WEBVTT NOTE 15. The Virginia Land System 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.200 Volume 2, Chapter 15, The Virginia Land System 2 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:09.920 The southern colonies generally had a much less eventful history in the first half of 3 00:00:09.920 --> 00:00:17.360 the 18th century than their more northerly sisters. These colonies expanded, but retained 4 00:00:17.360 --> 00:00:24.600 roughly the same social and political structure. A large plantation economy, growing mainly 5 00:00:24.600 --> 00:00:30.800 of Money, tobacco, and staffed with forced labor, with negro slaves increasing more and 6 00:00:30.800 --> 00:00:34.840 more in relation to indentured servants. 7 00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:41.400 The head-right system of land grants, among other political institutions, had subsidized 8 00:00:41.400 --> 00:00:48.840 the importation of indentured servants, and the availability of forced labor in turn permitted 9 00:00:48.840 --> 00:00:55.000 Large Plantations, otherwise uneconomic, to develop and prosper. 10 00:00:55.000 --> 00:01:02.040 In each colony the Anglican Church was established, but not very popularly, and religious liberty 11 00:01:02.040 --> 00:01:05.180 was permitted to all Protestants. 12 00:01:05.180 --> 00:01:11.360 An appointed royal or proprietary governor with his allied council presided over the 13 00:01:11.360 --> 00:01:17.760 colony and was confronted with an elected assembly, which, though elected reasonably 14 00:01:17.760 --> 00:01:24.200 democratically, generally represented the planter oligarchy. Slaves and servants, of 15 00:01:24.200 --> 00:01:30.720 course, could never vote. The assembly jealously guarded its power over appropriation in tax 16 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:37.980 bills and would not relinquish it to the executive. Maryland and Virginia were particularly stable 17 00:01:37.980 --> 00:01:44.340 in this period, especially the former colony. Virginia received a deep imprint from the 18 00:01:44.340 --> 00:02:14.340 and the Lengthy Administration of Governor Alexander Spotswood, 1710-22 A thoroughgoing reactionary, Spotswood was, in the words of Herbert Osgood, a high tory and defender of the prerogative in matters of church and state, and an aggressive imperialist in his relations with the Indians, the French and the neighboring colonies. He was a close friend of the influential British 19 00:02:14.340 --> 00:02:29.340 William Blathwaite. Spotswood was always ready to arm and fight against the Indians or the French, and he urged English seizure of the Great Lakes and Trans-Allegheny region. 20 00:02:29.340 --> 00:02:42.340 In contrast to the northern colonies, a permanent fund for governor's salaries existed in both Maryland and Virginia, and this weakened the extent of assembly control over the governor. 21 00:02:42.340 --> 00:02:49.340 Governor. But the assembly could still threaten to cut off other appropriations for the executive 22 00:02:49.340 --> 00:02:56.260 branch, and this proved an effective weapon. During Queen Anne's War, the assembly balked 23 00:02:56.260 --> 00:03:03.220 at Spotswood's demand for military appropriations against a rumored, but never materialized, 24 00:03:03.220 --> 00:03:09.920 attack by the French. Four years later, it again balked at appropriations to fight Indians 25 00:03:09.920 --> 00:03:16.540 in South Carolina. Governor Spotswood arrived in Virginia with instructions to reform the 26 00:03:16.540 --> 00:03:23.540 land system. The original fairly viable head-right policy of granting 50 acres to each settler 27 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:30.340 had been prevented through granting free settlers an additional 50 acres for each indentured 28 00:03:30.340 --> 00:03:36.800 servant. To this were added the purchases of head-rights, Virginia having decided in 29 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:44.640 1702 to allow unlimited purchases of head rights at the price of five shillings for 50 acres. 30 00:03:45.440 --> 00:03:53.040 Fraudulent surveys and grants also helped result in a policy of large land grants to speculators 31 00:03:53.040 --> 00:04:00.240 instead of to settlers. Spotswood at first tried to reform the system of land monopoly. 32 00:04:00.880 --> 00:04:06.320 The legal requirement that land be cleared and planted before grant of title 33 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:13.760 had been construed so loosely that a land speculator could appropriate 10,000 acres 34 00:04:13.760 --> 00:04:20.720 by clearing just one acre and building a tiny hut upon the acre of land. 35 00:04:20.720 --> 00:04:27.680 Spotswood managed to drive through a stricter land law in 1710 and 1713, providing also 36 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:31.640 for forfeiture for non-payment of quit rent. 37 00:04:31.640 --> 00:04:38.360 Spotswood was interested not only in genuine reform, but also in enforcement of the perennially 38 00:04:38.360 --> 00:04:41.600 contentious quit-rent burden. 39 00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:45.800 The council, however, was largely composed of great landlords. 40 00:04:45.800 --> 00:04:51.560 They bitterly resisted the new laws, and as judges of the general court, declared the 41 00:04:51.560 --> 00:04:59.200 forfeiture applicable only to future rather than past land grants, and even this restricted 42 00:04:59.200 --> 00:05:03.480 provision was not enforced by Virginia officials. 