Why is 1619 important to jamestown

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There was to be one church, one God, and one law. No dissension would be tolerated. Sir Thomas Dale built upon this strict enforcement of law when he arrived in March Even though these laws were very harsh, many felt that extreme measures were necessary in order for the colony to have any chance of surviving. The harsh regime was not especially attractive to potential colonists.

In the leadership of the Virginia Company issued a new set of instructions, often called the Great Charter, which contained provisions designed to encourage private investment and immigration. Under the new rules, Council decisions were made by majority vote, with the governor only casting the deciding vote in the case of a tie. The General Assembly was to be the voice of the people of Virginia, providing a check on the power of the governor and council.

Thus began the first representative government in the European colonies. Before adjourning, the burgesses had adopted new laws for the colonists as well as regulations designed to spur economic growth.

Martial law was a temporary measure designed to bring order to a chaotic situation. Remind students that the gentlemen running the Virginia Company stayed in England and made decisions from there on how to run the colony. Rule by the military. Ask why the Virginia Company instituted martial law in Lack of discipline among colonists; lack of work ethic; fears of trouble with native population.

What hopes or aspirations might have played a part in this decision? A determination to see the colony succeed. What are some advantages and disadvantages of martial law?

Advantages include maintaining order and gaining obedience from people; disadvantages include being unattractive to newcomers and harshness of rules,.

Step 3: Remind students that in the next six or seven years after the implementation of martial law, the Company was working to stabilize the colony and to encourage investment and immigration. An important turning point in American history occurred at Jamestown in as the first freely elected assembly met to make "just Laws" for the fledgling colony. Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer , two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history.

Convened with little fanfare or formality, the first gathering of a representative governing body anywhere in the Americas, the General Assembly, met from July 30 to August 4 in the choir of the newly built church at Jamestown. A few weeks later, a battered English privateer, the White Lion , entered the Chesapeake Bay and anchored off Point Comfort, a small but thriving maritime community at the mouth of the James River that was often a first port of call for oceangoing ships.

While roving in the Caribbean, the ship, together with its companion, the Treasurer , had been involved in a fierce battle with a Portuguese slaver bound for Veracruz. Victorious, the two privateers pillaged the Portuguese vessel and sailed away northward carrying dozens of enslaved Africans. Painting by Richard C. Moore, courtesy of Jamestown Rediscovery.

The Treasurer entered the James River a few days later but opted to leave quickly, possibly after clandestinely selling some of the African captives on board. No one in Virginia in or in the years following could have possibly grasped the importance of what had occurred. Equally, no documented discussion took place in the colony about the morality of owning and enslaving Africans. Deliberations in future general assemblies at Jamestown, as mirrored later in colonial legislatures across English America, focused far more on policing measures against Africans and protecting the rights of masters than on the rights of the enslaved or ethical considerations.

Slavery, African and Indian, together with a broad spectrum of white non-freedom—apprenticeships, convict labor, and serfdom—were simply taken for granted in the emerging Atlantic world of the time and elicited little comment. Yet the coincidence of the meeting of the first representative government and arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the summer of was portentous.

Historians have argued that the rise of liberty and equality in America, America's democratic experiment, was shadowed from its beginning by its dark obverse: slavery and racism.

Slavery in the midst of freedom, Edmund Morgan writes, was the central paradox of the birth of America. The rapid expansion of opportunities for Europeans was made possible only by the enslavement and exploitation of African and Indian peoples.

Non-Europeans were consigned to a permanent underclass excluded from the benefits of white society, while Europeans profited enormously from the fruits of the labors of those they oppressed. Arguably, then, marks the inception of the most important political development in American history, the rise of democracy, and the emergence of what would in time become one of the nation's greatest challenges: the corrosive legacy of racial stereotypes that continues to afflict our society today.

Despite the significance of and surrounding years, this period is almost entirely unknown to the public. For the nation at large, Plymouth in or the founding of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts a decade later exerts a far greater influence on our collective historical memory than the founding of Virginia in or the events of Photo by M.