The Other Source of Inexpensive Labor - Indentured Servants

As noted in an earlier post on slavery, the English colonies in the Americas fell short when it came to having a large and inexpensive labor force in order to turn a profit for a colony's proprietor and in return also for the Crown. After all, sending people across the ocean is expensive, and the typical laborer England and Ireland didn't have the means to make the voyage.

Indentured servants arrive early in the history of the colonies, one letter from 1623, describes conditions in Virginia from the perspective of Richard Frethorne. Frethorne opens his letter painting a fairly bleak picture.

"I your child am in a most heavy case by reason of the country, [which] is such that it causeth much sickness, [such] as the scurvy and the bloody flux and diverse other diseases, which maketh the body very poor and weak. And when we are sick there is nothing to comfort us; for since I came out of the ship I never ate anything but peas, and loblollie (that is, water gruel)...people cry out day and night Oh! That they were in England without their limbs – and would not care to lose any limb to be in England again, yea, though they beg from door to door" - Frethorne

From what we know of indentured servitude, it appears to have been a nasty business. It was a way for the English government to tackle a few problems in what probably seemed like pragmatic fashion. The first problem was to do with debtors, in England at the time being poor was likely to brand you as a criminal. As noted in an earlier post, Georgia was specifically setup as a colony for debtors, but indentured servitude was another route to the colonies. Second it was also the only route available for those laborers who could not afford passage to the Americas. And lastly, another source of indentured servants was the English colonization of Ireland, which ramped up during the reign of Oliver Cromwell and caused many Irish Catholics to be branded "criminals" later under the Penal Laws.

But what exactly was indentured servitude?

One description from Pennsylvania in 1750 describes it this way, Colonists " go on board the newly arrived ship that has brought and offers for sale passengers from Europe, and select among the healthy persons such as they deem suitable for their business, and bargain with them how long they will serve for their passage money, which most of them are still in debt for. When they have come to an agreement, it happens that adult persons bind themselves in writing to serve 3, 4, 5 or 6 years for the amount due by them" - Gottlieb Mittelberger

The outcome is a contract binding a person to a master for a period of time (like 5-10 years). The contents of these contracts is fairly interesting. Here are two examples: John Reid - 1742 and William Buckland - 1755 Reid's contract provides a little more detail although they read similarly. In short the servant works for the master and must always be available to work during the duration of the contract, and the master must only provider basic necessities such as food and water. The servant must

"...faithfully shall serve (his Master), his Secrets keep, his lawfull Commands gladly every where obey: he shall do no Damage to His said Master nor see to be done by others without letting or giving Notice to his said master he shall not waste his said Masters Goods, nor lend them unlawfully to any, he shall not commit Fornication, nor contract Matrimony within the said Term. At Cards, Dice or any other unlawful Game, he shall not play, whereby his said Master may have Damage with his own Goods, nor the Goods of others within the said Term, without Lisence [sic] from his said Master, he shall neither buy not [sic] sell, he shall not absent himself Day nor Night from his said Masters Service without his Leave..." - Reid contract 1742

For the duration of the contract, the servant does not have liberties.

There are a few key differences between the indentured servants and slaves in the colonies which should be noted before continuing:

• Servanthood was for a defined period of time and could not be passed on to your offspring
• Indentured servants were considered persons with legal rights

As persons, indentured servants had some legal recourse. as "legal persons with legal rights. Many used the court system to argue that they were being held beyond their term."

Indentured servants also self-liberated periodically, and ads to track down run-aways can be found here.

In the end, at least part of the colonies' economy was built on this source of free labor. (Between indentured servants and slaves, there is a lot of free labor happening.) The problems in England with what to do with some debtors and how to remove Irish Catholics was at least partially solved, and for those that could endure a contracted period of captivity, they would earn their freedom at the end of their term. How well did this system work for the servant? It's hard to say as clearly it caused Mr. Frehorne distress, and others likely felt similar distress in choosing to run-away. What can be said is that clearly from the start, the colonies were lands of freedom and opportunity for those who could afford it, but not a land of liberty for those who could not.

Early Abolitionists and Slave Revolts - Welcome to the 18th Century

As noted in earlier posts, enslaved Africans were brought to the English colonies in the Americas as early as 1619 (Virginia) and this practice continued and spread throughout the colonies during the 17th Century including places we often think of as free-states, like Massachusetts (earliest slaves in Mass. around 1638).

Senator Tom Cotton recently called slavery a necessary evil in describing conditions in the American colonies. This is an argument that has been made long before the senator's recent comment, as slavery in the colonies is still often attributed to a shortage of necessary labor. In other words, it was difficult for the rich proprietors of the colonies to turn a profit from the colonies for the English Crown without forcing people into free labor.

