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Thirteen Colonies: Virginia (Thirteen Colonies (Lucent))

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In telling the story of the original thirteen colonies the authors assigned to Virginia and Massachusetts have the hardest row to hoe before those are the two future states that are most prominently mentioned in your standard American history textbook. Compared to the stories of the colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth, even the stories of New York City and Philadelphia seem secondary. Karen Price Hossel faces this daunting challenge by introducing Virginia as a Land of Opportunity and the one colony in America that was most like the England many settlers have left behind. Although technically it was part of Virginia, the story of the legendary lost colony of Roanoke is told in the story of the colony of North Carolina, which allows Hossel to begin the story of The First Colony with the settlement of Jamestown. The first chapter details the problems faced by the colony, including relations with both the native Powhatan and the Virginia Company.

The second chapter looks at the rise and fall of the colony due to the production of tobacco and the change in the agricultural climate that made slavery economically viable. Hossel details what daily life was like in colonial Virginia for not only the plantation owners but the poor farmers and slaves as well. The fourth chapter is devoted to Virginia's Role in the American Revolution, which, to say the least was prominent and resulted in the "Virginia Dynasty" of early American Presidents from George Washington to James Monroe. The final chapter looks at Virginia After the Revolution, citing the Virginia's Declaration of Rights as a first key step toward democracy. Consequently, Hossel looks at the formation of the state government in Virginia as being similar to what happened on the national level with the Constitutional convention. It also explains why Virginia ended up being the tenth state to ratify the federal Constitution.

Consequently, I find Hossel succeeds in making the well-known story of Virginia compelling to young readers. True, she has to sacrifice some things, such as the Battle of Yorktown for example, but I like the way she focuses on the political aspects of Virginia's story both during and after the Revolution. There is a sense in which the book falls neatly in half, with the first three chapters being about the establishment of the colony and the last two being about that colony as the intellectual font of American political philosophy.

The book is illustrated with black & white historical paintings, etchings, and drawings, as well as some contemporary photographs of colonial buildings you can still see today. In the back of the book you will find plenty of sources for further research, a chronology of Virginia from the foundation of Jamestown in 1607 to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. The Thirteen Colonies series is an excellent exploration of the roots of the United States, not only because it provides a unique view of each of those original colonies but also because of the use of primary and secondary source quotations, which help enhance the stories being told. If I were teaching colonial history to young students in the Commonwealth of Virginia, then I would hope my school board had the funds to purchase classroom sets of this book.