A Jamestown festival.
We never read the accounts of the annual festivals of
Plymouth Rock without wondering that the people of
Virginia had not, in like manner, commemorated the virtues of the men who first planted at
Jamestown the banner of civilization on this continent.
It is by such commemorations, rather than by history or tradition, that men keep alive, in all its freshness, the spirit of a great ancestry, and not only render just homage to their fame, but identify the affections of the living with the glorious dead, and transmit their illustrious example from generation to generation.
The founders of the
Virginia colony entitled themselves to as distinguished honors at the hands of their posterity as any founders of empire in ancient or modern times.
Their great leader,
Captain John Smith, who, by the way, gave
New England its name, and made a map of that colony that is still considered valuable, was one of the master spirits of the age, equally distinguished by heroin actions and practical sense, and second to no man but one in the annals of
Virginia's illustrious sons.
The figure of this man stands out in bold relief upon the page of history — the most energetic, the most intrepid, the most chivalric, and yet the most common-sense and practical man of his time.
The truth that, for all great movements and changes in human society,
Providence has ever in reserve some man chosen to carry out its designs, was never more strikingly illustrated than in the life and labors of
Captain John Smith, but for whose individual strength of character and complete adaptation to the work he had to do, the settlement at
Jamestown would have been a disastrous failure.
We have no disposition to detract from the merits of any of the other pioneers of civilization in the Western world.
Nearly all the great nations of
Europe made various attempts to plant the germ of empire upon American soil.
In addition to the representatives at
Jamestown and
Plymouth of the Anglo-
Saxon race, there were the Swedes,
French, Spaniards, and those
Dutch of New Amsterdam who, in the veracious and charming chronicles of
Diedrich Knickerbocker, are embalmed for immortality.
The descendants of those last still keep up, as well they may, an annual festival in honor of the days of
Peter Stuyvesant,
Worter Van Twiller, and the broad-bottomed and many trowsered burghers who laid, with much deliberation and the patient industry of beavers, the foundation of what is now the
Empire City.
But none of all these
European settlers of
America have a higher claim to the admiration and affection of their descendants than the founders of the
Virginia colony and the class of Englishmen which they chiefly represented.
With the royalist principles of the Cavaliers and their undying devotion to the house of
Stuart, we may have no sympathies.
We may wish that the objects of their loyalty had been worthy of such fidelity and attachment, and we dare say that wish was no stranger to their own bosoms when
James the Second succeeded in alienating from himself the oldest and best friends of his family.
We have nothing to do with their politics, which were errors of the head rather than the heart, but we cannot consent that their intelligence, their fidelity to principle, and their social and household virtues, shall be thrown into the shade by the superior homage which is now paid to another and more progressive portion of the
British people.
We believe that it will be found upon examination that the Cavaliers contributed as much to the literature, the philosophy, the eloquence, the statesmanship, the soldiership, the intellect of
England in every department, as any other class of her people.
Nor were they the dissolute and reckless race that it has been customary to represent them.
Macaulay observes of the Puritans that it is unfair to judge them by the sanctimonious hypocrites and evil men who were found in their number, because power always attracts to its support adventurers and soldiers of fortune, who will embrace any cause and make any profession, political or religious, which will advance their personal success.
We claim that the Cavaliers shall be judged by a like charitable standard, and that the same influence of power, which they possessed so much longer than the Puritans, shall be permitted to relieve them, also, from the odium which has been brought upon them by the licentious and unprincipled sycophants and retainers of rank and authority.
Whatever the revelry of the times and Court of Charles the Second, (and an era of more shameless dissipation in the immediate circle of the
Court could not well be found,) the great body of the country gentlemen throughout the kingdom was a simple, virtuous, manly and noble race, pre-eminently distinguished by frankness, honesty, truthfulness, hospitality and courage.
There was as much purity, happiness and religion in their households as in any other British houses, and the contributions of their divines to the cause of Christianity are among the most cherished books in all theological libraries; reservoirs of thought and learning, from which generation after generation have drawn, and which will continue to supply the Christian world with argument and exhortation for ages to come.
Such was the character which was stamped upon the
Virginia colony, and whose distinctive features are yet visible in
Virginia households.
The country life and its home virtues, of the England of their day, was transferred to a new continent.
Of this race,
Captain John Smith was a noble type, and from it sprang the greatest of mankind,
George Washington, a long line of the most illustrious men of this hemisphere — men who not only inherited the social and domestic virtues of their forefathers, but who, with pen and sword, achieved the liberties of
America, and whose sagacious statesmanship, practical wisdom, and triumphant energy, advanced this country upon a march to prosperity and power unexampled in its rapidity and magnificence in the history of mankind.
If we would keep more continually before us the memory of our forefathers, we should not only do honor to them and ourselves, but find an incentive to enterprise and hope in our present condition.
Widespread as the wreck of fortunes which has followed the war, it presents no such difficulties and discouragements as served only to nerve the resolution and develop the energies of the men who rescued this country from a howling wilderness and made it bloom and blossom like the rose.
We have only to emulate their enterprises, their perseverance, their constancy, their faith, to restore the fallen fabric of our prosperity, and to make
Virginia what she was in old times — a star of the first magnitude in the
American firmament.
