No new nation can be successful if it allows its people to run amok in a lawless state of chaos. We gave that concept a try in the Shmoop office, and it was a disaster. Broken laptops, graffiti on the walls, desks TPed, apple cinnamon oatmeal everywhere... Anyway, we had to institute some rules.

And if you've got rules (read: laws), you need somebody—or a group of somebodies—to enforce them, or even just to determine whether or not someone is breaking them. This is true whether you're a band of renegade Shmoopers or bold colonists on the Virginia coast.

Let's back it up. Tired of being outdone by Spain, Britain decided to get on the Colonies Parade by starting colonies in what is now Virginia and North Carolina. Roanoke mysteriously disappeared, its residents never to be seen again, and Jamestown, after a very rocky start, failed to find the gold and silver its investors wanted. But it did strike it rich in another way: by growing tobacco.

Once Virginia began to thrive, the Jamestown colonists and other Virginians decided to get on the "having laws" train by creating the House of Burgesses. Established in 1619, the House of Burgesses was the first European elected assembly in America. At first, the colonists thought of it as a group of consultants, which means they thought its rules were more like guidelines. It also didn't meet consistently like our lawmakers do today. By the second half of the 17th century, however, the House had established itself as a more regular and essential part of Virginia's government.

So, who were these mysterious burgesses, and how did they achieve burgeosity? Well, the free, white, property-owning men over 17 in each county were allowed to elect two other free, white, property-owning men over 17 to serve as their representatives, or burgesses. 

So, yeah, less than 100% of people could vote. Like, way less. Baby steps, right?

While the House of Burgesses only allowed some of the colonists to have a say, it was infinitely better than the martial law Virginia's governors had previously enforced. Some representation is infinitely better than no representation. 

And honestly, in 1676, political stability didn't look like it was in the forecast for the colony. That year, Bacon's Rebellion, led by grumpy farmers displeased with the government's failure to handle the Native Americans, could have easily toppled the toddler colony. 

But it didn't. In the hundred years following Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, Virginia became the colony that we now imagine. It matured into a colonial powerhouse, expanding the tobacco economy, generating enormous wealth, and increasing its slave labor force.

Plus, we don't want to give too much away, but the HOB would also serve as a philosophical, democratic training ground for some of the nation's future leaders. 

Colonial Virginia was many things. It was Thomas Jefferson sitting on a hilltop thinking deeply about the natural rights of all humankind, and Patrick Henry rising to the floor in the House of Burgesses and declaring that he would rather die than sacrifice his liberty.

But colonial Virginia was also 90,000 people kidnapped in Africa and carried to the colony in the death-filled hold of a slave ship. Colonial Virginia was the great plantations of Westover and Gunston Hall—enormous testimonies to genteel living nestled among fields of sweet-smelling tobacco.

But it was also planter William Byrd II forcing a young slave to drink a pint of urine because he wet his bed—and Robert "King" Carter cutting off the toes of a slave who resisted other forms of discipline.

Virginia was George Washington painstakingly copying the rules of good behavior into a diary as an adolescent. But it was also cockfights on Saturday and drunken militia marches through the slave quarters on Sundays.

Virginia was genteel and barbaric, all at the same time. Which was the real Virginia? They both were.