Draft

Julie Richter

Introduction

Historians study the growth of economic institutions in the British North American colonies because an examination of the economy and the labor force (free, indentured, and enslaved) provides a window into the lives of the men, women, and children who lived in the thirteen colonies. Colonists needed workers as they established their new settlements and slavery became legal in all of the colonies during the seventeenth century. The institution of slavery in the Chesapeake Colonies-Virginia and Maryland-differed from the slave systems that emerged in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic Colonies by 1700. The differences reflected the fact that a distinctive way of life and work developed in each of the regions. Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina developed labor systems suited to the production of staple, or cash, crops. Plantations were commercial enterprises and planters needed large numbers of cheap laborers to produce their cash crop. In contrast, plantations failed to emerge in most of the northern colonies because the climate and soil quality did not support large-scale, commercial agriculture. Residents of New England and the Mid-Atlantic Colonies did not require as many laborers as their southern contemporaries did. As Ira Berlin notes in Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, by the end of the seventeenth century, Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina were slave societies; that is, societies in which slavery was the principal institution that shaped social and economic life. In contrast, the northern colonies were slaveowning societies-communities in which individuals owned slaves, but slavery was not the main social or economic institution.

The Chesapeake Colonies

Virginia's early settlers endured starvation and malaria and feared attacks by members of Powhatan's chiefdom during the colony's first decade. The leaders wanted the colonists (whom they saw as lazy) to grow corn and catch fish so that the settlers at James Fort would not have to depend on trade with the Indians for food. The fortunes and direction of the colony changed in 1614 when John Rolfe raised a strain of tobacco that sold in the English market. Both members of the gentry and those at the bottom of the social ladder in England decided to try their luck in the colony. The individuals who grew rich from tobacco gained possession of large tracts of land and exploited the labor of others for their own profit as Edmund S. Morgan details in American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. Those who labored on the tobacco plantations of the colony's prosperous residents included individuals from England, Europe, and Africa.

In the early years of the colony, the English did not have precise legal identities for either white or African servants. The indenture process was informal and many people-white and black-faced indefinite terms as servants. There were opportunities for African men and women and their descendants to gain their freedom before Virginia's leaders firmly defined a system of slavery. A precise legal definition for slavery in the colony was not created until 1662 when legislators decided that a child born to an enslaved woman would also be a slave for life. Maryland legalized slavery in 1663.

Virginia experienced a civil war known as Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Nathaniel Bacon's decision to offer freedom to all indentured servants and slaves who joined him to fight against Governor William Berkeley helped to unite Virginia's successful planters because they feared the loss of their labor force. During the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the colony's legislators strengthened Virginia's slave laws, made it more difficult for slaves to become free, enslaved the Indians who were captured during Bacon's Rebellion, and placed new restrictions on free blacks.

As the number of white indentured servants who arrived in the Chesapeake declined after 1680, planters turned to a labor force of enslaved Africans and their descendants. These individuals were forcibly taken from Africa. After they endured the Middle Passage (the journey across the Atlantic Ocean), planters purchased the Africans. Small groups of slaves-between ten and twelve laborers-tended fields of tobacco from sunrise to sunset under the watch of a white planter or overseer. At night, the enslaved workers slept in slave quarters that were separate from the dwelling of the white owner.

Berlin notes that during the first half of the eighteenth century, Virginia legislators imposed harsher restrictions on enslaved laborers and took away many of the rights previously allowed to free blacks. Slave owners attempted to strip the over 50,000 Africans transported to Virginia between 1700 and 1760 of their cultural identities and put most of the Africans to work at repetitious, backbreaking agricultural labor in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of the colony. In contrast, there were few slaves in the Valley of Virginia where some men had small-scale, subsistence farms and others worked as traders.

Enslaved laborers benefited from changes in Chesapeake society in the middle of the eighteenth century: the decreased productivity of tobacco fields in the Tidewater, the shift to grain production, and the growth of towns. Planters reorganized work on their plantations as they decreased the amount of tobacco grown on their land. Wheat and other grains did not require the same labor-intense work that tobacco did. Some slaves became artisans and others hired themselves out to urban residents in Williamsburg, Hampton, Norfolk, Baltimore, and Annapolis. Slaves who hired themselves out or who sold produce that they raised earned money and participated in the economy.

The Chesapeake colonies were committed to slavery one hundred years after lawmakers passed statutes to legalize the institution. Enslaved men, women, and children worked to produce the tobacco and grains that enabled the gentry to live in their plantation houses and to have an elegant lifestyle. At the same time, native-born slaves created their own society based on both African culture and Anglo culture. These enslaved workers knew English and negotiated with their masters to define limits on their work and to secure benefits for themselves and their families.

