The rapid growth of tobacco and other cash crops provided the Colonial merchants and farmers a desperate need for labor. As a result, thousands of people were transported from England to North American Colonies. The most common type of indenture or contract required that the servant serve a master for a specified period of time, usually three to four years, and in a particular location. Illustration courtesy of Xtephenhu/Creative Commons
I have no idea why all the hoopla going on over the “Rebel” flag got me thinking about slavery; but it did. So for the past few days I have been doing a good amount of research on the subject of the history of slavery in America. I must say I have learned a lot of interesting things about slavery — some of it rather shocking.
The most shocking thing I learned, by talking with my sister who is big on family genealogy, is this hillbilly might have came from slaves. Another thing I learned is, and I found this very interesting, owning a slave had to do with economics and not hate.
When my daughters were younger they enjoyed the movie Ever After starring Drew Barrymore and I have seen it more than once. There is a scene in the movie that deals with Barrymore’s character saving a friend from being sent to the colonies to become an indentured servant. To be honest with you I never really understood what was going on there; that is until a few days ago.
I don’t exactly know when England started sending people to the New World to live the life of an indentured servant, however, I can tell you that the Irish slave trade got off to a pretty good start when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the colonies.
Now this is interesting: Whenever the subject of white slaves in America is talked about in the movies or history books the term they use is indentured servant. Indentured servant is just a kinder more gentle word for slave.
At this time in American history Bibles used the word servant to describe a slave and the colonial people were very Bible-literate. (The Bible was a big part of colonial education.)
“In the North American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries and subsequently in the United States, servant was the usual designation for a slave” (Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, p. 2,739).
Well what do you say we get back to the Irish? Between 1641 and 1652 over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and some 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland lost 60% of its population in ten years.
During the 1650s alone, more than 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were forcibly taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. Another 52,000 Irish, mostly made up of women and children, were sold to Barbados and Virginia, and another 30,000 Irish men were simply sold to the highest bidder. I read an article that stated that these slaves ended up in every colony, with the largest number ending up in the southern colony of Pennsylvania clearing trees and the like.
(I said that owning a slave was more about economics than hate, but my guess is the English pretty much hated the Irish.)
Well as it turns out African “servants” were rather expensive at the time. African “servants” not only had to be transported longer distances but they had to be paid for twice, once in Africa and then again in the Colonies. Irish “servants” were either kidnapped, prisoners, or simply just forcibly removed.
African “servants” cost 50 pound sterling, but in Colonial America you could buy yourself an Irish “servant” for no more than 5 sterling. You can’t beat a 45 sterling savings with a stick. My bad, you could beat them with a stick. There were no laws against beating your “servant” to death. Sure if you beat your Irish “servant to death,” you lose your 5 sterling, but that is a lot better than losing 50 sterling when you beat your expensive African “servant” to death. Colonial Americans tended to treat their African “servants” better than the Irish.
The importation of Irish “servants” did not end until 1839, long after having African “servants” was the norm, when Britain decided to end slavery and stopped transporting slaves.
As interesting as I found all of that, there is more. There might not have been any laws concerning the way you treated your indentured servant but there was a rule: After seven years of service, the indentured servant was free to go. (People often became indentured servants in order to pay back some sort of debt; for example passage to the Colonies.)
Apparently Anthony Johnson considered the rule as more of a guideline. Anthony Johnson had an indentured servant by the name of John Casor, who, after serving his seven years, told Johnson he was leaving, and leave he did. Johnson was not big on the idea so he took Casor to court. In 1655 the court sided with Johnson and Casor became the permanent property of Anthony Johnson, making John Casor the first Black African slave in America and Anthony Johnson the first Black African slaveholder.
(It was not until 1670 that whites could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave. In 1670, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves.)
The interesting part of this story is that Anthony Johnson was brought to the Colonies in 1619 from modern-day Angola in Africa. After Johnson did his time as an indentured servant, he was free to go and recognized as a “free Negro” — and did very well for himself in providing for his family.
(Anthony Johnson might have been the first “free Negro” to own a slave but he sure wasn’t the last. The fact is large numbers of “free” blacks owned black slaves. In 1860, 3,000 of the “free blacks”, roughly 28%, living in New Orleans owned slaves.)
The history of slavery in America is one messed up story.
Everybody seemed to be in on it. (As always, I suggest you spend some time and do your own research on the topic.)
Slavery in America had nothing to do with gender; both males and females owned slaves. And it seems that slavery in America had nothing to do with race. Blacks owned blacks, whites, and Indians. Whites owned blacks, whites, and Indians. Indians owned blacks, whites, and Indians.
(By 1860, the Cherokees had 4,600 slaves; the Choctaws, 2,344; the Creeks, 1,532; the Chickasaws, 975; and the Seminoles, 500. Some Indian slave owners were as harsh and cruel as any white slave master. Indians were often hired to catch runaway slaves; in fact, slave-catching was a lucrative way of life for some Indians, especially the Chickasaws.)
It seems to me that slavery in America was mostly about greed — and sadly, it looks like greed is something we all have in common.