A Different Mirror: Chapter 3 - Hidden Origins of Slavery (2008) PDF

EXPERIENCE COLLEGE BEFORE COLLEGE A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, novel, “Chapter 3: The Hidden Origins of Slavery”, excerpts and adapted, written by historian Ronald Takaki, 2008... A View from the Cabins: Black...

EXPERIENCE COLLEGE BEFORE COLLEGE A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, novel, “Chapter 3: The Hidden Origins of Slavery”, excerpts and adapted, written by historian Ronald Takaki, 2008... A View from the Cabins: Black and White Together In 1613, the [Virginia] colony sent its first shipment of tobacco to London, a small but significant four barrels. The exports grew dramatically from 2,300 pounds in 1616 to 19,000 the following year, and to 60,000 by 1620. Virginia's rapidly rising tobacco economy generated an insatiable demand for labor. In 1619, a Virginia colonizer recorded a momentous event in the history of the English New World. "About the last of August," wrote John Rolfe in his diary, "came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars."8 The first Africans to be landed in Virginia had probably been captured in wars or raids by enemy tribes before they were sold as slaves. Their ordeal must have been similar to the experience of Olaudah Equiano. After serving as a slave, he purchased his freedom and wrote an account of his captivity: The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slaveship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror.... When I was carried on board I was immediately handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had got into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their com-plexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, which was very different from any I had ever heard, united to confirm me in this belief.... When I looked round the ship too, and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection' and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted.... I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat... [After a long voyage, the slaves finally sighted land.] We thought... we should be eaten by these ugly men... and... there was much dread and trembling among us, and nothing but bitter cries to be heard all the night from these apprehensions, insomuch that at last the white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify us. They told us we were not to be eaten, but to work. 9 Though they had been "sold," the first Africans in Virginia probably were not slaves, persons reduced to property and required to work without wages for life. In 1619, Virginia had no law legalizing slavery. Like many English colonists, the Africans were sold as indentured servants, bound by contract to serve a master for four to seven years in order to repay the expense of their passage. Curiously, for a long time, Africans remained a very small per-centage of the work force.10 The African population in Virginia increased very slowly … In 1650, Africans constituted only 300 of Virginia's 15,000 inhabitants, or 2 percent. In 1675, of the colony's approximately 32,000 inhabitants, blacks totaled only 1,600, or 5 percent.11 Why were so few Africans being imported into Virginia where the demand for labor was so great and constantly inclining? Carrying to Virginia negative images of Africans, English planters undoubtedly felt hesitant about peopling their colony with [Africans]. Unlike their counterparts in the Barbados, they were not primarily businessmen seeking to make money and return to England. Rather, they had brought their families with them and were planning to stay. They had come to the colony intending to create a reproduction of English society in Virginia. Thus, in the early decades of the Virginia colony, planters chose to rely on white indentured servants. In the seventeenth century, 75 percent of the colonists came as servants. In 1664, the Council of Foreign Plantations reported that the colony's population had been "increased principally by sending U.S. History 315K | 1  EXPERIENCE COLLEGE BEFORE COLLEGE of Servants." Tobacco agriculture and the generation of profits depended on these white workers. Describing how one planter with six indentured servants had made a thousand pounds with one crop of tobacco, John Pory of Virginia observed: "Our principal wealth... consisteth in servants."12 Recruited in England but also Germany and Ireland, these men and women were the outcasts of society. They included convicts, "rogues, vagabonds, whores, cheats, and rabble of all descriptions, raked from the gutter," as well as individuals who had been "decoyed, deceived, seduced, inveigled, or forcibly kidnapped and carried as servants to the plantations."13 Like the Africans, many of the white indentured servants came involuntarily, "spirited" here by unscrupulous recruiters. The "spirits," an Englishman reported, "take up all the idle, lazie, simple people they can entice, such as have professed idleness, and will rather beg than work." … Coming from different shores, white and black laborers had