really no reflection upon the character of the lawyers, who
on the whole, are shown by the records to have been leaders
in society.

At the end of the century a regular body of trained men
began to appear, such as William Sherwood and William Fitzhugh.
The pursuit in the eighteenth century became a dignified
profession resting on license and examination. This century
had in its early years such names as Edward Barradall,
John Clayton, Stevens Thompson, William Hopkins, William
Robertson, and John Holloway. In its latter years it was
brilliant with the names of Patrick Henry, George Wythe,
Peyton Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, Robert Carter Nicholas,
Thomas Jefferson, St. George Tucker, Edmund Randolph,
Henry Tazewell, and scores of others. The nineteenth
century shone with even a greater luster. The names of John
Marshall, Spencer Roane, Littleton W. Tazewell, Chapman
Johnson, John Wickham, and Benjamin Watkins Leigh illustrate
the earlier decades, and William Green, Henry St.
George Tucker, Conway Robinson and James P. Holcombe
illustrate the '40s and '50s.

William and Mary College had the first school of law
(1779) in the United States and St. George Tucker published

the first text book on the law (1803). Albert J. Beveridge
says in his Life of John Marshall that "as small and mean"
as was Richmond in 1780 "not even Philadelphia, Boston or
New York could boast of a more brilliant bar."

Medical Profession.[39] As with the lawyers, the doctors in
the early years of the Colony of Virginia were untrained men.
They were generally "surgeons, apothecaries or apprentices"
and they, like the lawyers, incurred the wrath of the Assembly
by charging "excessive fees." Laws were passed to regulate
the charges, but not the practice, and the profession lagged
much behind the legal profession. As late as 1736 a statute
declared the doctors to be merely "surgeons, apothecaries or
apprentices," and "unskillful in the art of a physician."

Nevertheless, the records show that, during all this long
period, there were men in Virginia of high professional training.
William Russell, who saved John Smith's life in June,
1608, was doubtless of this class. Dr. Lawrence Bohun, the
physician general of the Colony in 1610-1620, was educated
among the "most learned surgeons and physicians in the
Netherlands." His heroic death in 1620 on the Margaret and
John when attacked by the Spaniards in the West Indies,
makes him a glorious figure in Virginia history. The successor
to Doctor Bohun was Dr. John Pott, who was "a Cambridge
Master of Arts," and recommended by the famous
Theodoric Gulston "as well practiced in chirurgerie and
physic and expert in distilling waters." He served at one
time as acting Governor of Virginia.

Later on we come across the names of Dr. John Toton, a
French Huguenot physician, Dr. Henry Potter, Dr. Charles
Brown, Dr. John Mitchell and Dr. William Cocke. There were
doubtless many other names of trained physicians distinguishing
this long period. Virginia was very unhealthy, and
for a long time four out of every five immigrants died the

first year of their arrival. The diseases were chiefly ague and
fever, dysentery and scurvy.

After 1736 the profession grew much in character, and
many young Virginians studied medicine at the University of
Edinburgh. Some of them became well known in the annals
of the country, such as Theodorick Bland, Colonel of Cavalry
in the Revolution, Arthur Lee, Walter Jones and George
Gilmer, all four of whom served the State, in Congress or
the Legislature.

Bland took the lead in trying to dignify the profession,
and in 1761 he formed the young Virginians studying medicine
at Edinburgh into a club, whose constitution pledged the
members not to stop in their studies short of a degree, and
"not to degrade the medical business with the trade of an
apothecary or surgeon." After his return to Virginia, he
drew a petition to the Legislature asking that "the right to
practice should be confined to those who had been properly
licensed and honored with a doctor's degree."

The petition had no effect, and it is probable that the
country districts of Virginia were not ready for such a law.
The ordinary farmer thought it convenient that the same
man should be doctor, apothecary and surgeon, and deemed
it imprudent to separate the professions.

