Prof. Haber's Content Comments Chapter 3 Indentured Servants How did one become an indentured servant? 1) Voluntary-- we have to emphasize the voluntary nature of contracting oneself in order to get passage to North America. Servants who could pay own passage would be bound for a shorter contract length. Those who wanted to begin a new life were willing to sign a labor contract to get to the colonies. They would have to work the length of their contract and then they would be free men and women and children. 2) Involuntary--Some servants came because they were forced. Remember that some were sent against their will such as children, convicts, debtors or kidnap victims. People called “spirits” since they would sneak up on inebriated folks sleeping in public places and bind them up and then put them in the hold of a ship. These “spirits” made a living doing such despicable work. Length of contract of servants If one was skilled –carpenter, barrel maker, bricklayer (as examples) they could command a better contract. All colonies mandated some payment called “freedom dues” (money, land, clothes, tools) when a contract was over. Not all masters gave this. One would have to take the master to court and there were problems with doing so. Research shows that indentured servants tended to be better off after the contracts ended compared to new immigrants who came without a contract. Most immigrants would come over with no assets. “For those that survived the work and received their freedom package, many historians argue that they were better off than those new immigrants who came freely to the country. Their contract may have included at least 25 acres of land, a year's worth of corn, arms, a cow and new clothes. Some servants did rise to become part of the colonial elite, but for the majority of indentured servants that survived the treacherous journey by sea and the harsh conditions of life in the New World, satisfaction was a modest life as a freeman in a burgeoning colonial economy.” i Disadvantages of white servants for those who owned their contracts- as they became rarer the servants commanded more money. It became difficult to demand of the servants the harsh work of the early years. By the 1670s the number of servants coming to the colonies declined. There was still a need for labor (more labor than workers) so they to look elsewhere for laborers. According to research about early Virginia servants ran away at 13x greater a rate than slaves. Some servants had skills that were in demand which made the chances for their finding work greater. Also it was easier for them to change clothes and blend into the general populace. A black runaway had nowhere to go especially if he or she was in the interior or in a rural area. Servants could take masters to court and we have court records to attest that many did this. We don’t know what percentage of servants did this. Some colonies mandated “freedom dues” for servants who had completed their contracts. This could be money, tools, or clothing. Advantages of slaves- they were not less expensive than servants!! They were much more expensive in the 17th century. They became cost effective over time (by the mid 18th century) when the mortality rate became lower. Slave labor was expensive especially in the early period. Slaves were more expensive than servants and scarcer before the English got a monopoly to supply the Spanish colonies with slaves (1713). Once the supply increased the costs went down. Slaves were more abundant and available when the British broke the monopoly from the Royal African Company— giving them the right from the Spanish to bring slaves direct from Africa. Slaves from the Caribbean were more “Europeanized”. Slaves from Africa stood out more from the general population. They didn’t know the language or culture so were more “off balance” in their new surroundings and they found it more difficult to runaway. Because they were different it became easier to separate them from the white population. Thus there was more isolation of the black slaves. Before the late 17th century black and slave were not seen as the same. One of the important consequences of the Stono Rebellion was that the colony passed the Negro Act which was a "slave code". It became a model for future codes. Slaves had less rights sand less freedom. Slavery becomes more restrictive as the whites limit access and use fear to protect slavery and limit future rebellions. Male Domination was typical The idea of patriarchy which is male domination and subordination of women was carried over to British North America from Europe. All white European groups who came to the colonies believed that men were to have the public influence, power in the family and home, and in government. Women were subordinate because they believed that women were inferior in body, mind and spirit in this period. Quakers were the only group who gave women equal treatment spiritually and intellectually at this time. Because of the needs of the colonial environment--lack of women, high death rate, husbands ill or away on travel women had opportunities to run businesses, inherit land and property, have rights in wills, and even some power in a few situations as Lady Berkeley after Bacon's rebellion. This was true throughout the colonies. The question one has to ask is if women were able to do these things why didn't their activities change the culture's view of women and their roles in society? Women in the Chesapeake-had more opportunities to conduct business, inherit property, manage estates, and “marry up”; however they were not “in charge”. Once