1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy

In 1619, two singular events took place in Jamestown colony, both firsts for the nascent United States. Between July 30 and August 4, a general assembly of America's first representative governing body met at the Virginia settlement to recommend new and permanent laws for the colony. At the end of August, a battered privateer arrived in the bay and sold or traded enslaved Africans to the colonists, the first documented slave trade on the new land. Historian Horn (president, Jamestown Rediscovery Fdn.; A Kingdom Strange) relates the history of democracy, freedom, and enslavement in the same year. The heyday of the assembly was short. James I, King of England and Ireland, rescinded the colony's charter in 1624, bringing it under his direct jurisdiction. When the assembly formed again later on, it was as a tool of the planter aristocracy. Slavery remained a stain from start to finish, with the laws governing the colony increasingly restrictive.