To describe it as a "necessary evil" is however a radical simplification and discounts movements which started in the 17th Century which questioned the morality of slavery and can be seen as the roots abolitionism.

We'll start this exploration by revisiting William and Hannah Penn's colony, Pennsylvania. William Penn was a Quaker and had founded Pennsylvania as a haven, but while being a Quaker haven the colony allowed slavery. In 1688 a group of Quakers puts together a religious argument against slavery (I call out a religious argument because we are also entering the Enlightenment, a time when humanist arguments are used to describe the state of man and society) noting that the Africans:

"are brought hither against their will and consent, and that many of them are stolen. Now, they are black, we can not conceive there is more liberty to have them as slaves as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying, that we shall do to all men like as we will be done ourselves, making no difference of what generation, descent or color they are." - 1688 Germantown Friends Protest Against Slavery

The Quakers are able to draw on the Gospel teaching of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" here. And having endured persecution and feeling that their religious liberties and rights as people had been trampled upon, these Quakers did not see how they could justify doing worse. The argument is made in plain language, that those who have suffered persecution in Europe, certainly can't rightly be a part of oppression in the colonies and still consider themselves Christians.

"But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against. In Europe, there are many oppressed for conscience sake; and here there are those oppressed are of a black color...Ah! Do consider well this thing, you who do it, if you would be done at this manner? And if it is done according to Christianity?"

This is 70 years after the first enslaved Africans were brought to the American colonies. It would another almost 100 years after this that Pennsylvania would become a free-state and almost 200 years before slavery was abolished in the United States.

That's not to say that there weren't efforts, some of which moved from paper and out onto the streets. Less than 40 years later, in New York (formerly New Amsterdam), there was a slave revolt. Like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, New York is often a place we do not associate with slavery, but by 1711 an official slave market was built by the city and the local government collected sale tax revenues from the slave trade. On April 6, 1712 a group of 23 slaves, "Armed with swords, knives, hatchets and guns, the group sought to inspire the city’s slaves to rise up against their masters by staging a dramatic revolt." A militia is sent out to quell the revolt and capture the slaves, and after being captured "the majority were sentenced to brutal, public executions, including being burned alive and being hung by chains in the center of town."

Less than 30 years later, in South Carolina, slaves marched "down the road, carrying banners that proclaim "Liberty!". They shout out the same word. Led by an Angolan named Jemmy, the men and women continue to walk south, recruiting more slaves along the way. By the time they stop to rest for the night, their numbers will have approached one hundred."

The Stono Revolt, as it's known, comes at a time of escalating tension between England and Spain, with a quick note that Spain still held significant lands in the Americas, including nearby Florida with a colony at St. Augustine. White colonists at the time were required to carry firearms even on Sundays while at church, On their march, "The slaves went to a shop that sold firearms and ammunition, armed themselves, then killed the two shopkeepers...the few whites whom they now encountered were chased and killed, though one individual, Lieutenant Governor Bull, eluded the rebels and rode to spread the alarm." It's not long before armed white colonists are able to respond in kind, "By dusk, about thirty slaves were dead and at least thirty had escaped. Most were captured over the next month, then executed.

In 1733, six years before the Stono Revolt, James Oglethorpe founds Georgia as a free-state, a place for English debtors to work, and Oglethorpe believes slavery will lead to idleness. Oglethorpe also had a moral stance against slavery after hearing about "Job" (the Senegambian - Muslim merchant turned slave in Maryland who I referred to in an earlier post on religion in the colonies). "In December 1732, Job’s distant benefactor (Oglethorpe) sold his stock in the Royal African Co. and severed all ties with British slaving corporation. The precocious prince arrived in London during the spring 1733 while Oglethorpe was establishing the Georgia colony". Oglethorpe feeling terrible about what had happened to Job, purchases Job's freedom and goes about establishing a colony free of slavery. It's hard for us, living after the Civil War, to imagination a time when New York and Massachusetts allowed slavery but Georgia did not.

The empathy expressed by the Quakers in Pennsylvania and the ideas behind Georgia's founding make it clear that slavery wasn't a given. Moral arguments were made by the Quakers in the light of their own persecution, and Oglethorpe presented his case in opposition as a case against white idleness; he expected his white colonists to work. To assume then that slavery was a "necessary evil" is to ignore that not long after it's institution, white settlers in the colonies were questioning it. And it ignores that the enslaved Africans were marching, fighting and dying to assert their own liberties since at least the early 18th Century.