the gender ratio became more equal in the Chesapeake (by mid 17th century) patriarchy was more enforced in practice. All this changes when the gender ratio becomes more balanced by the mid 18th century. Midwives We will discuss how physicians take over delivering babies in the urban areas later in the class. This happened in the 1820s. Yes child birth was social. Other women were in the room and the room was well lighted. Once doctors took over it became a solitary event with just the doctor and the woman in the room. Witchcraft- take a look at my PPT on Witchcraft. Women were seen as being inferior in body, mind and spirit so if the devil was lurking in Massachusetts (why weren’t they prosperous, and why did the colony have problems) it was probably Satan. If Satan would attack wouldn’t it most likely to be “more vulnerable women”. Which women? (see text and PPT file). Women who were unmarried and older or widowed had the status under the law (from English common law) of feme sole. As such they could hold property and conduct business in their own name. Many of the women accused had feme sole status. Women were presumed to be weaker physically, intellectually, and spiritually (the view that women were spiritually weak will change after the American Revolution). The reasoning was if women were weak, and if the devil was alive in Massachusetts who would be his best target???-- Women of course. 75% of those accused were women. Many of the women accused did not fit the type of the ideal woman. They were eccentrics or they had "feuds" with people in the community. Some of the women accused were threats as they didn't meet the "standards" of the good, moral, Puritan woman. Here is a good website (scholarly) on Salem. Elsewhere in the colonies, even in New England, people were accused but not killed. Salem and Massachusetts are an interesting study due to the sharp contrast between the rural areas and the coast. Another background of the hysteria was that the colony Massachusetts was experiencing problems. The founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony had presumed that if they set up their colony the way "God" wanted, they would prosper but by the late 17th century that wasn't the case. Satan could be blamed for all the problems of the colony, internal and external. (see your text) It is significant that 5 years later in January 1697 the colony proclaimed a day for public repentance, fasting and prayer for the miscarriage of justice. The colony cleared the names of some of the witches in 1711. Why some? Families of others didn’t want the name publicized or listed. Early in 1712 victims’ families were paid 600 pounds. Brinkley states that "hundreds" were accused. He is overstating what happened. Around 200 were accused. Middle Passage-the text shows an illustration of hard pack where you packed so many slaves into the hold you knew you would lose many but perhaps bring more to port for sale than if you did “loose pack”. Conditions were nearly as horrid for the indentures of the ships. Many died on the way –sick people, troublemakers, pregnant women who had trouble in birth or who were ill were thrown overboard. I encourage you to see the film Amazing Grace about John Newton who was a slave captain, became a Christian and became a leader in the abolition movement in England. I also recommend the book Generations of Captivity by Ira Berlin, Prof. of History at Univ. of Maryland. He is one of the narrators of some of our video clips and the audio file on slavery. Colonial Medicine The text discussed the 4 humors; Many historians believe Washington probably would have lived if they hadn't bled him. Now we know to hydrate people. Back then they did the opposite. Not only would they bleed people but they would give people ipecac to cause vomiting. We give fluids and blood. This is a bleeding techniques showing antique bleeding and bloodletting devices The text describes colonial medicine and the belief in the four humors. George Washington was bled before his death. This link above is to a paper written on Washington’s illness and his doctors’ responses to it by a University of Virginia professor and M.S. Here is one quote from it: “Today we find the removal of about eighty two ounces of blood (about five pints or units of blood) from a sick patient in less than sixteen hours to be incredible. However this was the method of treatment being taught in those days. It was the treatment of choice for many diseases and the complications of using this method were not comprehended by the physicians of that day. I certainly have a great deal of compassion for George Washington's physicians who were attempting to save his life by using the methods that they thought best for him. I am also filled with sadness that such a remarkable man and leader should have such a painful and frightening end to his life.” Aren’t you glad you live today in the United States? Great Awakening I want you to recall that Christian religious dedication (not affiliation) but personal seriousness and personal commitment to Christ had diminished in the colonies. Part of this was the growing prosperity that took people's eyes off their relationship with God. It was also due to the lack of quality of the ministers sent by the Church of England to America. They were generally either inadequate, inept, or problems and that's why they received an American assignment. Back then North America was not considered a quality assignment. Also the enlightenment belief in natural law and reason, took some away from their reliance upon God. Ministers of the "awakening" were