Slavery In The Chesapeake Region

The Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland served a vital purpose in the developing seventeenth-century English empire by providing tobacco, a cash ingather. However, the early history of Jamestown did non suggest the English outpost would survive. From the outset, its settlers struggled both with each other and with the native inhabitants, the powerful Powhatan, who controlled the area. Jealousies and infighting amongst the English destabilized the colony. Ane member, John Smith, whose famous map begins this affiliate, took control and exercised well-nigh-dictatorial powers, which furthered aggravated the squabbling. The settlers' inability to grow their own food compounded this unstable situation. They were essentially employees of the Virginia Company of London, an English articulation-stock company, in which investors provided the majuscule and assumed the hazard in social club to reap the profit, and they had to make a profit for their shareholders as well as for themselves. Nigh initially devoted themselves to finding gold and silver instead of finding ways to grow their own nutrient.

Early Struggles and the Development of the Tobacco Economy

Poor health, lack of food, and fighting with native peoples took the lives of many of the original Jamestown settlers. The winter of 1609–1610, which became known every bit "the starving fourth dimension," came shut to annihilating the colony. By June 1610, the few remaining settlers had decided to abandon the expanse; only the concluding-minute arrival of a supply ship from England prevented another failed colonization try. The supply ship brought new settlers, but only twelve hundred of the seventy-five hundred who came to Virginia between 1607 and 1624 survived.

George Percy on "The Starving Time"

George Percy, the youngest son of an English nobleman, was in the first group of settlers at the Jamestown Colony. He kept a journal describing their experiences; in the extract below, he reports on the privations of the colonists' third winter.

Now all of us at James Town, get-go to feel that precipitous prick of hunger which no man truly depict but he which has tasted the bitterness thereof, a world of miseries ensued as the sequel will express unto you lot, in then much that some to satisfy their hunger take robbed the store for the which I caused them to be executed. Then having fed upon horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with vermin as dogs, cats, rats, and mice. All was fish that came to internet to satisfy cruel hunger as to eat boots, shoes, or whatever other leather some could come by, and, those being spent and devoured, some were enforced to search the woods and to feed upon serpents and snakes and to dig the earth for wild and unknown roots, where many of our men were cut off of and slain by the savages. And at present famine beginning to await ghastly and pale in every face up that nothing was spared to maintain life and to do those things which seem incredible as to dig up expressionless corpses out of graves and to eat them, and some have licked up the blood which has fallen from their weak fellows.
—George Percy, "A True Relation of the Proceedings and Occurances of Moment which accept happened in Virginia from the Time Sir Thomas Gates shipwrecked upon the Bermudes anno 1609 until my departure out of the Country which was in anno Domini 1612," London 1624

What is your reaction to George Percy's story? How exercise you think Jamestown managed to survive after such an feel? What do you think the Jamestown colonists learned?

Past the 1620s, Virginia had weathered the worst and gained a caste of permanence. Political stability came slowly, merely by 1619, the fledgling colony was operating nether the leadership of a governor, a council, and a House of Burgesses. Economic stability came from the lucrative cultivation of tobacco. Smoking tobacco was a long-continuing practice amid native peoples, and English language and other European consumers soon adopted it. In 1614, the Virginia colony began exporting tobacco dorsum to England, which earned it a sizable profit and saved the colony from ruin. A second tobacco colony, Maryland, was formed in 1634, when King Charles I granted its charter to the Calvert family for their loyal service to England. Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, conceived of Maryland as a refuge for English Catholics.

Growing tobacco proved very labor-intensive (Figure), and the Chesapeake colonists needed a steady workforce to do the difficult work of clearing the land and caring for the tender young plants. The mature leaf of the plant then had to be cured (dried), which necessitated the construction of drying barns. In one case cured, the tobacco had to be packaged in hogsheads (large wooden barrels) and loaded aboard ship, which also required considerable labor.

This is a 1670 painting showing bare-chested, barefoot black men in knee-length pants, doing various tasks associated with tobacco drying. Some stand in sheds hanging the leaves up to dry. — In this 1670 painting by an unknown artist, slaves work in tobacco-drying sheds.

To run across these labor demands, early on Virginians relied on indentured servants. An indenture is a labor contract that immature, impoverished, and frequently illiterate Englishmen and occasionally Englishwomen signed in England, pledging to work for a number of years (unremarkably between five and seven) growing tobacco in the Chesapeake colonies. In return, indentured servants received paid passage to America and food, clothing, and lodging. At the end of their indenture servants received "liberty dues," usually food and other provisions, including, in some cases, land provided by the colony. The promise of a new life in America was a stiff attraction for members of England'due south underclass, who had few if any options at home. In the 1600s, some 100,000 indentured servants traveled to the Chesapeake Bay. Virtually were poor immature men in their early on twenties.

