Tobacco: The Rich-tasting, Smokable Part Of Virginia History

In high school we all learn about the Stamp Act, the French and Indian War, and Lewis and Clark's expedition. (At least, we learn about these things long enough to pass a test.)

But what about tobacco leaves being used as currency? And the Tobacco Rebellion of Virginia? And the influence of tobacco on American political philosophy?

Often, the huge importance of tobacco to the development of the American nation-state is overlooked as part of the basic narrative of American history. Unfortunately, this means some Americans do tend to forget that two of the giants of early United States politics--George Washington and Thomas Jefferson--were tobacco farmers for a living.

But they were--like a great many Virginians. The story of the United States, for good or ill, in many ways starts with Virginia. It was the first part of the country settled by the British, with the plans for settlement dating from such an early period that the state is actually named for the Virgin Queen, AKA Queen Elizabeth, whose courtier Sir Walter Raleigh sought and was granted permission to start a colony in the area before the early-seventeenth-century accession of King James to the throne.

Once the Virginia settlement got off the ground, organized tobacco farming followed, and quickly. It began in 1612 and was soon the major economic staple of the New World. And, because of the unique biological demands of the tobacco plant--basically, it thrives best in virgin soil--Virginians, whose numbers constantly swelled as newcomers sought to enjoy the booming tobacco economy, tended to prefer large, isolated farms, with some of the acreage still unplowed or even forested. That way, as one tract of land went fallow, another could quickly be clearcut and substituted.

Thus from the beginning the society of early Virginia was biased toward an organization based on plantation farming, with all that comes with it: the lionization of rural life, the concentration of power away from cities and centralized governments, and, yes, slavery. Over a century later, all of these features--minus slavery, which he practiced in his own life but considered immoral and, in the long run, probably doomed--would leave their stamp on Thomas Jefferson's political philosophy, and Jeffersonian democracy, with its idealization of the yeoman farmer, would in turn influence the first thirty-to-forty years of United States political life before yielding, in turn, to Jacksonian democracy.

When a crop has that much significance, that much influence, bet that it will cause its share of controversy. In the late seventeenth century, Virginia suffered the period of strife known as the Tobacco Rebellion. By this time raw tobacco had been used for years as a form of currency. You could buy food or dressmaking materials with leaves of tobacco. Members of the professions--especially preachers, lawyers and doctors--were often paid in tobacco. After a certain point, the colony began suffering food shortages because too much land was being devoted to a crop that had overfilled its brief as a source of sensual pleasure and had now become a form of currency. Planters had to be forced by law to plant corn, and the custom of using tobacco as money tied out except in the case--oddly enough--of ministers' salaries.

However, another problem was developing: the population was too spread-out, and the House of Burgesses (the state's congress, essentially) wanted more towns to be built. They passed a law designating riverbank sites as future cities, and made it illegal for plantation tobacco farmers to sell their wares to foreign traders (which was a major source of income) anywhere but at the sites of these not-yet-existent cities.

Tobacco farmers grew angry at the inconvenience and inefficiency of the policy and, when illegal inland meetings with exporters became too difficult due to legal suppression, some Gloucester County tobacco farmers began burning entire crops in retaliation. Lord Culpepper, the nominal governor at that time, was called back from England, and, angry at having his vacation thus cut short, Culpepper imposed draconian sanctions against the rebelling farmers, including the death penalty for farmers who destroyed their plants. So much for the short-lived Tobacco Rebellion.