the western line from the Ohio River to the Lake of the Woods. As time and settlement progressed, the other colonies became unwilling Virginia should overshadow them all by retaining this great territory; and for the promotion of harmony the cession to the United States of all lying north and west of the Ohio was proposed, and finally consummated in 1784-just two hundred years after the Elizabethan christening. Virginia made the condition. (drawn by Jefferson) that the territory ceded should be divided into States in which slavery should be forever prohibited. She wanted it stipulated, too, that the territory between the Ohio River and the Allegheny Mountains (now West Virginia) should remain inviolably hers; but Hon. George W. Summers, speaking from examination of the original Virginia archives at Richmond, said at Wheeling in 1863 that this stipulation was not made by Congress for the reason that Virginia was unable to show title to that territory. Mr. Madison, then in Congress, wrote to Jefferson to furnish the evidence of the title claimed; but it could not be shown that Virginia's rights went beyond the springs of the waters flowing towards the Atlantic, and the Northwest Territory was finally ceded without such stipulation. Virginia did, however, retain possession of the district between the mountains and the Ohio River, no occasion arising to impeach her title; and with her 70,000 square miles, reaching from the Atlantic to the Ohio, still held a greater domain than any other of the original States. Jefferson Davis in his "Rise and Fall" describes Virginia as being at the opening of the Rebellion "a republic or nation." But relatively she was only a fragment of her former territorial greatness. Nor was

the shrinkage in area alone. She had lost the place conferred on her in early days by the exalted virtues of her great citizens, and lost also her primacy in population and commercial importance. At the time the Constitution was ratified, Virginia was the foremost of the States, and in the census the following year showed a population more than double that of New York.

No communities that have ever existed equal in political and economic interest those founded on the Atlantic coast of North America. None equalled Virginia in early development of a stable political and religious liberty, towards which the ferment in Europe had been working ever since the Crusades. The Virginia act of religious freedom, written by Jefferson, is the basis of similar provisions. in nearly all the States of the Union. In the bill of rights in the first West Virginia constitution, it was embodied word for word. The first constitution of Virginia, adoptMadon ed in 1776, was written by George Nelson; the preamble to it by Mr. Jefferson. It was far from satisfying Mr. Jefferson's advanced ideas, but it has the distinction of being the first written constitution of a free state in the annals of the world. Mr. Jefferson left Congress in that year in order that he might devote all his time and energies to a revision of the then existing Virginia code and to having this (legislative) constitution rewritten and adopted by convention in more permanent form. Four great changes he especially sought: To wipe out the laws of entail; to abolish primogeniture; to assert completereligious freedom; to adopt a system of general free edu cation. He also urged-and neyer ceased to urge while

he lived a system of gradual emancipation and deportation by which Virginia might be wholly rid not only of slavery but of the freed slaves as well. He also advocated citizen suffrage instead of "freehold." Mr. Jefferson had to encounter a deep-rooted aristocratic system and the radical reforms he proposed made slow progress; but to no one mind does Virginia owe so much for what she became in the days of her earlier greatness, nor perhaps has any one man so ineffaceably impressed his ideas on the whole American system. This act of religious freedom, passed in 1785, made a powerful impression in Europe. It was translated into French and Italian, and had a distinct influence in promoting the French revolu tion.

A noble and enduring progress should have followed such an initiative in Virginia; but on this splendid graft of English liberty soon fell the blight of the "black plague" whose germ had been carried in that old Dutch man-of-war from Africa to Jamestown in the year 1619.

The last riving of the old commonwealth along her Appalachian backbone, which is the subject of this volume, may be regarded as a "last analysis." It is not likely what is left will ever be reduced by further division. The story of this rending in the midst of civil tumult and confusion is a unique chapter in American annals. A State in the American Union cannot be disposed of with the same facility as unorganized territory. To carve a new State out of an old one, to clothe it with its prerogatives, including representation in the Senate, involves far more grave

year, but the settlers returned discouraged the year following. Another party sent out in 1587 perished, and permanent settlement of Virginia had to wait another twenty years. Under James' patent of 1606, two colonies in Virginia were authorized: one to be located by the Plymouth Company between 38 and 45 degrees north latitude; the other between 34 and 41, with reservation of at least one hundred miles between them. Late in the year, Sir Thomas Gates set out for the southern location; but his vessels were driven on the Bermudas and he did not reach Virginia till the following spring. It was this expedition which, entering Hampton Roads and naming the river after the English King, gave the world the romantic (and somewhat apochryphal) history of the adventures of Capt. John Smith. Three years later the Gates grant was superseded by one to the London Company, on whom was conferred a sea front of four hundred miles north and south from Hampton Roads, extending "throughout from sea to sea." To this charter the fragmentary Virginia of to-day goes back for its original authority. To this Virginia England sent out her white-handed and uselesscavaliers, of whom Col. William Byrd of Westover, in his "History of the Dividing Line," wittily says that they were "most of them reprobates of good families," who "like true Englishmen built at Jamestown a church that cost no more than fifty pounds and a tavern that cost five hundred." In this book, Colonel Byrd shows how all English America had once been Virginia and how the colonies had been carved out of it.

By the Peace of Paris in 1763, the boundaries of Virginia were definitely fixed, with the Mississippi River for

the western line from the Ohio River to the Lake of the Woods. As time and settlement progressed, the other colonies became unwilling Virginia should overshadow them all by retaining this great territory; and for the promotion of harmony the cession to the United States of all lying north and west of the Ohio was proposed, and finally consummated in 1784-just two hundred years after the Elizabethan christening. Virginia made the condition (drawn by Jefferson) that the territory ceded should be divided into States in which slavery should be forever prohibited. She wanted it stipulated, too, that the territory between the Ohio River and the Allegheny Mountains (now West Virginia) should remain inviolably hers; but Hon. George W. Summers, speaking from examination of the original Virginia archives at Richmond, said at Wheeling in 1863 that this stipulation was not made by Congress for the reason that Virginia was unable to show title to that territory. Mr. Madison, then in Congress, wrote to Jefferson to furnish the evidence of the title claimed; but it could not be shown that Virginia's rights went beyond the springs of the waters flowing towards the Atlantic, and the Northwest Territory was finally ceded without such stipulation. Virginia did, however, retain possession of the district between the mountains and the Ohio River, no occasion arising to impeach her title; and with her 70,000 square miles, reaching from the Atlantic to the Ohio, still held a greater domain than any other of the original States. Jefferson Davis in his "Rise and Fall" describes Virginia as being at the opening of the Rebellion "a republic or nation." But relatively she was only a fragment of her former territorial greatness. Nor was