#77 In Virginia in 1619: Part 1
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2022
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The year 1619 is a famous one in the history of Virginia. There were two big moments — the introduction of the “Great Charter,” which brought representative government to the future United States for the first time, and the first importation of enslaved Africans in English North America. This episode, Part 1, looks at the innovation of the Great Charter, the invention of the “General Assembly,” and the context in which representative government, if that is what it was, first came to the future United States.
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Selected references for this episode
James Horn, 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy
W. W. Henry, “The First Legislative Assembly in America: Sitting at Jamestown, Virginia, 1619,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jul., 1894)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 77. |
| 0:11.1 | I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this on June 23rd, 2022 in Austin, Texas. |
| 0:19.3 | If you are new to the podcast, we are telling the history of the land now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism. |
| 0:29.3 | So 411 years ago today, Henry Hudson's mutinous crew put the explorer, his son, and a few loyalists adrift in a boat in the still icy bay that would be named after him. |
| 0:44.0 | They were never heard from again. |
| 0:46.8 | One moral of that story is that a captain at sea should take care to ensure that at least most of his crew stays loyal. |
| 0:56.0 | Probably not as easy as it sounds. |
| 0:59.4 | This episode is the first of a pair about the momentous year of 1619 in Virginia, |
| 1:05.7 | including whether it was, in fact, momentous. |
| 1:09.6 | And no, don't get your dukes up. |
| 1:11.6 | I'm not going to bash the 1619 project in this series. |
| 1:15.8 | I may address it at some point in a sidebar, but I am not much for being baited into |
| 1:20.4 | culture war controversies and want to keep them away from my timeline episodes. |
| 1:25.8 | So, as usual, I will talk about 1619 in Virginia as I do |
| 1:30.1 | everything else without drawing conclusions for the present. That is for you to do, based not just on what I |
| 1:38.9 | say, but also on everything else you have read and learned for your entire life. I'm not going to lead you to |
| 1:45.7 | conclusions on your individual journey of history. Your conclusions are all on you. Before we get there, |
| 1:54.2 | though, let's talk about 1618 in the years before. Pocahontas has died, and her father, the Paramount Chief Powhatan, |
| 2:03.7 | Powhatan, will pass at some point during 1618. |
| 2:08.3 | By one account, Chief Powhatan's body would have been gutted, |
| 2:12.5 | its flesh removed, and the bones dried. |
| 2:15.9 | The skeleton would then be restored and replaced inside the skin. |
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