calling people back to follow Christ and accept Him as their savior and Lord. Whitefield held huge outdoor preaching rallies where many either came to faith in Christ or rededicated their lives to Him. Edwards wrote a book on the positive results of the awakening in his hometown. Jonathan Edwards was a Christian minister. George Whitefield was a Christian evangelist. New churches were started; colleges were founded for the training of ministers and Christian education. Moreover many charities were started as a result as well such as aid societies for the poor and needy. Slave Codes The text doesn’t say much about colonial slave codes. These were laws that separated black and white. They developed over time. For example slave codes were passed in South Carolina after the Stono Rebellion. Color was the distinguishing factor in the different laws for the races. These laws were passed became harsher over time. Examples were that black servants became servants for life, intermarriage was prohibited between black and white, blacks were given harsher punishments, the status of the child was determined by the condition of its mother, and eventually all slaves were made property of their owners. i http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/indentured-servants-in-the-us/ bri38559_ch03_068-103.indd Page 76 9/10/08 8:40:43 AM user-s180 /Volumes/203/MHSF070/mhbri13%0/bri13ch03 W HERE HIS TO RIA NS D ISA GRE E The origins of slavery The debate among historians over how and why white Americans created a system of slave labor in the seventeenth century—and how and why they determined that people of African descent and no others should populate that system—has been a long and unusually heated one. At its center is the question of whether slavery was a result of white racism or helped to create it. In 1950, Oscar and Mary Handlin published an influential article, “Origins of the Southern Labor System,” which noted that many residents of the American colonies (and of England) lived in varying degrees of “unfreedom” in the seventeenth century, although none resembling slavery as it came to be known in America. The first Africans who came to America lived for a time in conditions not very different from those of white indentured servants. But slavery came ultimately to differ substantially from other conditions of servitude. It was permanent bondage, and it passed from one generation to the next. That it emerged in America, the Handlins argued, resulted from efforts by colonial legislatures to increase the available labor force. That it included African Americans and no others was because black people had few defenses and few defenders. Racism emerged to justify slavery; it did not cause slavery. In 1959, Carl Degler became the first of a number of important historians to challenge the Handlins. In his essay “Slavery and the Genesis of American Race Prejudice,” he argued that Africans had never been like other servants in the Chesapeake; that “the Negro was actually never treated as an equal of the white man, servant or free.” Racism was strong “long before slavery had come upon the scene.” It did not result from slavery, but helped cause it. Nine years later, Winthrop D. Jordan argued similarly that white racism, not economic or legal conditions, produced slavery. In White Over Black (1968) and other, earlier writings, Jordan argued that Europeans ( View of Mulberry (House and Street) by Thomas Coram. Gibbes Museum of Art/Carolina Art Association) possible into their ships to ensure that enough would survive to yield a profit at journey’s end. On such ships, the African prisoners were sometimes packed together in such close quarters that they were unable to stand, hardly able to breathe. Some ships supplied them with only minimal food and water. Women were often victims of rape and other sexual abuse. Those who died en route were simply thrown overboard. Upon arrival in the New World, slaves were auctioned off to white landowners and transported, frightened and bewildered, to their new homes. The fi rst black laborers arrived in English North America before 1620, and as English seamen began to establish themselves in the slave trade, the flow of Africans to the colonies gradually increased. But North America was always a much less important market for Africans than were other parts of the New World, espe76 had long viewed people of color—and black Africans in particular—as inferior beings appropriate for serving whites. Those attitudes migrated with white Europeans to the New World, and white racism shaped the treatment of Africans in America—and the nature of the slave labor system—from the beginning. George Fredrickson has echoed Jordan’s emphasis on the importance of racism as an independent factor reinforcing slavery; but unlike Jordan, he has argued that racism did not precede slavery. “The treatment of blacks,” he wrote, “engendered a cultural and psycho-social racism that after a certain point took on a life of its own. . . . cially the Caribbean islands and Brazil, whose laborintensive sugar economies created an especially large demand for slaves. Less than 5 percent of the Africans imported to the Americas went directly to the English colonies on the mainland. Most blacks who ended up in what became the United States spent time first in the West Indies. Not until the 1670s did traders start importing blacks directly from Africa to North America. Even then, however, the fl ow remained small for a time, mainly because a single group, the Royal African Company of England, maintained a monopoly on trade in the mainland colonies