Slavery in America, typically associated with blacks from
Africa, was an enterprise that began with the shipping of more than 300,000
white Britons to the colonies. This little known history is fascinatingly
recounted in White Cargo (New York University Press,
2007). Drawing on letters, diaries, ship manifests, court documents, and
government archives, authors Don Jordan and Michael Walsh detail how thousands
of whites endured the hardships of tobacco farming and lived and died in
bondage in the New World.
Following
the cultivation in 1613 of an acceptable tobacco crop in Virginia, the need for
labor accelerated. Slavery was viewed as the cheapest and most expedient
way of providing the necessary work force. Due to harsh working
conditions, beatings, starvation, and disease, survival rates for slaves rarely
exceeded two years. Thus, the high level of demand was sustained by a
continuous flow of white slaves from England, Ireland, and Scotland from 1618
to 1775, who were imported to serve America's colonial masters.
These
white slaves in the New World consisted of street children plucked from
London's back alleys, prostitutes, and impoverished migrants searching for a
brighter future and willing to sign up for indentured servitude. Convicts
were also persuaded to avoid lengthy sentences and executions on their home soil
by enslavement in the British colonies. The much maligned Irish, viewed
as savages worthy of ethnic cleansing and despised for their rejection of
Protestantism, also made up a portion of America's first slave population, as
did Quakers, Cavaliers, Puritans, Jesuits, and others.
Around
1618 at the start of their colonial slave trade, the English began by seizing
and shipping to Virginia impoverished children, even toddlers, from London
slums. Some impoverished parents sought a better life for their offspring
and agreed to send them, but most often, the children were sent despite their
own protests and those of their families. At the time, the London
authorities represented their actions as an act of charity, a chance for a poor
youth to apprentice in America, learn a trade, and avoid starvation at
home. Tragically, once these unfortunate youngsters arrived, 50% of them
were dead within a year after being sold to farmers to work the fields.
A
few months after the first shipment of children, the first African slaves were
shipped to Virginia. Interestingly, no American market existed for
African slaves until late in the 17th century. Until then, black
slave traders typically took their cargo to Bermuda. England's poor were
the colonies' preferred source of slave labor, even though Europeans were more
likely than Africans to die an early death in the fields. Slave owners
had a greater interest in keeping African slaves alive because they represented
a more significant investment. Black slaves received better treatment
than Europeans on plantations, as they were viewed as valuable, lifelong
property rather than indentured servants with a specific term of service.
These
indentured servants represented the next wave of laborers. They were
promised land after a period of servitude, but most worked unpaid for up to15
years with few ever owning any land. Mortality rates were high. Of
the 1,200 who arrived in 1619, more than two thirds perished in the first year
from disease, working to death, or Indian raid killings. In Maryland, out
of 5,000 indentured servants who entered the colony between 1670 and 1680,
1,250 died in bondage, 1,300 gained their right to freedom, and only 241 ever
became landowners.
Early
in the 17th century, the headright system, a land allocation program to
attract new colonists, began in Jamestown, Virginia as an attempt to solve
labor shortages. The program provided acreage to heads of households that
funded travel to the colony for destitute individuals to work the land.
It led to the sharp growth of indentured servitude and slavery because the more
slaves imported by a colonist, the larger the tracts of land received.
Promises of prosperity and land were used to lure the poor, who were typically
enslaved for three to 15 years. All the while, agents profited handsomely
by augmenting their land holdings. Corruption was rampant in the
headright system and included double-counting of individual slaves, land
allocations for servants who were dead upon arrival, and per head fees given for
those kidnapped off English streets.
Purveyors
of slaves often worked in teams of spirits, captains, and office-keepers to
kidnap people from English ports for sale in the American labor market.
Spirits lured or kidnapped potential servants and arranged for their transport
with ship captains. Office-keepers maintained a base to run the
operation. They would entertain their prey and get them to sign papers
until an awaiting ship became available. Spirits and their accomplices
were occasionally put on trial, but court records show that they got off easily
and that the practice was tolerated because it was so profitable.
