Volume 1, Chapter 6, The Social Structure of Virginia, Bond Servants and Slaves
Until the 1670s, the bulk of forced labor in Virginia was indentured service, largely white but some negro.
Negro slavery was negligible. In 1683 there were 12,000 indentured servants in Virginia
and only 3,000 slaves of a total population of 44,000. Masters generally preferred bond
servants for two reasons. First, they could exploit the bond servants more ruthlessly because
they did not own them permanently as they did their slaves. On the other hand, the slaves were
completely their owners' capital and hence the masters were economically compelled to try to
to Preserve the Capital Value of Their Human Tools of Production.
Second, the bond servants, looking forward to their freedom, could be more productive
laborers than the slaves, who were deprived of all hope for the future.
As the colony grew, the number of bond servants grew also, although as servants were repeatedly
set free, their proportion to the population of Virginia declined.
Since the service was temporary, a large new supply had to be continually furnished.
There were seven sources of bond service, two voluntary, initially, and five compulsory.
The former consisted partly of redemptioners who bound themselves for four to seven years
in return for their passage money to America.
It is estimated that 70 percent of all immigration in the colonies throughout the colonial era
consisted of redemptioners. The other voluntary category consisted of apprentices, children
of the English poor who were bound out until the age of 21. In the compulsory category
were a. impoverished and orphaned English children shipped to the colonies by the English
government, b. colonists found to service in lieu of imprisonment for debt, the universal
C. Colonial criminals, who were simply farmed out by the authorities to the mastership of private employers D. Poor English children or adults kidnapped by professional crimps, one of whom boasted of seizing 500 children annually for a dozen years
and E. British convicts choosing servitude in America for 7 to 14 years in lieu of all prison terms in England.
The last were usually petty thieves or political prisoners, and Virginia absorbed a large portion of the transported criminals.
As an example of the grounds for deporting political prisoners into bondage, an English law in force in the mid-1660s
In the 1960s, banished to the colonies anyone convicted three times of attempting an unlawful
meeting, a law aimed mostly at the Quakers. Hundreds of Scottish nationalist rebels, particularly
after the Scottish uprising of 1679, were shipped to the colonies as political criminals.
An Act of 1670 banished to the colonies anyone with knowledge of illegal religious or political activity who refused to turn informer for the government.
During his term of bondage, the indentured servant received no monetary payment. His hours and conditions of work were set absolutely by the will of his master, who punished the servant at his own discretion.
Flight from the master's service was punishable by beating or by doubling or tripling the term of indenture.
The bond servants were frequently beaten, branded, chained to their work and tortured.
The frequent maltreatment of bond servants is so indicated in a corrective Virginia Act of 1662.
The barbarous usage of some servants by cruel masters being so much scandal and infamy to the country that people who would willingly adventure themselves hither are through fears thereof diverted, thus diminishing the needed supply of indentured servants.
Many of the oppressed servants were moved to the length of open resistance.
The major form of resistance was flight, either individually or in groups.
This spurred their employers to search for them by various means, including newspaper advertisements.
Work stoppages were also employed as a method of struggle,
But more vigorous rebellions also occurred, especially in Virginia in 1659, 1661, 1663, and 1681.
Rebellions of servants were particularly pressing in the 1660s because of the particularly large number of political prisoners taken in England during that decade.
Independent and rebellious by nature, these men had been shipped to the colonies as bond servants.
Stringent laws were passed in the 1660s against runaway servants striving to gain their freedom.
In all cases, the servant revolts for freedom were totally crushed and the leaders executed.
Demands of the rebelling servants ranged from improved conditions and better food to outright freedom.
The leading example was the servant uprising of 1661 in York County, Virginia, led by Isaac Friend and William Pluton.
Friend had exhorted the other servants that he would be the first and lead them and cry as they went along,
The Rebels retreated with surprising leniency by the county court, but this unwanted spirit quickly evaporated with another servant uprising in 1663.
This servant rebellion in York, Middlesex and Gloucester counties was betrayed by a servant named Birkenhead, who was rewarded for his renegade by the House of Burgesses with his freedom and 5,000 pounds of tobacco.
The rebel leaders, however, former soldiers under Cromwell, were ruthlessly treated. Nine were indicted for high treason and four actually executed.
