Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds

A History of Slavery in New England

Jared Ross Hardesty

• Verlag: Bright Leaf
• Jahr: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781613767016
• Thema: Storia
• Thema: Storia mondiale

Shortly after the first Europeans arrived in seventeenth-century New England, they began to import Africans and capture the area's indigenous peoples as slaves. By the eve of the American Revolution, enslaved people comprised only about 4 percent of the population, but slavery had become instrumental to the region's economy and had shaped its cultural traditions. This story of slavery in New England has been little told.In this concise yet comprehensive history, Jared Ross Hardesty focuses on the individual stories of enslaved people, bringing their experiences to life. He also explores larger issues such as the importance of slavery to the colonization of the region and to agriculture and industry, New England's deep connections to Caribbean plantation societies, and the significance of emancipation movements in the era of the American Revolution. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of New England.

Chapter 1

Origins

IN AUGUST 1645, leading Salem, Massachusetts, resident and attorney Emmanuel Downing wrote to his brother-in-law and former Massachusetts governor John Winthrop about a war with the Narragansett Indians of modern Rhode Island. Concerned about the spiritual wellbeing of the young colony, Downing believed the conflict to be good and just. Waging war on those who “maynteyne the wo[rshi]p of the devill” like the Narragansett would allow God to “deliver” Indian captives “into our hands.” These prisoners in turn could be exchanged for African slaves, which would be more useful than “wee conceive.”

Downing was shockingly blunt and honest in his letter. He proposed capturing Indians, enslaving them, and trading them for African captives. Having been resident in the colony for a number of years, Downing surveyed the young settlements and realized that Massachusetts suffered from a severe labor shortage. The colony required a “stock of slaves suffitient to doe all our business” because white settlers “desired freedome to plant for them selves” or would demand “verie great wages” to work for somebody else. Land was plentiful and workers scarce in early Massachusetts, and Downing understood this problem. To keep established farms and workshops in operation, Massachusetts needed laborers. And who better than African slaves? As the attorney conceded and Winthrop knew “verie well,” the colony could “maynteyne 20 [slaves] cheaper then one English servant.”1

Downing’s letter is important to understanding the origins and nature of slavery in colonial New England. Colonial expansion depended on two interrelated factors: displacement of the indigenous population and labor. Using connections to a larger Atlantic world, white New Englanders could address both problems with one solution, in this case an Indian war. By capturing Indians in “just wars” (wars against non-Christians), colonists could obtain a valuable trade commodity to exchange for African slaves. These Africans would be acquired through the region’s extensive trade with the Caribbean, the center of New World slavery. Even better for colonists, as Downing was sure to remind Winthrop, Africans were allegedly hearty and required little for survival, making them a much cheaper labor source than white settlers.

Articulating the racial theories of his time, Downing used his beliefs about African inferiority to make a fiscally sound argument. New England had cultivated connections with a source for slaves, while wars both displaced Indians, opening more land for settlement, and transformed humans into a good to be bought and sold. In short, as Downing’s letter demonstrates, slavery was on the table from the earliest years of settlement.

The New England colonies, home to around 1,700 slaves in the late seventeenth century, was not that different from other English settlements in North America. The region contained a small number of African slaves who supplemented the largely white workforce and settler population. Enslaved men and women arrived from all over the Atlantic world, attempted to build lives to the best of their ability, and found themselves exploited at the hands of a vicious, humiliating, and dehumanizing colonial regime.

Slaves and Englishmen

For the Englishmen and -women who settled New England, slavery was something both foreign and familiar. While they would not have encountered many enslaved Africans in England before sojourning across the Atlantic, they would have been aware of various forms of captivity and bondage from around the globe. As such, the first generations of New Englanders had a relatively ambivalent relationship with slavery. On the one hand, slavery was always on the table and a tool of colonization. There was, however, a deep-seated fear about the presence of so many enslaved “strangers” present in their colonial experiment in the North American wilderness. Such attitudes created a legal, albeit ill-defined form of slavery.

