or?

The event fully justified these fears. The yeoman class in Virginia was
doomed. In the face of the oncoming tide they had three alternatives--to
save enough money to buy a slave or two, to leave the country, or to
sink into poverty.

It was the acquiring of a few slaves by the small planter which saved
the middle class. Before the end of the colonial period a full fifty per
cent. of the slaveholders had from one to five only. Seventy-five per
cent. had less than ten. The small farmer, as he led his newly acquired
slaves from the auction block to his plantation may have regretted that
self-preservation had forced him to depend on their labor rather than
his own. But he could see all around him the fate of those who had no
slaves, as they became "poor white trash." And he must have looked on
with pity as a neighbor gathered up his meager belongings and, deserting
his little plantation, set out for the remote frontier.

It was one of the great crimes of history, this undermining of the
yeoman class by the importation of slaves. The wrong done to the Negro
himself has been universally condemned; the wrong done the white man has
attracted less attention. It effectively deprived him of his American
birthright--the high return for his labor. It transformed Virginia and
the South from a land of hard working, self-respecting, independent
yeomen, to a land of slaves and slaveholders.

_Princeton, New Jersey_ THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER
_August, 1957_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: ENGLAND IN THE NEW WORLD 7

CHAPTER II: THE INDIAN WEED 21

CHAPTER III: THE VIRGINIA YEOMANRY 38

CHAPTER IV: FREEMEN AND FREEDMEN 60

CHAPTER V: THE RESTORATION PERIOD 84

CHAPTER VI: THE YEOMAN IN VIRGINIA HISTORY 101

CHAPTER VII: WORLD TRADE 115

CHAPTER VIII: BENEATH THE BLACK TIDE 134

NOTES TO CHAPTERS 162

APPENDIX 181

INDEX 249

_CHAPTER I_

ENGLAND IN THE NEW WORLD

At the beginning of the Seventeenth century colonial expansion had
become for England an economic necessity. Because of the depletion of
her forests, which constituted perhaps the most important of her natural
resources, she could no longer look for