Over time, pleas which start on paper in 1688 evolve into small revolts like 1712 in New York and escalate into bigger revolts like Stono in 1739. These are moments of opportunity to stop and do something different, to recognize a series of escalations and to make reforms as suggested by the Quakers or Oglethorpe. Instead of pursuing the cause of the liberty, the colonies instead become more oppressive and crackdown on African slaves. Codified oppression takes hold in a number of the colonies. One example is the Negro Act of 1740 in South Carolina. This act establishes that:

"all Negroes and Indians....shall hereafter be, in this province and all their issue and offspring, born to be born, shall be, and they are hereby declared to be, and remain forever hereafter, absolute slaves"

And then goes on to detail other things which will sound more like the institution of slavery, which we imagine when thinking about the Civil War. Slaves shall not leave their towns or plantations and if they do then they shall receive 20 lashes. Any slave who assaults or strikes a white person will be punished by death. Any assembly or meeting of slaves will be dispersed. Acts like this are designed specifically to ensure that the enslaved African community cannot rebel against their enslavement, and once in place many of these laws will effectively stand until the end of the Civil War. To be sure, the abolition movement isn't dead as result of these laws, but it is pushed to the background throughout much the 18th Century. As we get closer to the framing the US Constitutions we'll revisit the progress abolitionism is able to make in the 18th Century.

Plurality of Religions - Colonies of New Netherlands and Maryland

The Reformation in Europe brought with it much unrest in England, as much discussed, the unrest often played out as Anglican vs. Catholic vs. Puritan. On the continent, this played out in events like the 30 Years War (1618-1648). This unrest is a major player in the formation of the American colonies as various groups looked to escape incarceration, violence, political persecution, and war.

In a previous post, we touched on the arrival of Puritans, as the Pilgrims settled in Massachusetts. Before arriving in Massachusetts, the Pilgrims migrated to the Netherlands, seen as a place of religious tolerance. At around the same time as the Pilgrims get settled in Massachusetts, (we'll talk about state sponsored monopolies in the future), the Dutch West Indian Company organized  the colony of New Netherlands, including founding a port city on the Hudson River, New Amsterdam (today's New York).

New Netherlands initially finds its fortunes in the fur trade, As noted in 1626,"The ship which has returned home this month [November] brings samples of all sorts of produce growing there, the cargo being 7246 beaver skins, 675 otter skins, 48 mink, 36 wild eat, and various other sorts". The colony itself is naturally founded by Calvinist Dutch Reformers, and it is to the best of my understanding that my earliest ancestor in the US was a deacon in the First Dutch Reformed Church (Teunis Covert).

It is clear that in the 1620's on the Atlantic Coast in what will be the 13 colonies of the American Revolution, there are English Puritans in Massachusetts, Dutch Reformers in New Amsterdam (New York City), Anglicans and Africans in Jamestown, and of course the Native Americans who already had their own established nations and religions here. But a little deeper digging into religious unrest in Europe will reveal others fleeing persecution and landing in New Amsterdam.

As noted in the post about Christopher Columbus, he set out from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. In 1492, Jews are expelled from Spain. Many eventually end up in the Netherlands, as noted by Bradford (one of the Pilgrims) as place of religious freedom. Religious unrest in Europe doesn't just present itself in the form of Catholic monarchs like Ferdinand and Isabella, the Reformation itself poses a threat to European Jews. Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, writes a treatise entitled the "Jews and Their Lies":

"Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, know that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defining of God and men are practiced....First set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This be done in honor of our Lord..."-Martin Luther

A reformed Europe isn't any safer for the Jewish people, if anything it may have been less safe. Just as other persecuted peoples flee to the Western Hemisphere, Jews begin to arrive in New Amsterdam in 1654 and found the Congregation Shearith Israel..

Other examples of religious plurality can be found further south. Maryland, named after the Virgin Mary, is found by Cecil Calvert, remembered in US History classes as Lord Baltimore. Maryland is founded as a haven for English Catholics, much like the Puritans, finding a home further away from the English Crown is a safer option than living in England. The Charter of Maryland is granted in 1632 by King Charles I. Catholics were looking for refuge from the Protestant Reformation, and would still find persecution through out the US History, as the fear of "papists" was on full display as late as the 1928 presidential election and anti-Catholicism dogged even JFK during his presidential run.