The
indentured servant system of people who voluntarily mortgaged their freedom
evolved into slavery. England essentially dumped its unwanted in the
American colonies, where they were treated no better than livestock.
Servants were regularly battered, whipped, and humiliated. Disease was
rampant, food was in short supply, and working and living conditions were
grim. War with local native Indian tribes was common. Severe
punishment made escape unrealistic. Initially, running away was
considered a capital crime, with clemency granted in exchange for an agreement
to increase the period of servitude.
In
the 1640s, the transportation of the Irish began. Britain's goal was to
obliterate Ireland's Catholics to make room for English planters.
Catholics who refused to attend a Protestant church could be fined. If
they were unable to pay, they could be sold as slaves. Following the end
of the English Civil Wars in 1651, English military and political leader Oliver
Cromwell focused his attention on Ireland, where the people had allied with the
defeated royalists during the conflict. Famine was created by the
intentional destruction of food stocks. Those implicated in the rebellion
had their land confiscated and were sold into slavery. Anyone refusing to
relocate was threatened with death, including children.
Scots
were also subjected to transportation to the British colonies for religious differences,
as England imposed Anglican disciplines on the Church of Scotland as
well. The English army was deployed to break up illegal church assemblies
and imprison or deport religious protesters.
Cruelty
to servants was rampant. Beatings were common, and the perpetrators,
buttressed by juries made up of fellow landowners, were rarely punished for
abuse or even murder. In time, efforts were made to improve the lot of
servants. Legislation in 1662 provided for a "competent diet, clothing
and lodging" and disciplinary measures not to "exceed the bounds of
moderation." Servants were granted the right to complain, but the
cruelty continued.
Infanticide
by unmarried women was common, as they could be severely punished for
"fornication." The mother faced a whipping, fines, and extra
years added to her servitude. Her offspring faced time in bondage as
well. If the mother was the victim of a rape by the master, he faced a
fine and the loss of a servant but wasn't subjected to whipping.
Several
uprisings in the American colonies awakened slave owners to problems, exposing
their vulnerability within the caste-like master-servant social system they had
created. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon, an aristocrat from England who became
a Virginia colonist, instigated an insurrection, referred to as Bacon's
Rebellion, that changed the course of white slavery.
Prior
to Bacon's Rebellion, much discontentment existed among servants over seemingly
empty promises of land following their periods of indenture. When they
were finally freed of their obligations, many found that they couldn't afford
the required land surveying fees and the exorbitant poll taxes.
In
1675, when war broke out with some of the native tribes, Bacon joined the side
of the warring settlers and offered freedom to every slave and servant who
deserted his master and joined Bacon in battle. Hundreds enthusiastically
joined him in the insurgency. When Bacon died suddenly, his supporters
fled or surrendered; some were recaptured, put in chains, and beaten or
hanged. However, because of the revolt, whites gained rights.
Whippings were forbidden without a formal judicial order.
By
the early 1770s, the convict trade was big business, more profitable than the
black slave trade because criminals were cheap. They could be sold for
one third the price of indentured servants. England's jails were being
emptied into America on a significant scale. Additionally, merchants who
traded in convicts from England and Ireland received a subsidy for every miscreant
transported to America. Up to a third of incoming convicts died from
dysentery, smallpox, typhoid, and freezing temperatures. Upon arrival,
they were advertised for sale, inspected, and taken away in chains by new
masters.
Following
the Revolutionary War, the British continued to ship convict labor as
"indentured servants" to America. During that time, seven ships
filled with prisoners made the journey, and two successfully landed. In
1789, convict importation was legally banned across the U.S. America
would no longer be the dumping ground for British criminals. It took
another 30 years before the indentured servant trade ended
completely.
A
well written and well researched historical narrative, White Cargo does
an excellent job of elucidating a forgotten part of our colonial past by
telling the story of thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage before
African slaves were transported to the New World.
