THE BEGINNING.
Of the one hundred and five colonists who came to Virginia, more
than half are classed as "gentlemen," and the remainder as laborers,
tradesmen and mechanics. Many of them probably had been unaccustomed
to labor, strangers to toil, and improvident. Such were the founders
of the first American States. From that beginning came the Virginias
of after times.
The London Company had prepared a form of government for the
colony before the departure from England. This code of laws was put
in a box, sealed and hidden until the arrival in Virginia, when it was
to be opened and the government established according to its provisions.
By it all power was vested in a body of seven councilors, whose names
were as follows: Bartholomew Gosnold, the navigator John Smith,
Edward Wingfield, Christopher Newport, John Ratcliffe, John Martin
and George Kendall. At their first meeting Edward Wingfield was
chosen president; in other words, the first governor of Virginia. This
was the beginning of civil government in America.
While most of the colonists engaged in felling the forest, building
cabins and erecting a fort for protection against the savages, Captains
Newport and Smith decided to explore the country, and accordingly
sailed up the James river as far as the falls of that river, when they
paid a visit to Powhatan, king of the Indians in these parts. Here, just
below the falls, near the present site of the city of Richmond, was the
capital of him whose word was absolute law to the savage nations over
which no civil code could ever have exerted the least influence. This
monarch of the forest received the foreigners with courtesy, and manifested
no uneasiness at their intrusion. After a short stay the party returned
to Jamestown, and Newport sailed for England. Shortly after
his departure the colonists began to realize their true condition. They
were three thousand miles from home and friends, upon an unknown
shore, surrounded by wild beasts and wilder men, subject to pestilential
diseases over which their physicians had no control, and added to this
were civil dissensions. These resulted in the displacement of Wingfield in
the office of president, and the deposing, imprisonment, and finally the
execution of Kendall. Newport was in England, and Ratcliffe, Martin
and Smith were the only remaining members of the council. Ratcliffe
was chosen president, but being a man of neither courage nor ability, he
voluntarily resigned an office which he was incompetent to fill. Smith
and Martin alone were left. The latter elected the former president,
and for the first time not the least opposition was manifested toward
the new administration.
