May 19, 2012

Unit 15 - People & Laws

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Unit Fifteen – Servants, Slaves, and Laws

When the English people came to settle the colonies they brought English ways with them. In England at that time the lands of rich men were worked by tenants and not the landowners themselves.  These tenants had to pay the landowner rent and had to pay their “Landlord” respect and fight for him in times of war.


If the tenants did not pay their rent faithfully they could be punished. Many of the people sent to Virginia at first were tenants, who were expected to work on other people's land in a sort of paid slavery. They were to pay half of all they produced to the landowner, and they were bound to stay on the land for seven years.

Tenants were also sent to Maryland, and the Dutch established the same system in New York.

Besides tenants, there were also people who were sent to Virginia of a poorer class, who were called "indentured servants." Those sent at first were poor boys and girls, bound to serve until they were of age. After a while adult servants were sent to Virginia and to New England, They bound to serve for seven or ten years, but afterward they were only required to serve four years to pay their passage.

This way of getting laborers became very common, and many thousands were sent over in this temporary bondage. During the time of their bondage they could be bought and sold like slaves. They were often whipped and otherwise cruelly treated, when they chanced to fall into the hands of hardhearted masters.

There were people in England at that time called "Spirits" and “Crimps."  These people would lure children and poor people to go to the colonies as servants by telling them stories of how great it was and how rich they would become.

A crimp would entrapped a man aboard a ship, and then detain him until the ship left harbor.  Thus, he was forced to the colonies against his will. This was called "trapanning" a man, which meant entrapment.

Sometimes they kidnapped or "spirited" away children, and sold them into service in the colonies. Other times people who wished to inherit an estate sent away the true heir and had him sold in America.

A crimp was a person who tricked or coerced others into service as sailors or soldiers.  One of these crimped children was by right a Lord!  He was entrapped on shipboard by his uncle and sold into Pennsylvania. He spent twelve years in bondage before he could return to England and proved his right to the lordship.  Tragically, he died before he came into possession of any wealth.

Bond servants were in some places called "redemptioners" About  fifteen hundred of them were sold in Virginia every year. In Pennsylvania the men who took hordes of these “servants” about the country and sold them to the farmers were called "soul drivers."

Many of the bond servants, when their time was out, got land and grew rich. But most of the people lived hard and laborious lives.

The English laws in old times were very severe against even the smallest petty crimes and a man could be hanged for stealing bread to satisfy his hunger. Many people sentenced to death for small offenses were pardoned on condition of their going to the colonies. In America convicts were sold for seven years. The Americans complained bitterly that such bad people were forced on them.

In 1619, the year that the Great Charter reached Virginia, a Dutch ship came into James River filled with African slaves.  They sold nineteen of these slaves to the planters. These nineteen were the first slaves in America.

For a long time the number of slaves that came into the colonies was small and the European bond servants did the most of the work in Maryland and Virginia until about the close of the seventeenth century, when the high price of tobacco caused a great many African Slaves to be brought to work the fields.   This was about the same time that large rice plantations were becoming popular in South Carolina and so this created a great demand for slaves.

All the colonies had slaves, but the colonies far to the north had no crop that would make their labor profitable and so African slaves in New England were mostly kept for house servants.

In New York City and in Philadelphia there were a great many house slaves, but not many in the country regions where wheat was the chief crop.  This was because wheat did not require much hard labor.

Most of the African slaves were taken to the colonies which raised tobacco, rice, and indigo.

After the Revolution, slavery was abolished in the colonies that had few slaves, but the Southern colonies felt they required this form of servitude for their plantations and were not ready to get rid of the practice. This led to the difference between free and slave States, and finally led to the Civil War.

The slaves at first did not speak English, and practiced their African customs. Some of them were fierce and the Colonists were afraid of them.
Sometimes this fear caused the slave owners to beat them brutally, and sometimes the slave owners were just brutal men themselves, and so treated them very badly.

The African slaves did not just lie down and take this poor treatment; in fact they formed uprisings which left all the “protesters” dead as well as many of the colonists.

One of these was in New York City in 1712. Twenty-four slaves were put to death on this occasion, mostly by burning but also by some of the other more torturous ways of the time.