Life in the colonies proved harsh, however. Indentured servants could not marry, and they were subject to the will of the tobacco planters who bought their labor contracts. If they committed a offense or disobeyed their masters, they constitute their terms of service lengthened, often by several years. Female person indentured servants faced special dangers in what was essentially a bachelor colony. Many were exploited by unscrupulous tobacco planters who seduced them with promises of marriage. These planters would so sell their pregnant servants to other tobacco planters to avert the costs of raising a kid.

Withal, those indentured servants who completed their term of service oftentimes began new lives equally tobacco planters. To entice even more than migrants to the New Earth, the Virginia Visitor likewise implemented the headright arrangement, in which those who paid their own passage to Virginia received fifty acres plus an boosted fifty for each servant or family member they brought with them. The headright system and the promise of a new life for servants acted equally powerful incentives for English migrants to hazard the journey to the New Earth.

Visit Virtual Jamestown to access a database of contracts of indentured servants. Search information technology by name to find an ancestor or browse by occupation, destination, or county of origin.

The Anglo-Powhatan Wars

By choosing to settle along the rivers on the banks of the Chesapeake, the English unknowingly placed themselves at the eye of the Powhatan Empire, a powerful Algonquian confederacy of thirty native groups with perhaps as many as xx-two k people. The territory of the equally impressive Susquehannock people as well bordered English settlements at the north cease of the Chesapeake Bay.

Tensions ran high betwixt the English and the Powhatan, and nearly-constant state of war prevailed. The First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614) resulted not only from the English language colonists' intrusion onto Powhatan land, but also from their refusal to follow native protocol past giving gifts. English actions infuriated and insulted the Powhatan. In 1613, the settlers captured Pocahontas (likewise called Matoaka), the daughter of a Powhatan headman named Wahunsonacook, and gave her in marriage to Englishman John Rolfe. Their union, and her pick to remain with the English, helped quell the war in 1614. Pocahontas converted to Christianity, irresolute her proper noun to Rebecca, and sailed with her husband and several other Powhatan to England where she was introduced to Rex James I (Figure). Promoters of colonization publicized Pocahontas as an case of the skillful work of converting the Powhatan to Christianity.

This is a 1616 portrait of Pocahontas depicting a young woman with Indian features in traditional European dress, including a tall hat and an Elizabethan ruff, and a regal pose. — This 1616 engraving by Simon van de Passe, completed when Pocahontas and John Rolfe were presented at courtroom in England, is the just known contemporary paradigm of Pocahontas. Note her European garb and pose. What message did the painter probable intend to convey with this portrait of Pocahontas, the daughter of a powerful Indian chief?

Explore the interactive exhibit Changing Images of Pocahontas on PBS'south website to see the many ways artists take portrayed Pocahontas over the centuries.

Peace in Virginia did not last long. The Second Anglo-Powhatan State of war (1620s) broke out because of the expansion of the English settlement nearly i hundred miles into the interior, and considering of the continued insults and friction caused by English activities. The Powhatan attacked in 1622 and succeeded in killing almost 350 English, well-nigh a 3rd of the settlers. The English responded by annihilating every Powhatan hamlet around Jamestown and from then on became even more intolerant. The 3rd Anglo-Powhatan State of war (1644–1646) began with a surprise assail in which the Powhatan killed around five hundred English colonists. Yet, their ultimate defeat in this disharmonize forced the Powhatan to acknowledge King Charles I as their sovereign. The Anglo-Powhatan Wars, spanning nearly xl years, illustrate the degree of native resistance that resulted from English language intrusion into the Powhatan confederacy.

The Rise of Slavery in the Chesapeake Bay Colonies

The transition from indentured servitude to slavery equally the main labor source for some English language colonies happened first in the Due west Indies. On the small island of Barbados, colonized in the 1620s, English planters first grew tobacco as their main export ingather, simply in the 1640s, they converted to sugarcane and began increasingly to rely on African slaves. In 1655, England wrestled command of Jamaica from the Spanish and quickly turned it into a lucrative saccharide island, run on slave labor, for its expanding empire. While slavery was slower to accept hold in the Chesapeake colonies, by the end of the seventeenth century, both Virginia and Maryland had likewise adopted chattel slavery—which legally defined Africans as property and non people—as the dominant form of labor to grow tobacco. Chesapeake colonists as well enslaved native people.

When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, slavery—which did not exist in England—had not yet get an institution in colonial America. Many Africans worked equally servants and, like their white counterparts, could learn state of their own. Some Africans who converted to Christianity became free landowners with white servants. The modify in the status of Africans in the Chesapeake to that of slaves occurred in the last decades of the seventeenth century.