very limited understanding of each other. Mutual feelings of fear and hostility undoubtedly existed. Still, they shared a condition of exploitation and abuse. The workers were sometimes forced to wear iron collars around their necks, often beaten and even tortured for [resistance], and always required to have passes whenever they left their plantations. Together, these exploited men and women of two races experienced the day-to-day exhaustion and harshness of plantation labor. They had to cut trees and clear brush, plow the soil and prepare it for planting. In the hot and humid tobacco fields, they worked side by side-their backs bent over row after row of tobacco, their arms sore from topping young plants, their legs cramped from carrying heavy loads of tobacco leaves to the wagons, their nostrils filled with dust, and their ears stinging from the barking commands of their masters. Weary from a day of toil, they returned to their roughly built cabins and huts, where they were fed a dreary mess made from ground Indian corn called "lob-lolly." A white servant in Virginia was undoubtedly expressing the anguish of many laborers, whether from England or Africa, when he wrote: "I thought no head had been able to hold so much water as hath and doth daily flow from mine eyes."15 … Some blacks and whites formed another kind of partnership. In 1630, the Virginia court decided that Hugh Davis was "to be soundly whipped before an assembly of negroes and others for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and the shame of Christianity by defiling his body in lying with a negro." Ten years later, the Virginia court punished a white man and a black woman: "Whereas Robert Sweat hath begotten with child a negro woman servant belonging unto Lieutenant Sheppard, the court hath therefore ordered that the said negro woman shall be whipped at the whipping post and the said Sweat shall tomorrow in the forenoon do public pennance for his offence at James city church in the time of divine service." Similarly, William Watts, a white man, and Mary, a black servant, were punished for fornication in 1649. A year later, a white man and black woman, found guilty of having sexual relations, were required to stand clad in white sheets before a congregation. In 1667, the court convicted Irish servant John Dorman of getting a "Negro woman" with child. Between 1690 and 1698 in Westmoreland County, fourteen white women were punished for having illegitimate children; at least four of the nineteen children were mulatto [a person of mixed white and black ancestry].17 Increasingly, black servants were singled out for special treatment. In 1640, for example, the Virginia legislature passed a law stating that masters should furnish arms to all men, "excepting negros." Blacks were also serving longer time periods for indenture [servitude] as punishment for running away. In 1640, for example, three runaway servants - two white men and a black man - were captured and returned. They were each given thirty lashes. In addition, both white men were required to work for their masters for an additional year and for the colony for three more years. But the third runaway received the most severe punishment: "Being a Negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere." During the same year, six white men and a black man were arrested for running away. Communicating between two plantations, they had carefully planned their escape and gathered "corn powder and shot and guns"; after stealing a skiff and sailing down the Elizabeth River, they were apprehended. One of the white men, Christian Miller, received an U.S. History 315K | 2  EXPERIENCE COLLEGE BEFORE COLLEGE especially harsh penalty - thirty lashes, an "R" (for Rogue) to be burned into his cheek, a shackle on his leg for at least a year, and seven years of service to the colony after he had completed his obligation to his master. The Negro Emanuel was given a similar punishment, except he was not ordered to serve additional time, implying he was required to labor for life.18 Some estate inventories showed that African laborers were more highly valued than English indentured servants, indicating that the former had a longer period of bound service. For example, the inventory of the estate of William Burdett, dated November 13, 1643, included this list: lb tobacco Sarah Hickman to serve one year at 0700 John Gibbs to serve one year at 0650 Nehemia Coventon Aged 12 years to serve 8 years at 1000 Symon Caldron a boy very Lame and 14 years old to serve 7 0500 William Young another boy full of the scurvey to serve six years at 0600 Edward Southerne a little Boy very sick having seven years to serve at 0700 Michael Pacey a boy to serve six years at 1100 Caine the negro, very ancient at 3000 One negro girl about 8 years old at 2000 32 goats young and old at 2500 A parcel of hogs at 1800 What was happening was evident: Africans were being degraded into a condition of servitude for life.19 Other documents reveal they had also become property. According to the Virginia court records of 1642, Thomas Jacob