Captain John Smith Vs William Penn
Essay by 24 • April 3, 2011 • 354 Words (2 Pages) • 2,821 Views
Captain John Smith, an explorer of England, New England’s coast, and the Chesapeake Bay was an energetic man in search of becoming a gentleman and colonizing America. In April 1606 John Smith was named as one of the twelve council members of the colony in Virginia. His vision for Virginia was to be prosperous, profitable, and peaceful; though it was going to be a hard task for the settlers were unskilled and didn’t expect to work, the Indians also had their own cultures.
William Penn envisioned a haven free from persecution and a place where Quakers could live in harmony and a place to perform his political experiments. The colony’s government was made up of 72 councilmen and 500 assemblymen.
William Penn was more successful in his quest. Penn was ambitious, educated, well traveled, and already in the social realm. He sought after the industrious workers and handcrafters who were skilled carpenters, masons, weavers, etc; who would be good plantation owners. The government in Pennsylvania being made up of 72 councilmen and 500 assemblymen had a hand in his success. Each member of the government had the right to vote on laws that were to be past for the improvement of the colony. If Penn had been a present governor his colony would have had more progress; he was absent for over 15 years and lost touch with the colony’s people and their maturity. The colony demanded a greater authority figure.
Virginia’s government being made up of only 12 councilmen portrayed itself as a communist government, to the extent that after Admiral Newport left Smith assembled the settlers together and told them to work or starve. He kept the key to the storehouse, only the “honest and industrious” would get to eat. Though this was the incentive he offered for the settler to encourage them to labor and this method worked for a while it soon failed. The councilmen themselves didn’t
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