But in course of time, the doctors themselves, aided by
public opinion, made a doctor's degree almost essential to
the practice. European Universities were superseded largely
by American Colleges, and the College of Philadelphia, which
had become in 1779 the University of Pennsylvania, was a
special favorite with the Southern youth. Between 1810 and
1860 the number of Southern youths who matriculated at that
institution reached a total of upwards of 7,000. Maryland
University was also a great favorite and contributed over
300 graduate doctors for Virginia alone.

But the University of Virginia had now gotten under way
and many doctors studied there. Later, deficiency in the
University in clinical advantages being felt, Hampden-Sidney

College in 1837 established a medical department in Richmond.
In 1844 this department being fortunate enough to
obtain a loan of $25,000 from the Literary Fund, built an
attractive building, and in 1854 it was made independent of
Hampden-Sidney and incorporated under the name and style
of "The Medical College of Virginia."

In 1860, by reason of the bitter sectional spirit, the large
contingent of Southern medical students attending at the
Colleges in Philadelphia withdrew in a body under the lead
of Hunter Holmes McGuire, and became students of the College
in Richmond. An arrangement was had between the
Legislature and the College by which the former gave the
College $30,000 for the erection of a hospital and in return
the Faculty of the Medical College turned the College over
to the State.

How much did Virginia doctors previous to 1861 contribute
to the general illumination of knowledge that characterized
the nineteenth century?

This is a question that cannot be answered with any degree
of accuracy. The amount of cultivation in the world at any
given time is the result of action and counteraction, and
perhaps there is no life, however obscure, that does not contribute
a little to the great mass of civilization. I may mention,
however, in a few words, some names of Virginians who
shine in the glory of a great light as benefactors of the human
race. First, James McClurg, son of Dr. Walter McClurg, a
British surgeon, who was sent to Hampton to open the first
hospital in America to inoculate for smallpox, pursued his
general studies at William and Mary College and studied
medicine at the University of Edinburgh and attended the
hospitals of Paris and London. In December, 1779, he was
elected to fill the chair of Medicine instituted that year at
William and Mary College, and which was next in time to that
at Philadelphia. He was a member of the Federal Convention
in 1787 and died in Richmond, July 9, 1825, having occupied
for half a century perhaps the foremost place in his profession

in America. His Essay on the Human Bile was translated
into every language in Europe. Second, Nathaniel
Chapman, of Fairfax County, one of the professors of the
University of Pennsylvania, first president of the American
Medical Association, founder of the American Journal of
Medical Science, and author of numerous medical works.
Third, Ephraim McDowell of Rockbridge County, Virginia,
born in 1771, studied at Edinburgh and practiced at Danville,
Virginia. He was first to operate for ovarian tumor, and
became "the father of ovariotomy." Fourth, Benjamin
Winslow Dudley, of Spotsylvania County, born in 1783, graduated
at the University of Pennsylvania in 1806, and afterwards
studied at London under Cooper and Abernathy. He
performed the first operation for stone in the bladder and
was called "the greatest lithotomist." He was an advanced
apostle of asepsis, attributing much of his success to the use
of hot water. Fifth, John Peter Mettauer, of Prince Edward
County, Bachelor of Arts of Hampden-Sidney College and
Doctor of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania in 1809.
He practiced at Prince Edward Courthouse and died there
in 1875. He was one of the first to conceive the idea of curing
vesicovaginal fistula, the first on this continent to operate
for cleft palate, the first to employ iodine in the treatment of
scrofula, and was among the first in such major operations
as amputation of the shoulder, ligation of the carotid, and the
resection of the superior maxilla.[40]

Religion. No history of Virginia would be complete without
some account of the progress of religion. In Colonial
days there was a state church fashioned after the Church
of England and regulated by the Legislature. Until about
1750 nearly everybody belonged to the Church, and dissenters
were few. After 1750, dissent became frequent, and by the
time the American Revolution began membership in the
Church had greatly declined. But the Conventions and Legislature
were still dominated by members of the State

