Saturday, July 25, 2015

Smith bids a sad farewell to Virginia

         After the assassination attempt, Smith’s allies, his “old soldiers,” the men who had been with him in his expeditions all over the Chesapeake, wanted revenge. They begged him to let them get rid of his enemies, “to take their heads that would resist his command.” But John Smith had had enough. He was desperately weak and in excruciating pain from his burns. Most people—and perhaps Smith himself—did not expect that he would live. And so, as he and his co-authors wrote afterward, Smith’s time in Virginia had come to a sad end: “his commission [as president] to be suppressed he knew not why, himselfe and souldiers to be rewarded he knew not how, and a new commission graunted they knew not to whom . . . .so grievous were his wounds, and so cruell his torment, few expected he could live, nor was hee able to follow his businesse to regaine what they had lost, suppresse those factions and range the countries for provision as he intended, and well he knew in those affaires his owne actions and presence was as requisite as his directions, which now could not be.”

--Virginia Bernhard, A TALE OF TWO COLONIES: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN VIRGINIA AND BERMUDA?

         In October 1609, John Smith sailed for England. He would never return to Virginia.



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