By the 1500s, slavery had largely disappeared in England itself. The ancient Celts and subsequent invaders alike, including the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings, practiced slavery. Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, however, slavery in England withered away over the High and Late Middle Ages. Perhaps foreshadowing colonists’ own predicament in the New World, centuries of plague and famine created labor shortages. Especially following the Black Death (1348–49), which killed roughly one-third of England’s population, both artisans and agricultural workers took advantage of the dearth of workers to demand higher wages, rights, and workplace privileges. In the process, many English peasants acquired their own property, becoming free, land-owning farmers called “yeomen.” Likewise, craftsmen laid claim to the right to control and bargain with their own labor and skillsets, a legal concept known as “property in labor.” Both yeomen and artisans were protective of their rights, independence, and property, promoting a culture and ideology of free labor.

Nevertheless, despite a culture emphasizing the rights of free workers, multiple forms of bound labor existed in England. Although most agricultural workers were free, serfdom still existed in parts of the kingdom. Likewise, young men and women would enter into various states of dependence to learn how to farm, keep house, or a skilled trade. Called “servants in husbandry” for boys and girls in rural areas and “apprentices” for young tradesmen learning a craft, this form of bondage was common and part of a young person’s transition to adulthood. Being bound out to a neighbor or local master artisan offered England’s youth the opportunity to learn how to be productive and independent laborers.

While this description implies benevolence and a happy dependence between master and servant, coercion and violence were integral parts of this relationship. A key part concerned disciplining young people to move them toward becoming good, contributing community members. Indeed, by the early 1500s, the nature of servitude began to change. Landowners, both noble and common, began experimenting with their land, turning it over to the production of cash crops, livestock, and marketable foodstuffs. This transition displaced large numbers of free peasants, who became vagrants looking for work. To address this social and economic crisis, during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, English officials, both local and national, promoted a number of relief programs. Many of these programs indented—transformed into servants—poor people, especially the young, to wealthier landowners and tradesmen. The idea behind these programs was not teaching useful skills but rather using legally dependent relationships to maintain order and the status quo. And much like traditional servitude, violence structured these relations. Likewise, to regulate both forms of servitude, English jurists created laws that governed masters and servants.

The Bible, especially important to the radical Protestants who settled New England, also provided an important perspective on slavery. Depending on how one read the Bible, it could provide a powerful critique of slavery, such as the book of Exodus, or condone bondage, such as the various laws governing slavery in Leviticus. Even the New Testament implicitly approved of slavery, instructing “all who are under the yoke of slavery [to] regard their masters as worthy of all honor” (1 Timothy 6:1–2). Especially important to how early modern English readers considered the Bible’s message on slavery was how they regarded themselves. For them, they would have been allowed to enslave non-Christians and foreigners or, in their parlance, “strangers.” In that sense, the message of liberation contained in Exodus was meant only for God’s chosen people.

Ambivalent language aside, many Europeans did look to the Bible for guidance on slavery. When they first encountered sub-Saharan Africans, many used the Bible to better understand the black people they were encountering. They found solace in the story of Noah and his son Ham, who, according to scripture, had looked on his father’s naked body after a night of drunken revelry. Upon learning of his son’s transgression, the patriarch punished his son, permanently marking him and forcing him and his progeny to serve his brothers. Known as the curse of Ham, Europeans associated African blackness with this biblical story, which provided an important precedent for enslaving Africans.

More concretely, an early account of slave ownership from New England demonstrates how the Bible could be used to justify and govern slavery. Theophilus Eaton, one of the founders of the New Haven Colony (later part of Connecticut) and its first governor, owned at least three slaves, Anthony, John Whan, and Whan’s wife, Lucretia. After Eaton’s death in 1658, his daughter Hannah Jones became involved in a dispute over the status of Whan and Lucretia. Were they indentured servants, whose service ended after a period of time, or were they bound for life? According to Jones’s testimony, the slaves were “servants forever or during his pleasure, according to Leviticus 25:45 and 46.” By drawing on biblical law to understand the legal status of John and Lucretia Whan, Jones’s action demonstrates how early modern Englishmen and -women used scripture to navigate slavery.2

As the various forms of servitude and the Bible suggest, most early modern Englishmen and -women would have been acquainted with slavery. As England underwent its own economic and social transformations during the sixteenth century, large numbers of English people also began to travel the globe. Everywhere they turned, whether in Africa, Asia, or the Americas, they encountered slavery. Travelers and explorers published their findings and encounters with the world. These books and pamphlets found wide readership, as the English Reformation and its emphasis on reading the Bible had created a literate public. As readers navigated the world in print, they prided themselves on being a nation of freemen. They were exceptional: free people in a world of slavery.