and managed as a result to keep prices high and supplies low. A turning point in the history of the African population in North America came in the mid-1690s, when the Royal African Company’s monopoly was finally broken. With the trade now opened to English and colonial merchants on a bri38559_ch03_068-103.indd Page 77 9/10/08 8:40:48 AM user-s180 Racism, although the child of slavery, not only outlived its parent but grew stronger and more independent after slavery’s demise.” Peter Wood’s Black Majority (1974), a study of seventeenthcentury South Carolina, moved the debate back away from racism and toward social and economic conditions. Wood demonstrated that blacks and whites often worked together on relatively equal terms in the early years of settlement. But as rice cultivation expanded, finding white laborers willing to do the arduous work became more difficult. The forcible importation of African workers, and the creation of a system of permanent bondage, was a response to a growing demand for labor and to fears among whites that without slavery a black labor force would be difficult to control. Similarly, Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom (1975) argued that the southern labor system was at first relatively flexible and later grew more rigid. In colonial Virginia, he claimed, white settlers did not at first intend to create a system of permanent bondage. But as the tobacco economy grew and created a high demand for cheap labor, white landowners began to feel uneasy about their dependence on a large group of dependent white workers, since such workers were difficult to recruit and control. Thus slavery was less a result of racism than of the desire of /Volumes/203/MHSF070/mhbri13%0/bri13ch03 white landowners to find a reliable and stable labor force. Racism, Morgan contended, was a result of slavery, an ideology created to justify a system that had been developed to serve other needs. And David Brion Davis, in The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (1975), argued that while prejudice against blacks had a long history, racism as a systematic ideology was crystallized during the American Revolution—as Americans such as Thomas Jefferson struggled to explain the paradox of slavery existing in a republic committed to individual freedom. Robin Blackburn’s The Making of New World Slavery (1996) is perhaps the most emphatic statement of the economic underpinnings of slavery. Why, he asks, did the American colonies create a thriving slave labor system at a time when slavery had almost entirely died out in Europe? He concedes that race was a factor; Africans were “different” in appearance, culture, and religion from European colonists, and it was easier to justify enslaving them than it was to justify enslaving English, French, or Spanish workers. But the real reasons for slavery were hardheaded economic decisions by ambitious entrepreneurs, who realized very early that a slave-labor system in the labor-intensive agricultural world of the American South and the Caribbean was more profitable than a free-labor system. Slaveowning planters, he argues, not only enriched them- competitive basis, prices fell and the number of Africans arriving in North America rapidly increased. By the end of the century, only about one in ten Growing Slave of the residents of the colonies Population was African (about 25,000 in all). But because Africans were so heavily concentrated in a few southern colonies, they were already beginning to outnumber Europeans in some areas. The high ratio of men to women among African immigrants (there were perhaps two males to one female in most areas) retarded the natural increase of the black population. But in the Chesapeake at least, more new slaves were being born by 1700 than were being imported from Africa. In South Carolina, by contrast, the difficult conditions of rice cultivation—and the high death rates of those who worked in the rice fields—ensured that the black population would barely be able to sustain itself through natural increase until much later. (National Maritime Museum, London) selves; they created wealth that benefited all of colonial society and provided significant capital for the rapidly developing economy of England. Thus, slavery served the interests of a powerful combination of groups: planters, merchants, governments, industrialists, and consumers. Race may have been a rationale for slavery, allowing planters and traders to justify to themselves the terrible human costs of the system. But the most important reason for the system was not racism, but the pursuit of profit—and the success of the system in producing it. Slavery was not, according to Blackburn, an antiquated remnant of an older world. It was, he uncomfortably concludes, a recognizably modern labor system that, however horrible, served the needs of an emerging market economy. Between 1700 and 1760, the number of Africans in the colonies increased tenfold to about a quarter of a million. A relatively small number (16,000 in 1763) lived in New England; there were slightly more (29,000) in the middle colonies. The vast majority, however, continued to live in the South. By then the flow of free white laborers to that region had all but stopped, and Africans had become securely established as the basis of the southern work force. It was not entirely clear at first that the status of black laborers in America would be fundamentally different from that of white indentured servants. In the rugged conditions of the seventeenthUncertain Status century South, it was often difficult for Europeans and