Captain John Smith (1579-1631).
"The father of Virginia, the true leader who first planted the Saxon race within the borders of the United States." — Bancroft.
A True Relation of Virginia.
Letter to the London Company.
A Map of Virginia. Life (by William Gilmore Simms; by G. S. Hillard, in Sparks' American Biography. Vol. II.; by C. D. Warner. See also Eggleston's Pocahontas, and Henry Adams' Historical Essays, 42. The chief authorities on the life of Smith are his own autobiographical writings).
The romantic life of Captain John Smith is too well known to need retelling. His character, too, needs no new light shed upon it. We must acknowledge that he was inordinately vain, fond of boasting, impetuous, imperious, restless, yet we know that his shrewdness, his indomitable courage, and his sound judgment more than once saved the Virginia Colony from ruin. "It is not too much to say," writes an eminent English critic, "that bad not Captain Smith strove, fought, and endured as he did, the present United States of America might never have come into existence. It was contrary to all probability that where so many had succumbed already, the Southern Virginia Company's expedition of 1606—7 should have succeeded."
Cooke, the historian of Virginia, writes of Smith:
"His endurance was unshrinking, and his life in Virginia indicated plainly that he had enormous recoil. He was probably never really cast down, and seems to have kept his heart of hope, without an effort in the darkest hours, when all around him despaired."