As England embraced liberty at home, it could not escape the world of slavery. While travel narratives described the barbarities of bondage, they also demonstrated how, especially for Spain’s and Portugal’s American colonies, slavery could be useful. Enslaved people, indigenous and African, provided the heavy labor required to extract the silver and sugar that enriched the Iberian Peninsula. At the same moment that English privateers were attacking Spanish shipping and intellectuals were making arguments that New World colonies could aid in the fight against Spain, Englishmen looked to the Spanish to see the utility of slavery in these endeavors. Whether illegally trafficking enslaved Africans to sell to Iberian settlements or purchasing slaves for their own uses, Englishmen, as one historian argues, saw “the utility of slavery at precisely those times when order was deemed necessary.”3 Slavery, then, held the key to making the New World profitable.

Just as Englishmen encountered enslaved Africans in the Americas, they also explored sub-Saharan Africa and came into contact with its inhabitants. While accounts were not in agreement, many English writers ascribed negative characteristics to the African peoples they encountered. Africans were different. They wore different clothing, ate different food, lived in different houses. Combined with the fact that most Africans were not Christians, these contrasts caused the English to interpret them as inferior and savage. While these attitudes were not the scientific racism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these perceptions of human difference helped drive England’s adoption of slavery.

Slaves and New Englishmen

By the time English colonists arrived in New England, they believed slavery and colonization went hand in hand. Indeed, even before the English began colonizing the region, famed English explorer John Smith saw the potential for slavery in New England. Deliberately emulating the Spanish, Smith argued that with enough military force, any colonists to the region could subdue the Indians, use them for labor, and supplement those forced laborers with Africans.4 Given that Smith laid the intellectual foundation for colonizing New England, it should be no surprise that less than two decades after the settlement of Plymouth Colony in 1620, and one decade after the settlement of Massachusetts Bay in 1628, slaves were present in the area. New Englanders were ready and willing adopters of slavery, using enslaved Africans on farms and in workshops across the region and passing laws that governed the institution.

Any assessment of slavery in New England must begin with an understanding of why English colonists settled in the region. Older narratives correctly demonstrate the religious origins of New England. In many ways, the origins of colonization lay in the English Reformation, when England broke away from the Catholic Church. After the split, King Henry VIII created a state church, the Church of England (or Anglican Church), with the monarch as the head. Outside of replacing the pope with the king and allowing priests to marry, however, the structure and nature of the Anglican Church did not radically differ from the Catholic Church. Many Englishmen, both clergy and laity, accordingly believed this English Reformation did not go far enough. Inspired by the teachings of theologian John Calvin, these reformers wanted to return the English church to its apostolic origins, or, in other words, purify the church of its Catholic, hierarchical, and oppressive structures. Appropriately and derisively called Puritans, this religious movement gained traction over the next three generations and was especially popular with the emerging English middle class of merchants and artisans.

Although Puritans always had an uneasy relationship with the monarchy, the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 gave them pause. The ascension of James I, believed to have Catholic sympathies and certainly no friend of the Puritans’ anti-hierarchical message, caused many to rethink their place in English society and the wider world. By the early seventeenth century, the Puritans had broken into two distinct sects: Separatists, who wanted to break away from the Church of England, and a more mainstream group who merely wanted to reform the church. James cracked down hardest on the former, forcing them into exile to the Netherlands. This group, seeking to distance themselves from the oppressive monarchy, eventually found passage on the Mayflower to settle Plymouth Colony in 1620.

