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of the “simple folk.” 37 This political deference was displayed in the choice of
representatives. Elite politicians running for Virginia’s House of Burgesses between
1728 and 1755 had little if any competition. 38 As late as 1775, one British expert
on American affairs suggested that in the southern colonies, “a Sort of Aristocracy
prevails,” and the elite “Families have a great weight in all the affairs of the
Country.” 39 Virginia society into the early eighteenth century was aristocratic in
style, with wealth conferring privilege, planters holding the political power, and the
elite making decisions about what was best for all. There was no broad public
discourse about political decisions. Before printing allowed wider distribution, very
few actually knew what the laws were, let alone how they might best be altered.
Discussions on governing were the affair of a small number of elite leaders who
tended to treat each other with a courteous respect. While there were few titled
nobles in the colony, wealth and disinterested public service distinguished a planter
elite. The gentry could maintain this control without much social unrest, as the
fluidity of position meant that the poorer could aspire to wealth and hope to one
day wield such power. 40
Yet seventeenth-century Virginia did experience violent social unrest.
Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 is often though of as the result of a popular uprising, but
in reality, it did not have an opportunity to become a rebellion with widespread
support partly because of the lack of print culture. While some have viewed it as a
rebellion against an oppressive government that prefaced the American Revolution,
37 Albert H. Tillson, Jr., Gentry and Common Folk: Political Culture on a Virginia Frontier,
1740-1789 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 1.
38 Beeman, “Deference,” 401-405.
39 Richard Oswald, to Lord Dartmouth, February 9, 1775, quoted in Robert M. Weir, “The
Role of the Newspaper Press in the Southern Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution,” in Bernard
Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds., The Press and the American Revolution, (Worcester: American
Antiquarian Society, 1980), 102.
40 Carl Bridenbaugh, Myths and Realities; Societies of the Colonial South (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1952), 14-50.