In 1672, a servant plot to gain freedom was uncovered and a Catherine Nugent suffered
thirty lashes for complicity. A law was passed forbidding servants from leaving home without
special permits and meetings of servants were further repressed. One of the first servant
rebellions occurred in the neighboring Chesapeake tobacco colony of Maryland. In 1644, Edward
Robert Robinson and two brothers were convicted for armed rebellion for the purpose of liberating
bond servants. Thirteen years later, Robert Chesick, a recaptured runaway servant in Maryland,
persuaded several servants of various masters to run away to the Swedish settlements on
the Delaware River. Chesick and a dozen other servants seized a master's boat, as well
as well as arms for self-defense in case of attempted capture, but the men weren't captured
and Chesick was given 30 lashes. As a special refinement, one of Chesick's friends and abettors
in the escape, John Beale, was forced to perform the whipping. In 1663, the bond servants of
Richard Preston of Maryland went on strike and refused to work in protest against the
The Maryland Court sentenced the six disobedient servants to thirty lashes each with two of
the most moderate rebels compelled to perform the whipping. Facing force majeure, all the
servants abased themselves and begged forgiveness from their master and from the court, which
suspended the sentence on good behavior.
In Virginia, a servant rebellion against a master, Captain Sisby, occurred as early
as 1638. The lower Norfolk Court ordered the enormous total of 100 lashes on each rebel.
In 1640, six servants of Captain William Pierce tried to escape to the Dutch settlements.
The runaways were apprehended and brutally punished, lest this set a dangerous precedent
for the Future Time. The prisoners were sentenced to be whipped and branded, to work in shackles,
and to have their terms of bondage extended. By the late seventeenth century, the supply
of bond servants began to dry up. While the opening of new colonies and wider settlements
increased the demand for bond servants, the supply dwindled greatly as the English government
In Virginia, there had been 50 Negroes, the bulk of them slaves, out of a total population of 2,500 in 1630, 950 Negroes out of 27,000 in 1660, and 3,000 Negroes out of 15,000 in 1660.
Negroes out of 44,000 in 1680, a steadily rising proportion but still limited to less
than 7% of the population. But in 10 years, by 1690, the proportion of Negroes had jumped
to over 9,000 out of 53,000, approximately 17%, and by 1700 the number was 16,000 out
In 1700, the number was 16,000 out of a population of 58,000, approximately 28 percent. And of the total labor force, the working population, this undoubtedly reflected a considerably higher proportion of Negroes.
How the Negro slaves were treated may be gauged by the diary of the aforementioned William Byrd II, who felt himself to be a kindly master and often invade against brutes who mistreat their slaves.
Typical examples of this kindly treatment were entered in his diary.
2-8-09 Jenny and Eugene were whipped 5-13-09 Mrs. Byrd whips the nurse
6-10-09 Eugene, a child, was whipped for running away and had the bit put on him
11.30.09. Jenny and Eugene were whipped 12.16.09. Eugene was whipped for doing nothing yesterday
4.17.10. Bird helped to investigate. Slaves tried for high treason. Two were hanged
7.1.10. The Negro woman ran away again with the bit in her mouth.
7.15.10. My wife, against my will, caused little Jenny to be burned with a hot iron.
8.22.10. I had a severe quarrel with little Jenny and beat her too much, for which I was
sorry.
1.22.11. A slave pretends to be sick. I put a branding iron on the place he claimed
of and put the bit on him.
It is pointless to criticize such passages as only selected instances of cruel treatment
counterbalanced by acts of kindness by bird and other planters toward their slaves.
For the point is not only that the slave system was one where such acts could take place.
The point is that threats of brutality underlay the whole relationship.
For the essence of slavery is that human beings, with their inherent freedom of will, with
individual desires and convictions and purposes, are used as capital, as tools for the benefit
of their master. The slave is therefore habitually forced into types and degrees of work that
he would not have freely undertaken. By necessity, therefore, the bit and the lash become the
The Myth of the Kindly Master
camouflages the inherent brutality and savagery of the slave system.
One historical myth holds that since the slaves were their masters' capital,
the masters' economic self-interest dictated kindly treatment of their property.
But again, the masters always had to make sure that the property was really theirs,
and for this systematic brutality was needed to turn labor from natural into coerced channels for the benefit of the master.
And second, what of property that had outlived its usefulness?
Of capital that no longer promised a return to the master?