Other Puritan groups likewise began discussing settlement in the New World, especially after the coronation of Charles I, the son of James. Puritans feared Charles, who was a believer in the divine right of kings and married to a Catholic princess. As Charles began to disregard the will of Parliament and levy taxes without consent shortly after taking the throne, he confirmed many of the Puritans’ worst fears. His reign helped push colonization to the forefront of the Puritan religious mission. Between 1628 and 1640, nearly thirty thousand English Puritans, many of them as family groups, traveled to New England to help build a Puritan society in the forests of North America. These settlers quickly spread across the region, settling in Massachusetts, Plymouth Colony, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine (part of Massachusetts) by 1640.

For many of the Puritans, their mission in the New World was an “errand in the wilderness.” They sought to create a Godly society in North America combining hard work and piety to build a civilization worthy of emulation across the Christian world. For the settlers, maintaining this “city on a hill” could not have been more important. Thus, order was paramount. Colonists settled in towns organized around established churches, hired ministers, and farming. Men who were full church members governed towns and managed labor to build roads and fences and clear land for agriculture. While relatively open and equitable for members of the Puritan community, New England society was intolerant of outsiders and enforced a strict disciplinary regimen for everybody living in the region.

From this perspective, slavery seems antithetical to the Puritan mission. After all, African and Indian slaves were non-Christians, strangers, and thus no friend to the religious mission in New England. Likewise, popular attitudes held that controlling the labor of others created idleness, sloth, and lethargy. Such sinful corruption of both the body politic and individual spiritual beings, in theory, could not be tolerated.

Nevertheless, Puritan settlers of New England espoused an economic vision that was part and parcel of their larger religious mission. Economics paved the way for slavery. Both Plymouth and Massachusetts received charters not as settlement colonies but as trading companies meant to make a profit exploiting New World resources. Moreover, New England’s settlers knew their enterprise had to be solvent. Colonists needed money to build towns and churches, pay ministers and governmental officials, and purchase the equipment necessary for clearing land, building farms, and rearing livestock.

While the majority of settlers in New England were Puritans or Separatists, other Protestants also colonized the region, and denominational diversity influenced economic development and slavery. Anglicans with deep connections to the English crown initially settled what became Maine and New Hampshire. While Massachusetts eventually gained control of Maine, New Hampshire remained a center of Anglican and royal interest. Imperial officials and English travelers, who were largely Anglican, also circulated through the region. Meanwhile, the radical Puritan Roger Williams had a falling out with the more conservative leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Company, leading him to move from Massachusetts and create the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Williams advocated for the separation of church and state, and the colony was officially tolerant of all Protestant faiths, becoming a haven for persecuted Baptists and Anabaptists. Finally, many Quakers, a radical English Anabaptist sect, settled in the region, especially Rhode Island, and were often the victims of repression and persecution in Massachusetts.

Religious diversity influenced New England slavery in different ways. Anglicans such as Samuel Maverick and John Josselyn, two men discussed later, often accepted slavery as a natural part of colonization. At the same time, in Rhode Island, the decision to weaken the colonial government to ensure religious freedom created a situation where the colony exercised little power over its colonists. Those settlers took advantage of lax control and pursued their own agendas. It should be no surprise that the colony became a haven for smuggling and piracy, but the colony also invested heavily in slavery. Although all the New England colonies did so, almost the entirety of Rhode Island’s economy came to revolve around slavery and the slave trade. Finally, Quakers had an ambivalent relationship to slavery. Many became slave owners and participated in the business of slavery, but over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Quakers gradually turned against slavery and became some of the leading voices against the institution. Indeed, Quakers were some of the first enslavers to manumit their bondsmen and -women and were o...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Note on the Text, Dates, and Terminology
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Origins
• Chapter 2 Trafficked People
• Chapter 3 Slave and Society
• Chapter 4 Working Worlds
• Chapter 5 Kin and Community
• Chapter 6 Revolution and Emancipation
• Epilogue The Problems of Emancipation
• Further Reading
• Notes
• Index