Several other uprisings occurred across the settlements and the unrest of the African slaves began to increase during the time leading up to the revolution, as well as afterwards.

The laws of the day were harsh and cruel, as were the punishments for breaking them.  The colonists brought with them many curious old customs and laws from England and the laws of that time were set up so that men and women didn’t have much privacy.

 
Men were punished for lying and a fine was imposed on profane swearing by the laws of nearly all the colonies; in New England the tongue of the swearer was sometimes pinched in the opening of a split stick.

In all the colonies there were laws about keeping the Sabbath (Sunday church day) and in many of them there were punishments for not going to church. In New England the Sunday laws were rigorously enforced, and the Sabbath was made to begin at sunset on Saturday evening. The people were at first called to church by beating a drum in the streets. For more than a hundred years after the settlement of Massachusetts, people were not allowed to sit in Boston Common on Sunday, or to walk in the streets except to church.  They could not even take a breath of fresh air on hot Sunday by the seashore directly in front of their own doors.

Women were also forbidden to be too free with their tongues, and in Virginia (and some other colonies) women were put upon a ducking stool and dipped in the water. In New England they were gagged and set by their front doors "for all and goers to gaze at."

Drunkards were sometimes obliged to wear a red letter D about their necks, and other offenses were punished by suspending a letter, or a picture, or a halter about the neck.  

Standing with the head and hands fast in the pillory, to be pelted with eggs by the crowd, and sitting with the feet fast in the stocks, were forms of punishment. In some places there were cages, in which criminals were confined in sight of the people. Punishments in the pillory and stocks, or in a cage, were inflicted on some occasion of public concourse—a lecture day or a market day —to make the shame greater.

More severe than stocks or pillory were the customary punishments of whipping on the bare back, cropping or boring the ears, and branding the hand with a hot iron. There were also sometimes, for great crimes, cruel punishments of burning alive, or hanging alive in chains.

The Colonists at the time were more superstitious most people are now, and they were very much afraid of witches. This belief in witchcraft prevailed both in England and America. People sometimes nailed up horseshoes, or hung up laurel boughs in their houses, to protect themselves from magic charms.
 
When butter would not come for churning, red hot horseshoes were dropped into the milk to "burn the witch out." When pigs were sick and thought to be bewitched, their ears and tails were cut off and burned. There were people tried in almost every colony for witchcraft. In England and in many other countries, executions for witchcraft were more common than in any of the colonies.

Of the many excitements about witchcraft in the colonies, the one that went to the greatest extreme was that in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692.

So great was the agitation that the most serious people lost their self-possession, and some poor people even believed themselves to be witches, and confessed it. In the fright and indignation that prevailed, twenty people were executed, and the jails were crowded with the accused. One fourth of the inhabitants of Salem moved away, afraid either of the witches or of being charged with witchcraft.


Eventually some common sense returned to the people of Salem and the prisoners were released, but not before Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused but not formally pursued by the authorities.

The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged. One man (Giles Corey) who refused to enter a plea was crushed to death under heavy stones in an attempt to force him to do so. At least five more of the accused died in prison.

In most of the colonies there was, at some time, persecution for religious opinions. In Virginia, only the Church of England form of worship was allowed at first, and Catholics, Puritans, Quakers, Presbyterians, and Baptists were persecuted.

In Massachusetts, for a long time, only the Puritan or Congregational worship, as set up by law, was allowed. Those who advocated other doctrines were punished, and many Quakers were whipped, and some of them even put to death for coming back after they had been banished.

Lord Baltimore wished to give toleration in Maryland to all who believed in Christ, but the lawmakers of Maryland afterward made laws to annoy those who were of Lord Baltimore's own religion—the Roman Catholics.

 Roger Williams, who was banished from Massachusetts for his opinions, founded what is now called Rhode Island, on the plan of entire liberty in religious matters. He went further than Lord Baltimore, and gave to Hebrews and to unbelievers the same liberty with Christians.

In Pennsylvania, where the Quakers were in the majority, there was toleration; and most persecution ceased in all the colonies before the Revolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 15 - Servants and Slaves

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