transferred a "negro Woman Susan" to Bridgett Seaverne and her son: "I do hereby declare that I have given the negro unto them and their heirs and Assigns Freely forever." Two years later, William Hawley borrowed money from William. Stone and provided as collateral "my Negro Mingo." In 1646, Francis Pott sold a Negro woman and boy to Stephen Charlton. "to the use of him... forever." Wills provided that white servants were to serve their "full term of time" and Negroes "forever." A 1648 deed included a provision for a "Negro woman and all her increase (which for future time shall be born of her body)." In 1652, a Negro girl was sold to H. Armsteadinger "and his heirs... forever with all her increase both male and female." A year later, William Whittington sold John Pott "one Negro girl named Jowan; aged about Ten years and with her Issue and produce during her (or either of them) for their Life time. And their Successors forever." In 1645, Ralph Wormeley presented in court a certificate of a gift to Agatha Stubbings in "Consideration of Matrimony" - "Four Negro men and Two women... Ten Cows, six Draft Oxen." Africans had become classified as property: slaves as well as their future children could be inherited and also presented as gifts. By the 1650s, 70 percent of the blacks in Virginia were serving as de facto slaves. 20 In 1661, the Virginia Assembly began to institutionalize slavery, to make it de jure. A law regarding the punishment of servants referred to "those Negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by addition of time." In other words, they were required to serve for life. Eight years later, the Virginia legislature defined a slave as property, a part of the owner's "estate." 21 Despite the fact that Africans had been reduced to slaves and that a system of unpaid labor was more profitable than paid labor, planters still preferred to depend on white indentured servants. After 1670, there was a decrease in the number of indentured servants migrating to Virginia. The labor shortage, however, did not turn planters to Africa as a more reliable source of labor. "It was not until at U.S. History 315K | 3  EXPERIENCE COLLEGE BEFORE COLLEGE least a decade after the decline in the supply of [white indentured] servants," historian Russell Menard observed, "that the number of blacks imported each year rose above a trickle." Why did the importation of Africans suddenly rise above "a trickle" in the late seventeenth century? 22 "English and Negroes in Armes:" Bacon's Rebellion …the English elite in Virginia erected a hierarchical racial and class structure. Most English colonists had migrated to Virginia as indentured servants. They planned to complete their period of indenture and become landowners. According to Governor William Berkeley, white servants came with a "hope of bettering their condition in a Growing Country." The American expanse seemed to offer them the possibility of starting over, creating new selves and new lives. Land in Virginia, taken from the Indians, was available and cheap. After completing the time and terms of their servitude, indentured servants became freemen; as such, they could claim title to fifty acres of land. As landholders, they could nurture the hope of becoming wealthy through tobacco agriculture. 24 The profitability of tobacco production, however, unleashed a land boom. Colonists with financial advantage scrambled to possess the best lands along the navigable rivers. Representing a landed elite, they dominated the Virginia assembly and began to enact legislation to advance and protect their class interests. They passed laws that extended the time of indentured servitude for whites and increased the length of service for white runaways. In this way, they minimized competition for lands and at the same time maximized the supply of white laborers by keeping them in servitude for as long as possible. 25 Finding it increasingly difficult to become landowners, many white freemen and indentured servants were becoming angry and frustrated: they felt they had been duped into coming to America. In 1649, pamphleteer William Bullock warned planters about the men and women who, "not finding what was promised," had become "dejected." In England, they had been viewed as the "Surcharge of necessitous people, the matter or fuel of dangerous insurrections." In Virginia, they became an even greater threat to social order, joining what the planter elite fearfully called a "giddy multitude" a discontented class of indentured servants, slaves, and landless freemen, both white and black… This unruly underclass constituted a volatile element. In the early 1660s, for example, indentured servant Isaac Friend led a conspiracy to band together forty servants and "get Arms." He issued the rebellious cry: "Who would be for Liberty, and free from bondage" join the revolt. Many others would flock to their armed campaign. Together they would "go through the Country and kill those that made any opposition," and would "either be free or die for it." The authorities were informed about Friend's plan and