This month marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in Virginia, the first permanent British settlement in the New World. However, most people overlook Jamestown as the beginning of the United States and focus on the Puritans/Pilgrims who settled 13 years later in Massachusetts. We still regard the Pilgrims as a freedom-seeking group whose example led eventually to a free United States separate from Great Britain. (We even honor them with Thanksgiving.)
However, the Puritans were actually a harsh, totalitarian sect, and the only freedom they sought was freedom from religious persecution, which they had experienced in Europe and fled from.
The settlement at Jamestown is much more instructive of how we came about as a nation.
The settlers who arrived in 1607 and settled along the James river were largely indentured servants, who were expected to work for free for seven years to gain their freedom. However, as slaves they simply refused to work, and soon starvation set in even though the land was fertile and deer and other fair game were plentiful. In short, they chose to starve rather than work for free!
It wasn’t until a group of replacement settlers arrived later that things began to change. The new governor, Thomas Dale, saw that the men would rather play in the streets and idle their time away than work, so he–miraculous idea–instituted the right to private property. Dale gave each man three acres of his own, and soon the population was a productive, hard-working, well-fed lot. Craftsmanship, innovation and invention soon followed, and Virginia became the most prosperous colony, eventually giving us three of our first five presidents, to say nothing of Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Amazing what private property (and the freedom it represents) can do. Under the colonial totalitarianism before Dale, the people literally chose death over work.
And some people still wonder why North Korea is so poor. They should study the history of Jamestown.
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Posted in Almanack Musings |
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