This post is abbreviated from my statement published in the Letters to the
Editor of the Times Dispatch. There was an editorial response that some
"seminars" had followed the Jamestowne activities and addressed the
foundation of American law and legal culture, Obviously, that would not
solve this failure in the presentation of Jamestowne to the thousands who
visited. I may have posted similar comments before and if so, I apologize.

The Jamestown “commemoration” missed an opportunity to explain the
“birthplace of the nation.” That was the motto on the publicity sail by the
Godspeed. Somehow, the importance of Jamestown got lost as the historic
landing in 1607 became a metaphor for diversity (“Thank you Pocahontas”?). 

Somewhere in the planning stages, it was decided that Jamestown was a place
where English settlers seeking gold and glory came and “inner-acted” with
the natives that already occupied the land and with Africans that later
came as slaves. This concept will live on with the Jamestown Settlement
website and the lesson plans that are recommended for teaching about
Jamestown. 

Jamestown was not an  “interaction” between three cultures. That implies
assimilation, cooperation, a melting pot. That did not happen. And it
minimizes the sacrifice and fortitude of those early Jamestown settlers who
were the beginning of a great migration that within fifty years had peopled
the east coast of America. To be sure, there were immigrants from other
European countries, but these colonies were English, united by a common
language and governed by English law and tradition, stretching back four
hundred years to the Magna Carta. That tradition landed at Jamestown, and 
through the 17th and 18th centuries, the European Enlightenment continued
to inform the sense and sensibility of British America. When Parliament
attempted to tax and exert greater control over the colonies, Thomas
Jefferson countered in a “Summary View” that this violated their rights as
Englishman. It was the violation of these rights that formed the basis for
the Declaration of Independence. For decades after the Constitution,
English common law was the basis of the American judicial system. 

That is the real meaning of Jamestown and it is a shame that Virginia
missed the opportunity to say so.

Richard Dixon

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