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As Jamestown, Virginia prepares to celebrate its 400th birthday, The Rappahannock News will occasionally print selected Virginia Vignettes as a way of celebrating Virginia’s history.
Was the Virginia
colony a fledgling
democracy?
No. Authority for running the colony resided first with the London Company and later with the King and his privy council, which could impose rules on the colony and veto the actions of governors and the General Assembly. Furthermore, powerful planter elite controlled the internal affairs of Virginia through its positions in the House of Burgesses, county government, and on church vestries. And yet the assembly was a representative body elected by the freemen, all of whom were eligible to vote prior to 1670. Although voting was later restricted to land and lease holders, eligibility was still considerable up to the Revolution. Most importantly, < distance from England and the isolation of the frontier cultivated a spirit of individualism, a defiance of authority that would be the basis for a democratic polity in the future.
Were the first Africans brought to
Virginia as slaves?
In 1619 a group of some twenty Angolans arrived in Virginia on a Dutch frigate, which had taken them from a
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