Africans to maintain strictly separate roles. In some areas—South Carolina, for example, where the number of African arrivals swelled more 77 bri38559_ch03_068-103.indd Page 78 9/10/08 8:40:53 AM user-s180 78 /Volumes/203/MHSF070/mhbri13%0/bri13ch03 CHAPTER THREE AFRICANS BOUND FOR AMERICA Shown here are the below-deck slave quarters of a Spanish vessel en route to the West Indies. A British warship captured the slaver, and a young English naval officer (Lt. Francis Meynell) made this watercolor sketch on the spot. The Africans seen in this picture appear somewhat more comfortable than prisoners on some other slave ships, who were often chained and packed together so tightly that they had no room to stand or even sit. (National Maritime Museum, London) quickly than anywhere else—whites and blacks lived and worked together for a time on terms of relative equality. Some blacks were treated much like white hired servants, and some were freed after a fixed term of servitude. A few Africans themselves became landowners, and some apparently owned slaves of their own. By the early eighteenth century, however, a rigid distinction had become established between black and white. (See “Where Historians Disagree,” pp. 76–77.) Masters were contractually obliged to free white servants after a fixed term of servitude. There was no such necessity to free black workers, and the assumption slowly spread that blacks would remain in service permanently. Another incentive for making the status of Africans rigid was that the children of slaves provided white landowners with a self-perpetuating labor force. White assumptions about the inferiority of people of color contributed to the growing rigidity of the system. Such assumptions came naturally to the English settlers. They had already defined themselves as a superior race in their relations with the native Indian population (and earlier in their relations with the Irish). The idea of subordinating a supposedly inferior race was, therefore, already established in the English imagination by the time substantial numbers of Africans appeared in America. In the early eighteenth century, colonial assemblies began to pass “slave codes,” limiting the rights of blacks in law and ensuring almost absolute authority to white masters. One factor, and one factor Slave Codes only, determined whether a person was subject to the slave codes: color. In contrast to the colonial societies of Spanish America, where people of mixed race had a different (and higher) status than pure Africans, English America recognized no such distinctions. Any African ancestry was enough to classify a person as black. Changing Sources of European Immigration By the early eighteenth century, the flow of immigrants from England itself began to decline substantially—a result of better economic conditions there and of new government restrictions on emigration in the face of massive depopulation in some regions of the country. But as bri38559_ch03_068-103.indd Page 79 9/10/08 8:41:24 AM user-s180 /Volumes/203/MHSF070/mhbri13%0/bri13ch03 SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN PROVINCIAL AMERICA 79 The British slave ship Brookes provided this plan of its “stowage” of slaves to conform to 1798 legislation from Parliament. It illustrates vividly the terrible conditions under which slaves were shipped from Africa to the Americas— human beings squeezed into every available space like cargo for the long, dangerous passage during which many Africans died. (Library of Congress) THE SLAVE SHIP BROOKES English immigration declined, French, German, Swiss, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Scandinavian immigration continued and increased. The earliest, although not the most numerous, of these non-English European immigrants were the French Calvinists, or Huguenots. A royal proclamation, the Edict of Nantes of 1598, had allowed them to become practically a state within the state in Roman Catholic France. In 1685, however, the French government revoked the edict. Soon after that, Huguenots began Huguenots and leaving the country. About Pennsylvania Dutch 300,000 left France in the following decades, and a small proportion of them traveled to the English colonies in North America. Many German Protestants suffered similarly from the arbitrary religious policies of their rulers; and all Germans, Catholics as well as Protestants, suffered from the devastating wars with King Louis XIV of France (the “Sun King”).The Rhineland of southwestern Germany, the area known as the Palati- nate, experienced particular hardships. Because it was close to France, its people were particularly exposed to slaughter and ruin at the hands of invaders. The unusually cold winter of 1708–1709 dealt a final blow to the precarious economy of the region. More than 12,000 Palatinate Germans sought refuge in England, and approximately 3,000 of them soon found their way to America. They arrived in New York and tried at first to make homes in the Mohawk Valley, only to be ousted by the powerful landlords of the region. Some of the Palatines moved farther up the Mohawk, out of reach of the patroons; but most made their way to Pennsylvania, where they received a warm welcome (and where they ultimately became known to English settlers as the “Pennsylvania Dutch,” a corruption of their own word for “German”: “Deutsch”). The Quaker colony became the most common destination for Germans, who came to America in growing numbers. (Among them were Moravians and Mennonites, with religious views similar in many ways to
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