Patrician and Plebeian Part 9

The more prosperous and capable members of the middle cla.s.s shared to some extent the benefits resulting from negro labor. Many that had been unable to secure servants now bought slaves and thus were able to increase very much the output of their plantations. The shortness of the time that the servants served, the great cost of transporting them to the colony and the risk of losing them by death or by flight, had made it impossible for the small farmers to use them in cultivating their fields. Since negro labor was not attended with these objections, many planters of humble means bought slaves and at one step placed themselves above the cla.s.s of those that trusted to their own exertions in the tilling of their fields. When once a start had been made, the advance of their prosperity was limited only by the extent of their ability and industry. Some became quite wealthy.

Smythe, writing in 1773, stated that many of them formed fortunes superior to some of the first rank, despite the fact that their families were not ancient or so respectable.

Those members of the middle cla.s.s who were unable, through poverty or incapacity, to share the prosperity of the early years of the 18th century were injured by the general use of slave labor in the colony.

Since they could not purchase negroes, they were in a sense thrown into compet.i.tion with them. The enormous increase in the production of tobacco brought down the price and made their single exertions less and less profitable. They were deprived of the privilege of working for wages, for no freeman could toil side by side with negroes, and retain anything of self-respect. Thus after the year 1700, the cla.s.s of very poor whites became larger, and their depravity more p.r.o.nounced.[222] A Frenchman, travelling in Virginia at the time of the Revolution, testified that the condition of many white families was pitiful. "It is there," he said, "that I saw poor people for the first time since crossing the ocean. In truth, among these rich plantations, where the negro alone is unhappy, are often found miserable huts, inhabited by whites, whose wan faces and ragged clothes give testimony of their poverty."[223] It is certain that this cla.s.s was never large, however, for those that were possessed of the least trace of energy or ambition could move to the frontier and start life again on more equal terms. Smythe says that the real poor cla.s.s in Virginia was less than anywhere else in the world.

The introduction of slavery into the colony affected far more profoundly the character of the middle cla.s.s farmer than it did that of the aristocrat. The indentured servants, upon whose labor the wealthy planters had relied for so many years, were practically slaves, being bound to the soil and forced to obey implicitly those whom they served. The influence that their possession exerted in moulding the character of the aristocracy was practically the same as that of the negro slave. Both tended to instil into the master pride and the power of command. Since, however, but few members of the small farmer cla.s.s at any time made use of servant labor, their character was not thus affected by them. Moreover, the fact that so many servants, after the expiration of their term of indenture, entered this cla.s.s, tended to humble the poor planters, for they realized always the existence of a bond of fellows.h.i.+p between themselves and the field laborers. When the negro slave had supplanted the indentured servant upon the plantations of the colony a vast change took place in the pride of the middle cla.s.s. Every white man, no matter how poor he was, no matter how degraded, could now feel a pride in his race.

Around him on all sides were those whom he felt to be beneath him, and this alone instilled into him a certain self-respect. Moreover, the immediate control of the negroes fell almost entirely into the hands of white men of humble means, for it was they, acting as overseers upon the large plantations, that directed their labors in the tobacco fields. This also tended to give to them an arrogance that was entirely foreign to their nature in the 17th century. All contemporaneous writers, in describing the character of the middle cla.s.s in the 18th century, agree that their pride and independence were extraordinary. Smythe says, "They are generous, friendly, and hospitable in the extreme; but mixed with such an appearance of rudeness, ferocity and haughtiness, which is, in fact, only a want of polish, occasioned by their deficiencies in education and in knowledge of mankind, as well as their general intercourse with slaves."

Beverley spoke of them as being haughty and jealous of their liberties, and so impatient of restraint that they could hardly bear the thought of being controlled by any superior power. Hugh Jones, John Davis and Anbury also describe at length the pride of the middle cla.s.s in this century.

Thus was the middle cla.s.s, throughout the entire colonial period, forming and developing. From out the host of humble settlers, the overflow of England, there emerged that body of small planters in Virginia, that formed the real strength of the colony. The poor laborer, the hunted debtor, the captive rebel, the criminal had now thrown aside their old characters and become well-to-do and respected citizens. They had been made over--had been created anew by the economic conditions in which they found themselves, as filthy rags are purified and changed into white paper in the hands of the manufacturer. The relentless law of the survival of the fittest worked upon them with telling force and thousands that could not stand the severe test imposed upon them by conditions in the New World succ.u.mbed to the fever of the tobacco fields, or quitted the colony, leaving to stronger and better hands the upbuilding of the middle cla.s.s. On the other hand, the fertility of the soil, the cheapness of land, the ready sale of tobacco combined to make possible for all that survived, a degree of prosperity unknown to them in England. And if for one short period, the selfishness of the English government, the ambition of the governor of the colony and the greed of the controlling cla.s.s checked the progress of the commons, the people soon a.s.serted their rights in open rebellion, and insured for themselves a share in the government and a chance to work out their own destiny, untrammelled by injustice and oppression. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the middle cla.s.s was a numerous, intelligent and prosperous body, far superior to the ma.s.s of lowly immigrants from which it sprang.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] Abstracts of Proceedings of Va. Company of London, Vol. II, p.

164.

[140] Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 17 and 18; Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., Vol.

I, p. 597.

[141] Abstracts of Proceedings of Va. Company of London, Vol. I, pp.

26 and 34; Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., Vol. I, pp. 599-600.

[142] Abstracts of Proceedings of Va. Company of London, Vol. I, pp.

162-164.

[143] Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va. Vol. I, p. 51.

[144] Abstracts of Proceedings of Va. Company of London, Vol. I, pp.

130 and 138.

[145] Force, Vol. III.

[146] Abstracts of Proceedings of Va. Company of London, Vol. I, p.

12.

[147] Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., Vol. I, p. 286.

[148] Bruce, Soc. Life of Va., p. 17; Wm. & Mary Quar., Vol. IX, p.

61.

[149] Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., Vol. I, pp. 576-584.

[150] Force, Vol. III, Orders and Const.i.tutions, p. 22.

[151] Va. Maga. of Hist. and Biog., Vol. VII, p. 191.

[152] Ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 75.

[153] Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 251.

[154] Ibid., Vol. VI, p. 251.

[155] Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., Vol. I, pp. 378, 477 and 480.

[156] Va. Maga. of Hist. and Biog., Vol. VI, p. 251.

[157] Ibid., Vol. VII, p. 441.

[158] Sainsbury Abstracts, year 1638, p. 8.

[159] Va. Maga. of Hist. and Biog., Vol. VI.

[160] Abstracts of Proceedings of Va. Company of London, Vol. I, p.

92.

[161] Neill, Virginia Carolorum.

[162] Hening's Statutes, Vol. II.

[163] Virginia Hist. Register, Vol. I, p. 63.

[164] Neill, Virginia Carolorum; Hening's Statutes, Vol. II, p. 510.

[165] Hening's Statutes, Vol. II, p. 510.

[166] Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., Vol. I, pp. 576-584.

[167] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 573.

[168] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 574.

[169] Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., Vol. I, p. 574.

[170] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 608.

[171] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 609.

[172] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 610.

[173] Beverley, Hist. of Va., p. 57.

[174] Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., Vol. I, p. 611.

[175] Hening's Statutes, Vol. II, p. 510.

[176] Strachey's Historie of Travaile into Va., p. 63.

[177] Percy's Discourse, p. lxxii.