quickly suppressed the plot… Unruliness and discontent, however, continued to grow. Fearing this landless class, the Virginia legislature restricted suffrage to landowners in 1670. Governor William Berkeley reported the explosive class conditions in his colony, where "six parts of seven" of the people were "Poor Indebted Discontented and Armed." The ownership of guns was widespread among whites, for every white man had a right to bear arms and was required by law to have a gun in order to help defend the colony. The landed elite distrusted this class of armed poor whites so much that they were even afraid to organize them for military service. On one occasion, in 1673, Governor Berkeley raised troops to defend Virginia against Dutch warships, but he did so very reluctantly. Of the men he enlisted in his army, Berkeley apprehensively noted, at least one-third were freemen or debtors [owe money]. They could not be trusted, he cautioned, for in battle, they might revolt and join the enemy "in hopes of bettering their Condition by Sharing the Plunder of the Country with them."27 Three years later, the revolt Berkeley feared took place, led by Nathaniel Bacon, a planter in upcountry Virginia. To address the Indian threat in the back region of the colony, Bacon raised a militia U.S. History 315K | 4  EXPERIENCE COLLEGE BEFORE COLLEGE from the ranks of the "giddy multitude." Bacon's actions shocked Berkeley and his council, who were more worried about armed white freemen than hostile Indians... By force and deceit, the rebels of the "giddy multitude" had been defeated, but they had fought in what historian Edmund Mor-gan called "the largest rebellion" known in any American colony before the American Revolution... By importing and buying more slaves, they could reduce their dependency on an armed white labor force and exploit workers from Africa, who could be denied the right to bear arms because of their race. After Bacon's Rebellion, the planters made their choice: they turned to Africa as their primary source of labor and to slavery as their main system of labor. The growing African population can be measured decade by decade from the tax lists of Surry County. Slaves constituted 20 percent of households in 1674, 33 percent in 1686, and 48 percent in 1694. In other words, near the end of the century, slaves totaled nearly half the population in the county. 32 From 5 percent of the colony's population in 1675, blacks increased sharply to 25 percent by 1715 and over 40 percent by 1750. "There were as many buyers as negros," Francis Nicholson commented on a sale of 230 slaves in Virginia in 1700, "and I think that, if 2,000 were imported, there would be substantial buyers for them." "The negroes are brought annually in large numbers," a visitor to Virginia reported. "They can be selected according to pleasure, young and old, men and women. They are entirely naked when they arrive, having only corals of different colors around their neck and arms." Unlike the first "twenty Negars," these Africans arrived as slaves. 33 What the landed gentry systematically developed after the insurrection was a labor force based on caste. After 1680, the legislature enacted laws that denied slaves freedom of assembly and movement. The "frequent meeting of considerable number of negroe slaves under pretense of feasts and burials" was "judged of dangerous consequence." Masters and overseers were prohibited from allowing "any Negro or Slave not properly belonging to him or them, to Remain or be upon his or their Plantation above the space of four hours." Militia patrollers were authorized to visit "negro quarters and other places suspected of entertaining unlawful assemblies," and to "take up" those assembling "or any other, strolling about from one plantation to another, without a pass from his or her master, mistress, or overseer." The manumission of slaves [gradual release from slavery] was prohibited unless the master paid for transporting them out of the colony. Significantly, all blacks, free and slave, were disarmed: an act entitled "Preventing Negroes Insurrections" ordered that "it shall not be lawful for any negro or other slave to carry or arm himself with any club, staff, gun, sword or any other weapon." 34 New legislation also sharpened the color line. Who was "black" was given expanded definition. Earlier, in 1662, the legislature had declared that children born in Virginia should be slave or free according to the condition of the mother. In 1691, a new law prohibited the "abominable mixture and spurious issue" of inter-racial unions and provided punishment of white women who vio-lated the anti- miscegenation law: a white mother of a racially mixed child would be subject to banishment and the child would be enslaved. Whether fathered or mothered by whites, mulattoes became slaves; as such, they were implicitly classified as black. Thus was born the "one-drop rule." 35 In their pursuit of their short-term class interests, the elite had made decisions that would have tragic consequences for centuries to come. U.S. History 315K | 5