pean market and the
vast expansion of the tobacco trade, while bringing prosperity to the
larger planters, was no great boon to the man who tilled his fields with
his own hands. It assured him a ready sale for his crop, it is true, but
at prices so low as to leave him a very narrow margin of profit. The new
era which was opening, the so-called golden era of Virginia history, was
not for him. Virginia in the Eighteenth century was to be the land of
the slave holder, not of the little planter.

_CHAPTER VIII_

BENEATH THE BLACK TIDE

The importation of slaves in large numbers reacted almost immediately
upon the migration of whites to Virginia. As we have seen, the stream of
indentured servants that poured across the Atlantic remained remarkably
constant throughout almost all of the Seventeenth century. The larger
planters were always in need of laborers, and they looked to the surplus
population of England to supply them. But with the coming of the blacks
all was changed. The Virginians saw in the slave ships which now so
frequently entered their rivers the solution of all their problems. And
so the influx of white men and women from the mother country dwindled
and almost died out, while in its place came a still greater stream from
the coast of Africa.

At the time of Bacon's Rebellion the annual importation of servants was
between 1,500 and 2,000. The headrights for 1674 show 1931 names.[8-1]
Seven years later the whites were still arriving in large numbers, the
rolls for 1682 having 1,565 names. As the century drew to a close,
however, the effect of the slave trade upon white immigration is
reflected in the dwindling number of headrights. The change that was
taking place is illustrated by a patent of 13,500 acres to Ralph
Wormleley for the transportation of 249 persons, 149 of whom were white
and 100 black.[8-2] Yet so late as 1704 the servants were still coming
in appreciable numbers. In 1708 however, the number of servants at work
in the colony had dwindled away almost entirely.[8-3] In 1715 the names
of white persons listed as headrights was but ninety-one; in 1718 but
101.[8-4] In other words, the first great migration of Englishmen to
continental America, a migration extending over a century and comprising
from 100,000 to 150,000 men, women and children, had practically come to
an end.

English statesmen at the time looked upon this event as an unalloyed
blessing. The day had passed when they felt th