Colonial and Revolutionary America Essay 5 to 6 pages

Race and Slavery in British North America

Enslaved Americans in the Chesapeake, the Lower South, and the Northern Colonies

The Atlantic Slave Trade

• http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-atlantic-slave- trade-what-your-textbook-never-told-you- anthony-hazard

From Indentured Servants to Enslaved Africans

• During much of the 17th Century, indentured servitude and slavery coexisted in the southern and parts of the northern colonies

• Around 1700 the number of indentured servants begins to decline for 2 reasons • Wages rising in Britain due to economic growth/industrialization

• Contracts shorter

• European immigrants paying their own way

• Cost of transatlantic passage falls

• More voyages

• Larger, faster ships

• Slave trade expands, prices fall, become competitive with indenture contracts

• Colonists wealthier, can afford purchasing slaves

Race, Class, and Slavery in the Chesapeake

• First enslaved Africans arrive in Jamestown in 1619

• Experiences of indentured survants and enslaved Africans similar in the early decades work side-by-side on most plantations, overseer might be European or African, possibility of freedom about the same for both

• More race mixing, intermarriage – 25-30% of children born to white women were mixed race

• Some successful Black freemen purchased indenture contracts and owned black slaves

• Case of Anthony Johnson, free black man • Owned property, sued and was sued, passed estate onto children • Granted 250 acre headright for paying transport of 5 people to Virginia • Pursued escaped white servant, won damages against white neighbor

Race, Class, and Slavery in the Chesapeake

What does this tell us about the early Chesapeake?

• Class often mattered more than race

• Society characterized by mobility (geography, class)

Later Chesapeake - after the 1680s

• Race & racial identity more significant

• 1691 – Virginia colonial assembly outlaws interracial marriages

• Less mixing, enslaved tended to be African natives (until 1740s), who did not quickly adopt European ways/languages

• Association between race and condition of freedom (black = enslaved)

Chesapeake Slavery

Tobacco and Slavery – Gang Labor

• Tobacco required constant attention from planting to harvest, prompted constant supervision of day-to-day operations

• Labor intensive, but low skill • Planting, topping, worming, suckering, curing

• Gang labor system develops

• Masters typically present: Small farms masters labored with slaves and servants, large plantations masters oversaw operations

• Transition to wheat and grain crops after 1750s, often grown along with tobacco, more skilled work, more time away from plantations

• Slaves have certain legal rights, treatment and conduct of enslaved governed by law, petty “crimes” typically left to masters

Chesapeake Slavery

Robert “King” Carter (b. ~1663 – d. 1732)

• Planter, Virginia’s Neck

• Corotoman Plantation – more than 300,000 acres at its largest

• Owned more than 1,000 slaves spread over 48 farms

• Offices: County Court Judge, General Assembly, Governor’s Council, Acting Governor (1727-28)

• Land Agent for Thomas, Lord Fairfax of the Fairfax Proprietary

• In/famous for his brutal & authoritarian plantation management

Credit: Wikicommons

Slavery in the Lower South (South Carolina, Georgia)

Two versions of slavery, rural/planation and urban

Wealth of Carolina planters meant they were often away, had more managers/underlings for day-to-day oversight

Lower South Plantation slavery – the Task System:

• Different crops (rice, Sea Island cotton, indigo), different agricultural cycle, different ways of life

• Indentured servants uncommon in Carolina

• Less interaction between races in the fields

• Rice cultivation intermittent, less labor intensive, more skills involved

• Task labor system develops

• More autonomy from the masters on a daily basis

• Often able to raise own crops, engage in individual economic activity

• Developed distinctive culture, language, ways of living

Slavery in the Lower South

Urban slavery in South Carolina and Georgia (Charles Town, later Savannah)

• Enslaved were often mulattoes/mixed race

• Greater mobility, skilled or semi-skilled laborers, sometimes literate

• Movements later restricted by law but often disregarded

• Men often “mechaniks” in the shipping, building, and craft industries, women usually house servants

• Sometimes engaged their own contracts, carried on their own work (“overwork”)

• Often clothed in current fashions

Slavery in the North

Chiefly New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania

Northern Slavery blended some of the characteristics of slavery in the Chesapeake and the Lower South

• Most slaves labored in the cities or small farms with their masters

• Commercial characteristics of northern economy meant both urban and rural slaves tended to be more skilled

• Farmwork involved processing wheat, managing/slaughtering/processing livestock, lumbering, weaving & clothmaking

• In cities carpenters, shipwrights, rope makers, sailmakers, coopers, and sometimes high-skill workers: silver- and goldsmiths, cabinetmakers

Indentured Servitude in the 18th Century

• Typically highly skilled immigrants in the building, fine clothing trades, agriculture

• From all over Europe: France, Germany, Italy

• More urban than rural work

• Contracts were expensive, passage paid by the employer, terms negotiable

• Sometimes employed in mines & rural manufactures