Of slaves too old or too ill to continue earning their masters a return?
What sort of treatment did the economic self-interest of the master dictate for slaves who could no longer repay the cost of their subsistence?
Slaves resisted their plight in many ways, ranging from such non-violent methods as work slowdowns, feigning illness and flight, to sabotage, arson and outright insurrection.
Insurrection. Insurrections were always doomed to failure, outnumbered as the slaves were
in the population, and yet the slave revolts appeared and reappeared. There were considerable
slave plots in Virginia in 1687, 1709 and 10, 1722 and 23, and 1730. A joint conspiracy
The conspiracy of great numbers of Negro and Indian slaves in Surrey and Isle of Wight counties was suppressed in 1709 and another Negro slave conspiracy crushed in Surrey County the following year.
The slave who betrayed his fellows was granted his freedom by the Grateful Master.
The 1730 uprising occurred in five counties of Virginia and centered on the town of Williamsburg.
A few weeks before the insurrection, several suspected slaves were arrested and whipped.
An insurrection was then planned for the future, but was betrayed and the leaders executed.
Joint flight by slaves and servants was also common during the 17th century, as well as
joint participation in plots and uprisings.
In 1663, Negro slaves and white indentured servants in Virginia plotted an extensive
slave revolt and a number of the rebels were executed.
The colonist appointed the day as one of prayer and thanksgiving for being spared the revolt.
Neither slave nor indentured servant was permitted to marry without the master's consent, yet
there is record of frequent cohabitation despite prohibitory laws.
It has been maintained in mitigation of the brutality of the American slave system that
The Negroes were purchased from African chieftains who had enslaved them there.
It is true that the slaves were also slaves in Africa, but it is also true that African
slavery never envisioned the vast scope, the massive dragooning of forced labor that marked
American plantation slavery.
Furthermore, the existence of a ready white market for slaves greatly expanded the extent
of Slavery in Africa, as well as the intensity of the inter-tribal wars through which slavery
came about. As is usually the case on the market, demand stimulated supply. Moreover,
African slavery did not include transportation under such monstrous conditions that a large
percentage could not survive, or the brutal seasoning process in a West Indies way station
to make sure that only those fit for slave conditions survived, or the continual, deliberate
breaking up of slave families that prevailed in the colonies.
From the earliest opening of the New World, African slaves were imported as forced labor
to make possible the working of large plantations, which, as we have seen, would have been uneconomic
If they had had to rely, as did other producers, on free and voluntary labor.
In Latin America, from the 16th century on, Negro slavery was used for large sugar plantations
concentrated in the West Indies and on the North Coast of South America.
It has been estimated that a total of 900,000 Negro slaves were imported into the New World
in the 16th century and two and three quarter million in the 17th century. Over the 17th
and 18th centuries, only about one-fifteenth of the total Negro imports into the New World
arrived in the territory of what is now the United States. That the slaves fared even
worse in the Latin American colonies is seen by the far higher death rate there than in
in North America. Negros came into use as slaves instead of the indigenous American
Indians because a. the Negros proved more adaptable to the onerous working conditions
of slavery. Enslaved Indians tended, as in the Caribbean, to die out. b. it was easier
to buy existing slaves from African chieftains than to enslave a race anew and see of the
great moral and spiritual influence of Father Bartolomé de Las Casas in Spanish America,
who in the mid-16th century invade against the enslavement of the American Indians. Spanish
consciences were never agitated over Negro slavery as they were over Indian. Even Las
Las Casas himself owned several negro-slaves for many years. Indeed, early in his career,
Las Casas advocated the introduction of negro-slaves to relieve the pressure on the Indians, but
he eventually came to repudiate the slavery of both races. In the seventeenth century,
two Spanish Jesuits, Alonso de Sandoval and Pedro Claver, were conspicuous in trying to
to help the Negro slaves, but neither attacked the institution of Negro slavery as un-Christian.
Undoubtedly one reason for the different treatment of the two races was the general conviction
among Europeans of the inherent inferiority of the Negro race.
Thus, the same Montesquieu who had scoffed at those Spaniards who called the American
Indians Barbarians suggested that the African Negro was the embodiment of Aristotle's natural
slave, and even the environmental determinist David Hume suspected the Negroes to be naturally
inferior to the whites.
