Labor hierarchies in the new world
“This is to lett yow vnderstand that I am in a most miserable and pittiful Case both for want of meat and want of cloathes” (Dahlberg, 2012, p. 31).
So wrote indentured servant, Richard Frethorne, from the Virginia colony to those who held his labor contract in England. Frethorne’s letter reveals the difficulties indentured laborers faced in 1623 Virginia. Considering this was his third letter, it also reveals the challenges one faced in convincing family and friends to redeem – or buy out – an indentured contract (Dahlberg, 2012).
From the beginning of the English colonies in the New World, the division between free and unfree labor was clear. The use of indentured servitude, while not a new practice, became a popular source of labor. Indentured servitude existed as a source of unfree labor that contractually bound an individual to work for another for a specific amount of time—usually to pay off debts or as punishment for breaking the law. It provided predictable service and manual labor in a harsh climate and also expanded the English population, which helped the English exert greater control over Virginia and Maryland (Musselwhite, Mancall, & Horn, 2019, p. 14). Frethorne represented one of 132,100 persons (67 percent of the English population) who came as indentured servants in the seventeenth century (Dahlberg, 2012, p. 1).
A few years before Mr. Frethorne’s arrival, in 1619, John Smith recorded the entry of another labor source to the New World. “About the last of August,” he wrote, “came in a dutch man of ware that sold us twenty Negars” (Sluiter, 1997, p. 395). Kidnapped from their homes in West Africa they arrived, ironically enough, in place called Point Comfort, Virginia (p. 395).
Together with white and Black indentured servants, enslaved Africans labored to support the growing agricultural economy in Maryland, Virginia, and up and down the eastern seaboard (Roberts, 2016). The agricultural model proved lucrative, but its success became dependent on the enslavement of Africans. With the success of the plantation model, Black lives became tied to slavery and to the economic achievement of the planter class. As historian Ira Berlin (1998) noted, “The triumph of the planter class began the transformation of [B]lack life in the Chesapeake” (p. 109). This transformation meant that by the end of the seventeenth century, the Chesapeake region had undergone an economic shift that changed the region from “[a] society with slaves … to a slave society” (Berlin, 1998, p. 109).
From the earliest days of the English colonization efforts, a labor hierarchy existed. Poor white Englishmen and women (even those convicted of a crime) were held in labor contracts that eventually allowed them to regain their freedom. As Englishmen and women, they also operated under the legal protections afforded all citizens under the British Crown. Black Africans, on the other hand, arrived as kidnapped slaves. Unable to speak the language, often sick and completely disoriented after weeks at sea, Black Africans faced a radically different future. Not considered English citizens, Africans had no rights. Very few had the good fortune to be considered indentured servants, and so the vast majority became one of thousands that now made up the Maryland and Virginia “slave societies.”
Western Notions of the Black “Race”
The shift in labor source represented more than an opportunistic seizing of human “property” that the emerging Atlantic Slave Traders would bring to the East Coast. The almost casual shift from poor white laborers to enslaved Black laborers came from deeply entrenched Western racist ideas that perceived Black skin as inferior to white (Kendi, 2017, p. 17).
In early America, distrust of Black skin was reinforced by Puritan preachers who had “learned rationales for human hierarchy [from Aristotle] and … began to believe that some groups were superior to other groups… Puritans believed they were superior to Native Americans, the African people, and even Anglicans—that is all non-Puritans” (Kendi, 2017, p. 17).
They also argued that such a hierarchy was “biblical” by relying on a story in the first book of the Bible of Noah cursing his son Ham. The reasoning shared by influential preachers went something like this: “[T]he Negroes were the children of Ham, the son of Noah, and … they were singled out to be black as the result of Noah’s curse, which produced Ham’s colour and the slavery God inflicted upon his descendants” (Kendi, 2017, p. 21).
The “curse” theory, as it was known, validated the existence of a God-ordained hierarchy between the races – the white race represented the chosen leaders of mankind and the Black race represented those cursed and inferior.
“Act for the Liberties of the People”
Attitudes condoned actions. Ideologies rationalized behaviors. The enslavement of African people expanded. As the economy grew and white merchants, plantation owners, and other businessmen became dependent on this “free” labor source, they looked for ways to legally enshrine and protect it.
