The Mentor, No. 32, Historic Spots of America

The Mentor

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

HISTORIC SPOTS OF AMERICA

By ROBERT McNUTT McELROY

Head of the Department of History and Politics, Princeton University

A few years before the settlement of the territory now known as the United States the people of Europe had witnessed a great naval battle in which two kinds of civilizations contended for supremacy. England and Spain were the combatants, and the issue, as we now clearly see, was whether the old idea of monarchy or the new idea of democracy should dominate two continents. Gold from Mexico and Peru had made Spain a great power. Successive royal inheritances had given to her kingly line the control of a large part of Europe. She was the champion of the Church of Rome, and regarded it as her mission to prevent all heretics from planting colonies in the New World. England, on the other hand, was the champion of Protestantism, whose doctrine of the direct responsibility of the individual led logically to democracy in government. England won the battle, destroying Spain’s great Armada, and thus opening the New World to the settlement of men professing Protestant doctrines; for as soon as Spain’s power on the seas was shattered Protestants could plant colonies without danger of having them destroyed by a Spanish man-of-war.

JAMESTOWN ISLAND

The exact site of the original settlement. Once a peninsula, this ground has been cut away from the mainland by the constant washing of the river. It is now protected by a stone wall.

THE VIRGINIA COMPANY

OLD CHURCH AT JAMESTOWN

A ruined tower of the earliest colonial days.

JAMESTOWN CHURCH

A reproduction of the church built 1639-1647. This building was put up for the Jamestown Exposition in 1907, using the old tower, which can be seen in the background, for its entrance.

Within a few years after the destruction of the Armada a great colonizing company was established in England for the purpose of sending out men to settle the New World. Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and a number of associates asked King James the First of England to grant them a charter of incorporation. He consented, and on April 10, 1606, transferred to them the vast district called Virginia, which comprised practically all the territory later occupied by the thirteen American colonies. The charter which made the grant clearly declared “that all and every the Persons … which shall dwell and inhabit within every or any of the said colonies or Plantations, and every of their children, … shall have and enjoy all liberties, Franchises, and Immunities … as if they had been