There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even an individual
eminent either in action or speculation, no ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts,
no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarian of the whites have still something
eminent about them. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries
in the Middle Ages if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds
of men.
Contrary to the views of those writers who maintained that Negroes and whites enjoyed
equal rights as indentured servants in Virginia until the 1660s, after which the Negroes were
gradually enslaved, evidence seems clear that from the beginning many Negroes were slaves
and were treated far more harshly than were white indentured servants.
No white man, for example, was ever enslaved into perpetuity, lifetime service for the
slave and for his descendants in any English colony.
The fact there were no slave statutes in Virginia until 1660 simply reflected the small number
of Negroes in the colony before that date.
Jordan cites many evidences of Negro slavery, including court sentences, records of Negroes,
executions of wills, comparative sale prices of Negro and white servants, dating from 1640,
before which time the number of Negroes in Virginia was negligible.
From a very early date, owned Negroes were worked as field hands, whereas white bond
and also from an early date, Negroes in particular were denied any right to bear arms.
An especially striking illustration of this racism pervading Virginia from the earliest days
was the harsh prohibition against any sexual union of the races.
As early as 1630, a Virginia court ordered Hugh Davis to be soundly whipped before an assembly of Negroes
to be soundly whipped before an assembly of Negroes and others for abusing himself to
the dishonor of God and shame of Christians by defiling his body in line with a Negro.
By the early 1660s, the colonial government outlawed miscegenation and interracial fornication.
When Virginia prohibited all interracial unions in 1691, the assembly bitterly denounced miscegenation
as that abominable mixture and spurious issue. Spurious in colonial legislation meant not
simply illegitimate, but specifically the children of interracial unions. Other regulations
and a little later included one that forbade any slave from leaving a plantation without a pass from his master.
Another decreed that conversion to Christianity would not set a slave free,
a fact which violated a European tradition that only heathens, not Christians, might be reduced to slavery.
By the end of the seventeenth century, the growing Virginia colony had emerged from its tiny and precarious beginnings with a definite social structure.
This society may be termed partly feudal. On the one hand, Virginia, with its abundance of new land, was spared the complete feudal mold of the English homeland.
The Virginia Company was interested in promoting settlement, and most grantees, such as individual settlers and former indentured servants, were interested in settling the land for themselves.
As a result, there developed a multitude of independent yeoman settlers, particularly in the less choice upcountry lands.
Also, the feudal quit-rent system never took hold in Virginia. The settlers were charged
quit-rents by the colony or by the large grantees who, instead of allowing settlers to own the
land or selling the land to them, insisted on charging and trying to collect annual quit-rents
as overlords of the land area. But while Virginia was able to avoid many crucial features of
and Feudalism, it introduced an important feudal feature into its method of distributing land,
especially the granting of large tracts of choice tied water river land to favorite and wealthy planters.
These large land grants would have early dissolved into ownership by the individual settlers,
were it not for the regime of forced labor, which made the large tobacco plantations profitable.
Furthermore, the original settlers, those who brought the new land into use, were in
this case the slaves and bond servants themselves. So it might well be said that the planters
were in an arbitrary quasi-feudal relation to their land, even apart from the large grants.
Temporary indentured service, both voluntary and compulsory, and the more permanent Negro
Primal slavery formed the base of exploited labor upon which was erected a structure of
oligarchic rule by the large tobacco planters. The continuance of the large land tracts was
also buttressed by the totally feudal laws of entail and primogenitor, which obtained
at least formally in Virginia and most of the other colonies. Primogenitor compelled
of the undivided passing on of land to the eldest son and entail prevented the land from
being alienated even voluntarily from the family domain. However, Primogenitor did not
exert its fully restrictive effect, for the planters generally managed to elude it and
to divide their estate among their younger children as well. Hence, Virginia land partly
Promojenitor and entail never really took hold in Virginia, because the abundance of
cheap land made labor, and hence the coerced supply of slaves, the key factor in production.
More land could always be acquired, hence there was no need to restrict inheritance
to the Eldest Son. Furthermore, the rapid exhaustion of tobacco land by the current
methods of cultivation required the planters to be mobile and to be ready to strike out
after new plantations. The need for such mobility militated against the fixity of landed estates
that marked the rigid feudal system of land inheritance prevailing in England. Overall,
The wealth and status of Virginia's large planters was far more precarious and less entrenched
than were those of their land-owning counterparts in England.