43 00:05:03.480 --> 00:05:10.320 Alexander Spotswood finally decided that it would be more profitable to join the grantees 44 00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:12.280 than to try to defeat them. 45 00:05:12.280 --> 00:05:21.000 Spotswood not only had his own land laws weakened in 1720, he also inaugurated an era of large 46 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:28.240 land grants on easy terms, especially in the tempting areas of unsettled Piedmont land 47 00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:33.900 West of the Virginia Fall Line. Spotswood himself was not slow to take advantage of 48 00:05:33.900 --> 00:05:40.200 his own change of heart, especially when he heard of his pending removal. And by the end 49 00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:47.200 of his term, he had managed to grant himself over 85,000 acres in Spotsylvania County. 50 00:05:49.880 --> 00:05:55.880 As an extra bonus, Spotswood granted himself a special quit-rent exemption for a seven-year 51 00:05:55.880 --> 00:06:02.880 Period. He also took care to be granted land containing iron mines, the first iron produced 52 00:06:02.880 --> 00:06:09.380 in Virginia. He even imported a settlement of Germans to found Germana and to work the 53 00:06:09.380 --> 00:06:15.740 mines, but the subsidized venture turned out to be a failure. The first imported Germans 54 00:06:15.740 --> 00:06:21.580 were Swiss, who soon moved to new land of their own, at which point Spotts Wood made 55 00:06:21.580 --> 00:06:27.620 made certain to import palatine Germans to be indentured servants who could not leave 56 00:06:27.620 --> 00:06:30.060 their work so readily. 57 00:06:30.060 --> 00:06:36.260 The policy of land engrossment was continued and expanded by Spotswood's successors, among 58 00:06:36.260 --> 00:06:43.820 whom was William Gooch, who governed Virginia from 1726 to 1749. 59 00:06:43.820 --> 00:06:50.820 In 1730, Gooch made the lot of the land monopolist still easier by deferring quid rents, and 60 00:06:51.580 --> 00:06:57.020 and permitting the settlement of one family for every thousand acres. 61 00:06:57.020 --> 00:07:03.580 These terms were specified in a grant of 30,000 acres to John Van Meter. 62 00:07:03.580 --> 00:07:11.820 Between 1730 and 1736, just six years, eight grants were made by the Virginia government 63 00:07:11.820 --> 00:07:16.660 totaling 500,000 acres of unsettled land. 64 00:07:16.660 --> 00:07:24.260 The largest grant was 130,000 acres to William Beverly. Some of these grants passed through 65 00:07:24.260 --> 00:07:32.940 the Piedmont and into the Shenandoah Valley. These grants began in 1728 with gifts of 26,000 66 00:07:32.940 --> 00:07:41.420 acres to Larkin Chu and his associates. The van Meters soon received 40,000 acres. The 67 00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:47.140 The actual settlers, however, were not necessarily worse off in securing this land here than 68 00:07:47.140 --> 00:07:48.860 elsewhere. 69 00:07:48.860 --> 00:07:54.660 In no colony was a libertarian homestead principle in full operation. 70 00:07:54.660 --> 00:08:01.340 And many settlers found it cheaper to purchase small farms from these speculators than to 71 00:08:01.340 --> 00:08:07.660 battle for patents from the Virginia bureaucracy or to buy land in Pennsylvania. 72 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:13.560 In the March westward, Virginia came into conflict with competing land monopolists, 73 00:08:13.560 --> 00:08:16.680 the owners of the huge Northern Neck. 74 00:08:16.680 --> 00:08:22.620 Lord Culpepper had been proprietor of Northern Neck as well as co-proprietor of Virginia 75 00:08:22.620 --> 00:08:29.100 itself in the late 17th century, but when he sold back his proprietary right in Virginia 76 00:08:29.100 --> 00:08:36.560 to the Crown in 1684, he could not negotiate a sale for Northern Neck, for which he then 77 00:08:36.560 --> 00:09:05.560 The Northern Neck Grant had passed by inheritance into the hands of Lord Fairfax. Fairfax, by loose construction of the Charter, contended that Northern Neck should extend to all the land between the headwaters of the Potomac and Rappahannock, including Rapidan Rivers. 78 00:09:05.560 --> 00:09:13.520 Finally, in 1745, the case was decided in favor of Lord Fairfax over the protest of 79 00:09:13.520 --> 00:09:16.840 the Governor and the House of Burgesses. 80 00:09:16.840 --> 00:09:23.880 By this appalling decision, Lord Fairfax was granted the ownership of the enormous total 81 00:09:23.880 --> 00:09:30.600 of six million acres of northern Virginia, including a large piece of the Shenandoah 82 00:09:30.600 --> 00:09:31.600 Valley. 83 00:09:31.600 --> 00:09:57.600 The decision awarded to Fairfax, the present Virginia counties of Culpeper, Folkere, Rappahannock, Madison, Prince William, Stafford, Fairfax, Loudon, Arlington, Warren, Page, Shenandoah, Clark, Frederick, King George, Westmoreland, Richmond, Northumberland, and Lancaster. 84 00:09:57.600 --> 00:10:05.600 and the West Virginia counties of Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire, and Hardy. 85 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:13.600 In the meanwhile, leading tidewater planters had for decades received land grants from Virginia in this expanding region. 86 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:23.600 Particularly active was William Beverly, nephew of William Byrd II, and the Beverly family had secured over 60,000 acres 87 00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:43.600 and, in fact, a large part of Augusta County. In contrast, Robert King Carter, an agent of Lord Fairfax and senior member of the Council, had acquired an enormous amount of land under Fairfax's overlordship for himself, his relatives and friends. 88 00:10:43.600 --> 00:10:51.440 When Fairfax's claim was upheld, he validated all Virginia grants in his region, with himself, 89 00:10:51.440 --> 00:10:55.320 of course, as the overlord, receiving quit rents. 90 00:10:55.320 --> 00:11:00.520 The quit rents, however, were poorly enforced, Fairfax having come up against the almost 91 00:11:00.520 --> 00:11:05.920 universal colonial resistance to paying this feudal levy. 92 00:11:05.920 --> 00:11:11.760 Being poorly enforced, the Fairfax proprietary did not arouse the resentment that might have 93 00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:12.600 have been expected.