[Sidenote: "Court Day."]
We must, however, avoid the mistake of making too much of this contrast.
As already hinted, in those rural societies where people generally knew
one another, its effects were not so far-reaching as they would be in
the more complicated society of to-day. Even though Virginia had not the
town-meeting, it had its familiar court-day, which was a holiday for
all the country-side, especially in the fall and spring. From all
directions came in the people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot. On the
court-house green assembled, in indiscriminate confusion, people of all
classes,--the hunter from the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the
grand proprietor, and the grinning, heedless negro. Old debts were
settled, and new ones made; there were auctions, transfers of property,
and, if election times were near, stump-speaking.[15]

[Sidenote: Virginia prolific in great leaders.]
For seventy years or more before the Declaration of Independence the
matters of general public concern, about which stump speeches were made
on Virginia court-days, were very similar to those that were discussed
in Massachusetts town-meetings when representatives were to be chosen
for the legislature. Such questions generally related to some real or
alleged encroachment upon popular liberties by the royal governor, who,
being appointed and sent from beyond sea, was apt to have ideas and
purposes of his own that conflicted with those of the people. This
perpetual antagonism to the governor, who represented British imperial
interference with American local self-government, was an excellent
schooling in political liberty, alike for Virginia and for
Massachusetts. When the stress of the Revolution came, these two leading
colonies cordially supported each other, and their political
characteristics were reflected in the kind of achievements for which