IN AMERICA AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THIS NATION, WRITTEN BOSTON AND NEW YORK MDCCC XCVIII PREFACE THE scene of the happy republic which Sir Thomas More describes in his "Utopia" is laid in an island said to have been recently discovered in America. The learned Budæus and others accepted More's description as a genuine history, but it was only a dream. The Utopia which Sir Edwin Sandys and other advanced statesmen designed was a reality, but it has had no genuine history. .. It has been said that "the history of every nation begins with myth. When the age of reflection arrives and the nation begins to speculate on its origin, it has no more recollection of what happened in its infancy than a man has of what happened to him in his cradle, and in the absence of records has been disposed to accept for itself a mythical foundation and founder." When our age of reflection arrived "Smith's history was almost the only source from which we derived any knowledge of the infancy of our State;" and it came to be regarded as the standard authority on our foundation and its author as our founder. It was my original intention to consider fully in the text of this work each one of the numerous questions involved in "the John Smith controversy," but so much depends upon the point from which we look that I became convinced that so long as any one looked from the John Smith standpoint he would retain the John Smith views regardless of other evidences, and that if he should conclude to take the right view he would then see correctly without any aid from others. Therefore I decided to avoid the needless controversies in the text and to devote it especially to an account of the origin of this nation from the point of view (the authentic records, etc.) of those on whom the enterprise was dependent, which I believe to be the right view for the historian to take; because it is the point from which the history of their enterprise can be clearly seen, fully appreciated, and fairly presented. Their acts and the motives which inspired them cannot really be seen at all through the thick veil thrown over them by their opponents for the special purpose of obscuring them. But my reasons for opposing the John Smith views have been so frequently misunderstood as to make some personal explanation on my part necessary, and therefore I shall give them here, in the preface, so fully that no one need misunderstand my motive in this matter hereafter. Although my tasks in life have not always been along literary lines, I have been a student of history ever since I was a child, and Captain John Smith was the hero of my childhood; but after reaching manhood, as I continued my studies, I was obliged to abandon one idea after another which I had derived from Smith's history, until I was finally obliged to relinquish my faith in him, and I then became convinced that there was certainly something wrong with our earliest history. The hearing of my right ear having been destroyed by the concussion from the explosion of General B. F. Butler's powder-boat in December, 1864, near Fort Fisher, N. C., where I was a soldier in the Confederate service, and my left ear having been injured by the same shock, I finally became so deaf as to be cut off from my former business pursuits, and I then determined to try to locate this historic wrong, and to right it if I could. With this object I searched for evidence wheresoever there seemed a prospect of finding any. I have collected a great deal, and it is really not me but this evidence which is opposing the Smith views. I believe that the maxim, "under no circumstances are we justified in defending an injurious story which we do not know to be true" is an especially good maxim in matters of history, where truth and justice are necessary for historic uses. Smith's story is beneficial to himself, but it is injurious to others; and, however true parts of it may be, it conveys an untrue and trivial idea of the great movement of which it pretends to be a history. As I am a Virginian, I am naturally anxious to take our earliest history out of the narrow, inaccurate ruts into which it was put by the "historian," and to place it on the broad foundation where it rightly belongs. As I am a citizen of this republic, I wish to show the fallacy of the claims and pretensions of Captain John Smith, because they are incorrect, unjust, and ungenerous; and to give the correct view of our foundation, because it is honorable to our founders and to us. But in this matter I am not "moved by personal animosity towards Smith," and I am not "working under influences which are unfriendly to Virginia." I bear Captain Smith no malice. I regret exceedingly that any one who had been an official in Virginia should afterwards have been guilty of imposing a story as "history" which has made it necessary to expose the false ideas conveyed thereby. That this necessity exists, and that the issues involve the true basis of our foundation, is certain. I. The historic issue is between John Smith, the author, in England, and the managers of the movement on whom the enterprise was dependent in England and in Virginia. II. The personal issue is between John Smith, the actor, in Virginia, and the other councilors during his time here and the committees of the company in England for the rewarding of men on their merits, whose business it was to decide such matters at that time. III. The question is, Does Captain John Smith's history convey a correct idea of this movement? That is to say, Was the colony founded by Smith under the form of government designed by King James I., and did everything go to ruin "after the alteration," under the popular char |