tyrant. For the first time in his career he heard the cry 

 of "treason!" But his oratory had won the jurors. They 

 awarded the plaintiff exactly one penny damages — 

 an old English custom in technical judgments. Their 

 verdict was, in essence, a defiance of the king. Patrick 

 Henry, whose eloquence seems to have carried him 

 further than he had planned to go, became the popular 

 hero of Virginia. 



V: 



irglnia leaf and foreign creditors 



Throughout the colonial period, in a good part of the 

 world, the term "Virginia" meant the finest tobacco 

 rather than a place. Before the middle of the 18th cen- 

 tury, the curing methods of earlier periods were giving 

 way to the use of open fires built on the floors of tightly 

 closed barns. The directed heat brought leaves to a 

 "proper" color. 



So eagerly sought was Virginia leaf that it was ac- 

 cepted as valuable collateral in an important transaction 

 during the War of American Independence. Through 

 the efforts of the American commissioners at Paris, Ben- 

 jamin Franklin and Silas Deane, the French tobacco 

 interests advanced a credit to the Continental Congress 

 of 2 million livres. The loan was secured by 5 niillion 

 pounds of Virginia's best tobacco— that from the York 

 and James River districts. 



The Revolutionary War had a disastrous eflPect on ex- 

 ports and, consequently, on most planters. Many of 

 these, including such notables as Thomas Jefferson and 

 Patrick Henry, were already heavily in debt to British 



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