Church, who proceeded to divorce the State from religion.
Their action was partly due to the influence of the rival sects,
but still more to the spread of free thought and scientific
discussion that sprang from the teachings of the French
school of writers and the English scientists.[41]

After the Revolution those persons who remained attached
to the old forms of religion organized themselves into a separate
establishment called the American Episcopal Church.
In 1786 Rev. David Griffith became first Bishop of the Church
in Virginia. In 1785 James Madison, President of William
and Mary College, presided over the first Convention of the
Episcopal Church, and in 1790 he was made second Bishop
of the Diocese. He was a scientist as well as a churchman.

For about thirty years after the Revolution this Church
struggled with adversity. The support of the law was removed
and its ministers, after being repeatedly assured of their
glebes, were deprived of them and exposed to starvation. Many
of them in self preservation had to engage in secular affairs
and abandon their flocks. Thus the church buildings were left
vacant for want of preachers and congregations, and were
often appropriated by other denominations. Others fell into
ruins and their bricks were used to construct homes and
other buildings. Among the generality of its members religion
was lifeless and skepticism prevailed.

In May, 1814, Richard Channing Moore was elected Bishop
of the Diocese of Virginia to succeed Bishop Madison, who
died in 1812, and from that time a change appeared in the
fortunes of the Church, gradual but decided. A man of great
energy and decision, Bishop Moore rendered notable service
in raising the Church from its prostrate condition. He was
assisted in this great work by William H. Wilmer, who became
President of William and Mary College, and by the lovable

and industrious William Meade, who succeeded Moore as
Bishop in 1841. From having been the most intolerant of all
Churches in Virginia, the Episcopal Church became the most
liberal of all.

The history of dissent begins with the nonconformists in
Princess Anne and Norfolk counties about 1642. Because of
the harsh laws passed at the instance of Sir William Berkeley,
many of them removed from the Colony and settled in Maryland.
Then appeared the Quakers about 1660, against whom
equally harsh laws were passed. But the Quakers were more
patient, bowed their heads to affliction, and the authorities got
tired of persecuting them. Then in 1699 the toleration law
was adopted in Virginia, and persecution relaxed. In their
petition in 1737 the Quakers declared they had nothing to complain
of except being taxed for the support of the clergy of the
State Church. For many years after the Revolution the
Quakers had strong conventides in Nansemond and Isle of
Wight counties, and in York, New Kent, and Charles City
counties, but with the cessation of persecution their influence
began to decline and their numbers decrease. The petition for
the abolition of slavery from the Quakers in Charles City
County figured in the debate in the Legislature in 1832.

In the seventeenth century a few Presbyterian ministers
were preaching in Virginia. Among them was Francis
Makemie (1658-1708). He put the Church upon its feet and is
looked upon as the Father of the Presbyterian Church in
America. In the Spring of 1706 he formed at Philadelphia the
first Presbytery ever established in the United States. He was
followed by Samuel Davies, who preached in Hanover County,
James Waddell, who preached in Lancaster County, and John
Jeffrey Smith, who established a Presbyterian Church in New
Kent County, and named the place "Providence." Their
ranks were immensely augmented by the Scotch Irish, who
poured into the Valley of Virginia.

In the bitter antagonism to the establishment the Presbyterians
joined with the Quakers and Baptist, and supported

all the bills for its divorce from the State. After the Revolution,
when the Legislature passed an act incorporating the
Episcopal Church the Presbytery of Hanover was implacable
and protested against it and assisted in accomplishing its
repeal. After that the progress of the Presbyterians was
steady and rapid. Its ministry has been noted for its able
and learned men. The names, occurring in the latter part of
this period, of John Holt Rice, Conrad Speece, Moses Hoge,
George A. Baxter, William Armstrong and R. L. Dabney will
long be remembered and revered.

