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 prosperity from the old industries that for centuries had been her mainstay. In the days when the Norman conquerors first set foot upon English soil the virgin woods, broken occasionally by fields and villages, had stretched in dense formation from the Scottish border to Sussex and Devonshire. But with the passage of five centuries a great change had been wrought. The growing population, the expansion of agriculture, the increasing use of wood for fuel, for shipbuilding, and for the construction of houses, had by the end of the Tudor period so denuded the forests that they no longer sufficed for the most pressing needs of the country.