w 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
class 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
class in this century.

Thus was the middle class, 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 succumbed
to the fever of the tobacco fields, or quitted the colony, leaving to
stronger and better hands the upbuilding of the middle class. 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, t