After the assassination attempt, Smith’s allies, his “old
soldiers,” the men who had been with him in his expeditions all over the
Chesapeake, wanted revenge. They begged him to let them get rid of his enemies,
“to take their heads that would resist his command.” But John Smith had had
enough. He was desperately weak and in excruciating pain from his burns. Most
people—and perhaps Smith himself—did not expect that he would live. And so, as
he and his co-authors wrote afterward, Smith’s time in Virginia had come to a
sad end: “his commission [as
president] to be suppressed he knew not why, himselfe and souldiers to be
rewarded he knew not how, and a new commission graunted they knew not to whom .
. . .so grievous were his wounds, and so cruell his torment, few expected he
could live, nor was hee able to follow his businesse to regaine what they had
lost, suppresse those factions and range the countries for provision as he
intended, and well he knew in those affaires his owne actions and presence was
as requisite as his directions, which
now could not be.”
--Virginia
Bernhard, A TALE OF TWO COLONIES: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN VIRGINIA AND BERMUDA?
In October
1609, John Smith sailed for England. He would never return to Virginia.
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