The next in order of the greater denominations of Christians
were the Baptists. In 1714 some emigrant Baptists settled
in Southeast Virginia and in 1743 another party settled in
the Northwest, but a large accession came from New England
about the period of the "New Light Stir." The first formal
church was established in Hanover County in 1760, but soon
there were numbers of others in Chesterfield, Middlesex,
Caroline, and other counties. A passionate impulse swayed
the preachers of the Baptist faith. The Toleration Act required
all ministers to have a license and the Baptists disregarded
its injunction. For breach of the law many of their preachers
were confined in jails, and the jails of that period had no
fire places and were cold and comfortless. Nevertheless,
through the windows of their places of confinement they
preached to great throngs of people. The result might have
been foreseen. The Baptists only grew stronger, and when
the opportunity presented itself with the coming of the Revolution
they were the bitterest opponents of the State Church.

After the American Revolution the Baptists became the
most numerous sect in the State. The masses had rushed into
their ranks and most of their early preachers were poor and
self educated. John Waller and R. B. Semple were exceptions.
But about 1830 the Baptists began to pay more attention to
the work of training their ministers. They established Richmond
College and numerous schools.

The Methodists were the last of the great denominations

to come into existence. George Whitefield, who, with John
Wesley, founded Methodism, visited Virginia in December,
1739. His doctrine of faith discarded predestination and
asserted that every man's salvation or damnation depended
upon his acceptance or rejection of the workings of the Holy
Spirit. Thus was sowed the seed which was to germinate
and bear fruit.

At first Methodism was a movement within the State
Church, both in England and Virginia. Rev. Robert Williams
was one of the earliest pioneer members, and he baptized
Rev. Jesse Lee in 1779. At that time Virginia was the headquarters
of Methodism in America. In that year there were
in the United States forty-two Methodist ministers and 8,577
members and nearly one-half of this number was in Virginia.
It was here that the largest labor was performed and from
here the greatest product was gathered. In 1784 the Methodists
set up an establishment independent of the regular
Church, which they had resolutely refrained from attacking in
the Legislature. In 1789, Jesse Lee, after visiting with Bishop
Francis Asbury, many parts of the South, took the light to
New England, which stood out like an iceberg in the cold
formality of its religion. The Methodists continued to grow
in Virginia, and established Randolph-Macon College and
other valuable schools. In 1844, the conflict of opinion and
practice between the Northern and Southern Conferences on
the subject of slavery, had become so intense that a separation
took place, which resulted in the organization of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South.

Besides these prominent Protestant denominations there
were in Virginia during this period several other Protestant
sects—Lutheran, Campbellites, Thomasites, Menonites, etc.—
all more or less important in numbers and influence. Nor had
the Roman Catholic Church neglected the State in extending
her Communion. In Colonial days the Catholics were much
feared and disliked by the people of Virginia, as by Protestants
everywhere. They might vote but the test oath prevented

them from holding offices. Notwithstanding this
the Brent family, though Catholics, held office in Colonial
days, the oath being doubtless waived as to them. With the
Revolution came more liberal feelings, and the Statute of
Religious Freedom guaranteed everybody, including Catholics,
equality of rights. So the Catholics ceased to be discriminated
against and increased in numbers during the period
under consideration; and in 1846, this denomination had
thirteen churches and three institutions of learning or charity,
one of which was St. Joseph's Academy in Richmond. The
communicants of this church were in general foreigners,
chiefly of French or Irish extraction.

Apart from the Christian denominations stood the Jews.
Some Jewish names had appeared very early in the history
of Virginia. Their first religious congregation was established
in Richmond in 1791, and in 1846 they had in that city
two synagogues, one conducted after the order of the Spanish
and Portuguese Jews, and the other after that of the German
Jews.[42]

In conclusion it may be stated with great confidence that
after the American Revolution there was no part of the world
in which conscience was more free than in Virginia.