Those who first came to Jamestown endured many hardships: starvation, Indian attacks, sickness and even the revocation of the private charter by England in 1624. Yet through it all, they endured and eventually flourished. Jamestown began as a profit-making venture for the stockholders of the Virginia Company of London, but over time the company gave the settlers a stake in the colony through private land ownership.
As settlers worked their own land, they produced more goods and grew more cash crops. One of those crops, tobacco, became a best seller in England and helped establish one of the earliest market exports in America. Prosperity increased when the colonists followed the biblical principle that "if any would not work, neither should he eat.
" Thus, Jamestown is known as the birthplace of the American system of capitalism. Representative government in our colonies began at Jamestown s church on July 30, 1619, with the first meeting of a general assembly that included "burgesses" representatives elected by property owners to advise the governor on the issues facing the colonists. The secretary s notes for that first meeting record that they opened with a prayer asking "God to guide and sanctify all [their] proceedings to His own glory and the good of this Plantation," and that it was their intent is to "establish one equal and uniform kind of government over all Virginia.
" One hundred and fifty years later, the Virginia House of Burgesses produced men like Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason and our first president, George Washington, men who greatly influenced founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Finally, those who came to Jamestown did not do so solely for economic or political purposes, but also to propagate the Christian religion. The charter granted to the Virginia Company to establish a colony in the Chesapeake Bay region was done expressly for "the furtherance of so noble a work which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in propagating of Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God.
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" Upon arriving at Cape Henry, Chaplain Robert Hunt called for three days of fasting and prayer. On April 29, 1607, he planted a wooden cross in the soil and dedicated the New World to God and to the preaching of the Gospel across the land. It was at Jamestown where Pocahontas, the beautiful daughter of the chief of the powerful Powhatan Indian tribe, became the first recorded Christian convert on American soil.
Pocahontas played a vital role in the relations between Indians and the settlers, and, after her conversion to Christianity, she married John Rolfe, one of the more prominent colonists. Far from opposing the English presence on her shores, Pocahontas traveled to England with her husband in an effort to encourage colonization of America. Officials in charge of the commemoration have said that the new emphasis on the darker side of Jamestown is all in the name of making the event "more inclusive than ones in the past.
" Those who wish to revise our history often talk about feelings of inclusiveness, not facts. While there was some injustice between the Indians and the colonists (on both sides), numerous accomplishments were made by the Jamestown settlers against great odds. Sanitized history should not be allowed to malign the American spirit and our cherished values of courage, determination and faith.
While that may make the politically correct crowd feel good, it does a grave disservice to the brave founders of Jamestown and all who follow in their footsteps. We should celebrate Jamestown, not slander it.
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