In Maryland’s 1639 “Act for the Liberties of the People,” enslaved people were explicitly excepted from legal protections.
Be it Enacted By the Lord Proprietarie of this Province of and with the advice and approbation of the ffreemen of the same that all the Inhabitants of this Province being Christians (Slaves excepted) Shall have and enjoy all such rights liberties immunities priviledges and free customs within this Province as any naturall born subject of England hath or ought to have or enjoy in the Realm of England by force or vertue of the common law or Statute Law of England.... (Rees, 2001 – italics added by the author)
The act denied African enslaved persons both citizenship in Maryland and any legal right to fair treatment or freedom of will (Miller, 2015, p. 267).
Racial Chattel Slavery—Permanent and Inheritable
As the African slave population increased, slave laws adapted to ensure the continuation of the institution. Historian Jessica Millwad (2015) wrote, “in 1662, the Virginia state legislature determined that racial chattel slavery would be a permanent, inheritable condition by asserting that the status of the child followed that of the mother” (p.15). By establishing the mother’s status as inheritable, slave owners ensured that all children born on their plantations or through their enslaved women would remain in slavery and perpetuate the condition. Slave owners had secured a free labor source for themselves, and they had increased profitability by no longer having to purchase slaves from the Atlantic slave traders.
Notably, this decision to trace status through the mother consciously broke with traditional English law. Instead they adopted an old Roman principle of “partus sequitur ventrum” – which literally means “that which is brought forth follows the belly (womb).” According to an ancient Roman legal scholar, this principle was applied “among tame and domestic animals” and meant that “the [animals] brood [or offspring] belongs to the owner of the dam or mother” (Kendi, 2017, p. 41). Virginia’s law (followed by the other colonies) legally treated enslaved women as animals, such that the children of Black women were deemed the property of their owner. Laws continued to be adapted to meet the “needs” of the white plantation owner while Africans held no legal standing nor were afforded rights in this system.
Charity Folks, an enslaved woman from Annapolis, Maryland represents one of those women who bore children while enslaved. She spent her life working to purchase her own freedom and that of her children and grandchildren. Because of the principle of “partus sequitur ventrum,” enslaved mothers like Folks faced an excruciating reality that the beautiful act of giving life also meant sustaining slavery’s brutality for yet another generation. Historian Jessica Millward noted that as a mother, “giving birth under slavery meant reconciling one’s own role as a reproducer of the slave system with the joys and heartbreaks associated with pregnancy” (Millward, 2015, p. 14).
While a white woman was legally forbidden from marrying a Black man, no laws governed white men’s sexual behavior towards Black women. Many masters forced themselves upon their slaves at will and because enslaved women lacked any legal standing (or even considerations of basic humanity) rape was not considered applicable. Even if a Black woman was spared the horrors of sexual abuse by her master, enslaved women rarely could select their partner as they often were paired with another enslaved man to produce what the owner deemed the “best” offspring (Millward, 2015, p. 17).
Frederick Douglas wisely observed that, “[s]lavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families and its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation” (Millward, 2015, p. 19). Black mothers, such as Charity Folks, often worked tirelessly to keep track of their children and be the family anchor in an otherwise chaotic world. At times, they succeeded, but for some their children were lost in the slave system stretching up and down the Atlantic coast.
Slavery Legalized
Labor hierarchies, racist ideas and actions converged in the legalization of slavery in Maryland in 1663 when the General Assembly passed the “Act Concerning Negroes and Other Slaves.” The law legalized slavery and underscored the racial basis of the institution by specifically calling out Black Africans as slaves. The law further reinforced racial hierarchy by prohibiting “marriage between white women and [B]lack men” (Berlin, Grivno, & Brewer, 2007, p. 27). This prohibition reflected another racialized attitude held by many white people who viewed Black men as aggressively sexual and prone to go after “pure” white women (Kendi, 2017, p. 43).
For the next one hundred years, over 100,000 Africans, mainly Igbo, Angolans, and Mande, were brought to Maryland, and “by 1755, about one third of Maryland’s population—in some places as much as one half—was derived from Africa” (Berlin, Grivno, & Brewer, 2007, p. 4).
Next: 1700-1799