At this point in the 17th Century, the three main factions openly engaged against one another in the British Isles are now setting up their own havens across the Atlantic. Dutch Reformers have a colony wedged in between with a Jewish congregation in the main port. By the time the Congregation Shearith Israel is setup, it's been 35 years since the first Africans arrived in Jamestown, and enslaved Africans were first sold in the Massachusetts colony 16 years earlier. If Colonial America is starting to sound more diverse than you remember, that isn't an accident or mistake. Someone makes the decisions about what ends up in textbooks and is taught in schools (do some googling on the Texas State Board of Education).

In doing some digging on Maryland, I came across an interesting account from later in colonial history, a story from around 1730, which got me thinking a little bit more about what the world of the 17th and early 18th Century looked like. The account from 1730 is of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, a Senegambian merchant and son of a Muslim cleric, who is sent by his father to sell two of their slaves at a port near the Gambia River. Ayuba has the misfortune of being attacked while en route by Mandigo bandits; he stripped of his valuables, clothing, etc, and sold into slavery at the port himself. Ayuba ends up in Maryland where he comes to be known as Job.

While assigned to work on the plantation, he "withdraw(s) into the woods to pray; but a white boy frequently watched him, and whilst he was at his devotion would mock him, and throw dirt in his face. This very much disturbed Job, and added considerably to his other misfortunes; all which were increased by his ignorance of the English language." Ayuba was a Muslim, enslaved, practicing his religion in the American colonies in 1730.

Historically speaking, at the time Columbus set sail, Islam had spread throughout the Middle East, across North Africa, into Spain, and across the Black Sea as various kingdoms and empires from the Saracens to the Ottomans rose and fell. The map below represents the spread of Islam today according to Pew Research.



It stands to reason that Ayuba wasn't the only Muslim person to be enslaved and brought to the United States. History Detectives from PBS estimates that 10 to 15% of enslaved Africans brought to the US were Muslims. If that holds true, that means 2 or 3 of the original slaves brought to Jamestown would have been Muslim. The Africans forcibly brought to the United States were largely purchased at ports along Africa's west coast. Looking at the PEW map, it's entirely possible that 10-15% is accurate.

Of course, these people would have been enslaved and not been allowed to practice their religion freely, and for the most part not allowed to read or write either, so it's hard for us to know exactly who these people were, how many there were, etc. And when we think of these enslaved peoples as property, we forget that they had unique cultures, languages, and religions which were forcibly stripped from them upon being enslaved.

Based on the evidence and accounts available, we must acknowledge that the American Colonies were in fact not really Christian colonies. As has already been argued, in the 17th Century there is no overarching "Christianity", that's a more modern concept, and it's abundantly clear that the three main Abrahamic religions were present in the American Colonies prior to the American Revolution. In the future we'll circle back to this point when we go deeper on the First Amendment, the Freedom of Religion.

The Fate of Such - Slavery Starts in Jamestown

After the failure of the Roanoke Colony and finding that tobacco could be potential cash crop to help Jamestown succeed, John Rolfe notes the arrival of enslaved African people...

1619? How did we get here? Let's take a giant step backwards in time. Slavery has a long, storied human tradition. It appears in the Bible: from the captivity in Egypt to the Apostle Paul telling slaves to be obedient to their masters and masters to be good to their slaves. (See Ephesians 6) The ancient kingdoms from Persia, to Egypt, to Greece had well organized systems of slavery. Roman slavery is well documented and studied, and initially it seems for many of the ancient kingdoms, slavery is the result of one kingdom conquering another.

Slavery persists in Europe after the Roman Empire, and as the continent becomes mostly Catholic and transitions to feudal forms of government, slavery is largely phased out and replaced with serfdom. There's a nuanced distinction between a slave and serf to clarify. The slave is the direct property the master or the master's family, the serf is more bound to the master's land or manor. The serf worked the master's land in exchange for security, justice, and some of land of their own to farm. To be clear serfdom was still pretty miserable and was another way for the wealthy, gentry or noble classes to benefit from free or mostly free labor.

Throughout the Middle Ages, slavery in form of one Christian owning another is largely done away with, but slavery is known to have existed in the form of Christians owning Muslims or Muslims owning Christians. As Europeans begin navigating beyond the Mediterranean in the 15th Century, the nature of the European slave trade changes and is legitimized by the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Nicholas V in 1452 in the Dum Diverseas authorized that Saracens and pagans could be kept enslaved perpetually, and in 1455 in the Romanus Pontifex authorized King Alfonso:

"to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods"

This is the approach Columbus takes when he sails to the Americas, meets the Taino, and by day 3 has seven people captive on his ship to be brought back to Spain as servants for Queen Isabella. Initially slavery in the Americas uses the local people as the workforce. This system smells a little more like feudal serfdom, these Native Americans live on this land, this land has been claimed for Spain, therefore these people work the land for Spain. There's one major problem with the plan for leveraging the Native Americans for slave labor, epidemic.

