The year 1619 is a famous one in the history of Virginia. There were two big moments — the introduction of the “Great Charter,” which brought representative government to the future United States for the first time, and the first importation of enslaved Africans in English North America. This episode, Part 1, looks at the innovation of the Great Charter, the invention of the “General Assembly,” and the context in which representative government, if that is what it was, first came to the future United States.

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Selected references for this episode

James Horn, 1616: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy

W. W. Henry, “The First Legislative Assembly in America: Sitting at Jamestown, Virginia, 1619,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jul., 1894)

Sir Edwin Sandys (1561–1629)

The Graves of the Powhatan

“The Dutch”