Salary's Rebellion, an insurgence of both whites and blacks who believed that the Virginia government was impeding their admission to state and wealth and seemed to practise little to clear the land of Indians, hastened the transition to African slavery in the Chesapeake colonies. The rebellion takes its name from Nathaniel Salary, a wealthy immature Englishman who arrived in Virginia in 1674. Despite an early friendship with Virginia's royal governor, William Berkeley, Salary constitute himself excluded from the governor's circumvolve of influential friends and councilors. He wanted land on the Virginia frontier, simply the governor, fearing war with neighboring Indian tribes, forbade further expansion. Bacon marshaled others, particularly onetime indentured servants who believed the governor was limiting their economic opportunities and denying them the right to own tobacco farms. Salary'southward followers believed Berkeley's frontier policy didn't protect English settlers enough. Worse withal in their eyes, Governor Berkeley tried to keep peace in Virginia by signing treaties with various local native peoples. Bacon and his followers, who saw all Indians as an obstacle to their access to state, pursued a policy of extermination.

Tensions between the English and the native peoples in the Chesapeake colonies led to open conflict. In 1675, war broke out when Susquehannock warriors attacked settlements on Virginia's borderland, killing English planters and destroying English plantations, including 1 owned by Bacon. In 1676, Bacon and other Virginians attacked the Susquehannock without the governor'south approval. When Berkeley ordered Salary's arrest, Salary led his followers to Jamestown, forced the governor to flee to the condom of Virginia'due south eastern shore, and then burned the city. The civil state of war known as Bacon'south Rebellion, a vicious struggle between supporters of the governor and those who supported Bacon, ensued. Reports of the rebellion traveled back to England, leading Charles II to dispatch both royal troops and English commissioners to restore order in the tobacco colonies. By the cease of 1676, Virginians loyal to the governor gained the upper hand, executing several leaders of the rebellion. Salary escaped the hangman'due south noose, instead dying of dysentery. The rebellion fizzled in 1676, but Virginians remained divided as supporters of Bacon continued to harbor grievances over admission to Indian land.

Bacon'southward Rebellion helped to catalyze the creation of a system of racial slavery in the Chesapeake colonies. At the time of the rebellion, indentured servants made up the bulk of laborers in the region. Wealthy whites worried over the presence of this big class of laborers and the relative liberty they enjoyed, as well as the alliance that black and white servants had forged in the class of the rebellion. Replacing indentured servitude with blackness slavery diminished these risks, alleviating the reliance on white indentured servants, who were frequently dissatisfied and troublesome, and creating a caste of racially defined laborers whose movements were strictly controlled. Information technology also lessened the possibility of further alliances between black and white workers. Racial slavery even served to heal some of the divisions between wealthy and poor whites, who could now unite as members of a "superior" racial group.

While colonial laws in the tobacco colonies had made slavery a legal institution before Bacon'south Rebellion, new laws passed in the wake of the rebellion severely concise blackness freedom and laid the foundation for racial slavery. Virginia passed a police force in 1680 prohibiting free blacks and slaves from bearing arms, banning blacks from congregating in large numbers, and establishing harsh punishments for slaves who assaulted Christians or attempted escape. Two years later, another Virginia police stipulated that all Africans brought to the colony would be slaves for life. Thus, the increasing reliance on slaves in the tobacco colonies—and the callous laws instituted to control them—not only helped planters meet labor demands, but likewise served to assuage English language fears of farther uprisings and convalesce course tensions between rich and poor whites.

Robert Beverley on Servants and Slaves

Robert Beverley was a wealthy Jamestown planter and slaveholder. This excerpt from his History and Present State of Virginia, published in 1705, conspicuously illustrates the contrast betwixt white servants and black slaves.

Their Servants, they distinguish by the Names of Slaves for Life, and Servants for a time. Slaves are the Negroes, and their Posterity, post-obit the condition of the Mother, co-ordinate to the Maxim, partus sequitur ventrem [status follows the womb]. They are call'd Slaves, in respect of the fourth dimension of their Servitude, because it is for Life.
Servants, are those which serve merely for a few years, according to the fourth dimension of their Indenture, or the Custom of the Country. The Custom of the Country takes place upon such as have no Indentures. The Law in this case is, that if such Servants exist nether Nineteen years of Age, they must be brought into Courtroom, to take their Age adjudged; and from the Historic period they are judg'd to be of, they must serve until they reach four and twenty: Merely if they be adjudged upwards of Nineteen, they are so only to be Servants for the term of v Years.
The Male-Servants, and Slaves of both Sexes, are employed together in Tilling and Manuring the Ground, in Sowing and Planting Tobacco, Corn, &c. Some Stardom indeed is made between them in their Cloaths, and Food; but the Work of both, is no other than what the Overseers, the Freemen, and the Planters themselves practise.
Sufficient Distinction is besides made between the Female-Servants, and Slaves; for a White Woman is rarely or never put to work in the Basis, if she exist skillful for any thing else: And to Discourage all Planters from using whatsoever Women and then, their Law imposes the heaviest Taxes upon Female Servants working in the Ground, while it suffers all other white Women to exist absolutely exempted: Whereas on the other paw, it is a mutual thing to work a Woman Slave out of Doors; nor does the Law make whatsoever Distinction in her Taxes, whether her Work be Abroad, or at Habitation.

According to Robert Beverley, what are the differences between servants and slaves? What protections did servants have that slaves did non?