As noted in an earlier post, the indigenous people of the Americas had not been exposed to diseases from the Eastern Hemisphere and within 50 years, various American nations are devastated. Diseases like influenza and smallpox spread not only to the nations which have had direct contact with the Europeans but also to other nearby nations as peoples engaged in travel and trade.

Europeans had already explored along the west coast of Africa (remember Dias made it south around Africa to reach in India in 1488), with the new colonies in the Americas short on labor, Europeans turned to another source of slaves, Africa.

At the time European encroachment into Africa was primarily limited to coastal colonies (pretty much true until the development of quinine). It is here that the Europeans are able to trade goods for slaves. Like many other parts of the world, slavery existed in Africa, and like many other parts of the world it was part of the spoils of war, "Those sold by the Blacks are for the most part prisoners of war, taken either in fight, or pursuit, or in the incursions they make into their enemies territories..To conclude, some slaves are also brought to these Blacks, from very remote inland countries, by way of trade, and sold for things of very inconsiderable value - John Barbot.

The Spanish and Portuguese start the Atlantic slave trade very simply by trading European made goods to coastal African kingdoms. And as these people are sold as property, they marked as such, "These being set aside, each of the others, which have passed as good, is marked on the breast, with a red- hot iron, imprinting the mark of the French, English, or Dutch companies, that so each nation may distinguish their own," These enslaved people are now marked for shipping and ready to sail across the Atlantic as property, as Barbot notes, "Many of those slaves we transport from Guinea to America are prepossessed with the opinion, that they are carried like sheep to the slaughter". Their primary job upon reaching the colonies is to grow whatever the local cash crop is, whether growing sugar in the Caribbean or tobacco in Virginia.

That brings us back to Jamestown. The Spanish may have started bringing slaves over, and the English are all too eager to follow suit. The slave trade is a product of religious supremacy as noted in the papal bulls form 1452 and 1455 but also as seen Queen Elizabeth's charter for Walter Raleigh's Roanoke colony. The lives of Saracens, heathens, pagans, etc are simply are not of value, and Christians of the time feel perfectly justified committing violence against people or lands that are not Christian (keeping in mind that it means their particular version of Christianity, as noted in earlier posts on European religious unrest). There's also a practical problem they are trying to solve, colonies across the Atlantic are expensive and difficult to prop up, especially if you don't strike gold upon landing. Massive, industrialized farming appears to be needed in order for agriculture to make colonial profit, and the expense of being a free European who wants to cross the ocean is largely cost prohibitive. The age old, tried and tested, and now religiously approved use of slave labor is the solution. Other solutions will be tried as well and will be discussed in future posts, but the economic foundation of the Virginia colony, the first English colony in the US, is built on slavery.

Jamestown is the first successful English colony in the US. The first enslaved Africans arrived in 1619, right at the point when the colony realizes tobacco is the future, and within a little more than a decade after its founding. We may never know what languages these first slaves spoke or what religions they practiced, although some google searching will suggest they came from Angola. What we can know is that these slaves are amongst the first people to settle in the English colonies, the first lasting English colony to more precise. This American society started culturally pluralistic, and we have often failed to recognize it.

We also shouldn't assume that the Atlantic slave trade was inevitable. It was a convenient solution to be sure, and one which Europeans could easily encourage by trading manufactured goods and helping to prop up kingdoms that were willing to capture and sell slaves. In many ways, it's a precursor to later Imperialism and certain subtler forms of modern day Imperialism and global trade. In the 18th Century, John Wesley writes, "It was some time before the Europeans found a more compendious way of procuring African slaves, by prevailing upon them to make war upon each other, and to sell their prisoners," as he rebukes the rationale for starting and maintaining the slave trade. The choice to start and continue the slave trade was deliberate, and well before Wesley, there were voices of dissent.

One hundred years after the papal bulls which gave legitimacy to slavery, Pope Paul III believing that Jesus intended believers to spread the Gospel to the corners of the Earth, flatly condemns the slave trade:

"Hence Christ, who is the Truth itself, that has never failed and can never fail, said to the preachers of the faith whom He chose for that office 'Go ye and teach all nations.' He said all, without exception, for all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith. The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God's word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith."

As we leave Jamestown and 1619, we leave a colony populated with Anglican Englishmen who owe their very survival to the local Powhatan, and who will build their tobacco fortunes on the backs of African men and women. In just this one colony the face of America is already many, but we will explore the other early colonies, we'll see how other peoples formed the foundation of the pluralistic society that we live in today.