Word: virginia
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...fledgling colony in September 1608. Chief executive, military commander and political leader of British America, Smith, at 28, had found a place at last where a man might thrive on bravado and wit. No title, no patron, no ruff-throated pretensions of nobility were required in Smith's Virginia, just an iron will to prevail--and a hornful of powder and shot...
Suddenly it wasn't only the Indians who had to deal with Smith, but also the Virginia Co. investors who funded Jamestown and were impertinent enough to expect a return. Forget it, Smith wrote his London underwriters. There was no sense digging for gold where nature had left none, he scoffed, nor would the rock-strewn James River ever guide their wind-driven square-riggers on some long-dreamed-of shortcut to China. Disenchanted investors, he concluded, were free to join him in Jamestown, where their odds of surviving were about...
Until the massacre at Virginia Tech, the last thing the Democrats wanted was a debate about guns. Convinced that Al Gore lost Tennessee in 2000 partly because of his support for gun control in the primaries, moderate Democrats elected to Congress last November from formerly Republican districts often proclaimed their support for gun owners' rights. And even after the shootings at Blacksburg, it's not obvious that the new Democratic Congress wants to take the political risk of resurrecting the federal assault-weapons ban, which the Republican Congress allowed to expire in 2004. Although majorities of Americans support...
After 2 1/2 years in Virginia, Smith returned to England, and the settlers told Pocahontas he was dead. About 14 at the time, her reaction speaks for itself: she banished all thought of the settlers, staying clear of Jamestown for the next four years. The English, though, weren't finished with her. In the spring of 1613, when Pocahontas was nearing 18, she was kidnapped by a colonist-sailor. Her father paid most of the ransom--a gaggle of English prisoners, guns and a boatload of corn--but the white men kept the girl just upriver from Jamestown. There...
...years later, the Anglo-American couple and their young son Thomas visited London on a public relations scheme hatched by the Virginia Co. Its heavily indebted investors hoped the exotic New World princess would help them drum up desperately needed capital to keep their flagging American venture afloat...