The Lowcountry

In 1670, settlers from Barbados relocated to the area that became known as South Carolina. Many of these individuals brought their slaves to the new colony. However, according to Philip D. Morgan in Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry, residents of South Carolina did not have a cash crop for their slaves to tend until the 1690s. Rice replaced pitch and tar as the main crop by the end of the seventeenth century. The cultivation of rice began on a small scale as slave owners learned the complex process behind the commercial production of this crop. Slaves also contributed their knowledge about the cultivation of rice in Africa.

As the production of rice increased, planters bought larger tracts of land and more laborers to cultivate this crop. Initially, planters relied on enslaved Indians; however, their labor requirements exceeded the number of Indians and they turned to Africans. Slaves made up the majority of the working class in the Lowcountry section of South Carolina and Africans comprised the greater part of the enslaved population in the early eighteenth century. Successful South Carolinians also established rice plantations in Georgia and Eastern Florida. Initially, the residents of the Lowcountry area of Georgia relied on white laborers because the colony's trustees banned slavery in 1734. However, Parliament lifted this restriction in the middle of the century and Georgia planters imported large numbers of Africans. Like South Carolina, lowland counties in Georgia had a black majority in their populations on the eve of the Revolution.

Most South Carolina slaves labored in large groups. As a result, it was easier for slaves in the Lowcountry to preserve their African culture than it was for enslaved laborers in Virginia. By 1720, three-quarters of the enslaved people in the colony resided on plantations with a minimum of ten slaves. In 1750, one-third of South Carolina's slaves lived with at least fifty other enslaved persons. Slaves worked under the close supervision of an overseer or driver. As planters saw their profits increase, they pushed their slaves to produce more and intensified their work.

Planters searched for another lucrative crop after a decline in profits following the loss of overseas markets during England's war with Spain (1739-1742). The 1739 Stono Rebellion also impacted the colony's economic difficulties and increased the fear of whites living in a black majority. In the aftermath of the rebellion, South Carolina's legislators imposed a high duty on imported slaves and tightened the slave code. Planters tried to become more self-sufficient and decided to shift some slaves to growing food, making clothes, and cobbling shoes. Other slaves learned how to produce indigo.

Planters relied on the task system-each slave had a set amount of work or a task for each day. After the task was complete, a slave could do his/her own work. A small number of slaves gained some control over their work and the money that they earned from the sale of goods they produced or crafted enabled them to participate in the slave economy. A few slaves worked as slave drivers on plantations. Some masters allowed enslaved artisans to hire out their own time. The lives of slaves who lived in the inland area of South Carolina had similarities to the experiences of slaves who lived in the Valley of Virginia. The inland region was home to small subsistence farmers, hunters, and traders.

The life of an urban slave in South Carolina differed from that of his/her rural counterparts in both the Lowcountry and the inland area. Urban slaves lived in closer contact with their white owners than did slaves who tended fields of rice and indigo. Work in urban areas was also different. Female slaves worked as domestics and had an important role in the public markets. Enslaved men participated in all aspects of work in the port of Charleston. Slaves, whether urban or rural, made up the majority of the laborers in the Lowcountry area of South Carolina and Georgia on the eve of the American Revolution and were essential to the economy of this region.

New England and the Mid-Atlantic Colonies

The first settlers in New England-the Pilgrims and the Puritans-wanted to establish churches that would continue the Protestant Reformation by making additional reforms to the Church of England. In 1620, the Pilgrims sailed to the New World and created a church in Plymouth that was separate from the Church of England and the influence of government. In contrast, the Puritans believed that they could reform the Church of England from within the institution. The Puritans journeyed to New England in 1630 and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritan leaders wanted to have a government that supported their church. However, not all of the residents of Massachusetts Bay Colony agreed with the connection between church and government. The colony's leaders became intolerant of dissenters. The Puritans banished Roger Williams in 1636 and Williams established a new colony, Rhode Island, with his followers. Other Puritans decided to settled in the area that became Connecticut in order to have more land to farm.

The New England economy depended on small-scale subsistence farming, lumbering, manufacturing, shipbuilding, fishing, and trade. Most of the necessary labor came from family members. However, a small number of slaves labored in the port towns and Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641. Connecticut's lawmakers established slavery in 1650. Settlers throughout New England prospered as a result of hard work, an important value in Pilgrim and Puritan society.

New England merchants who traded with residents of New Netherland found that slaves labored in the Dutch colony. The city of New Amsterdam was more dependent than the Chesapeake colonies on slave labor by the mid-seventeenth century because prosperity in the Netherlands and opportunities in the Dutch Empire reduced the number of people who wanted to journey to the capital city of New Netherland. Africans found that it was difficult to secure their freedom even though there was not a system of slavery in New Netherland. However, English officials passed laws that legalized slavery soon after the Crown took possession of the Dutch colony in 1664.

Although a number of slaves lived and worked in northern cities-New York, Philadelphia, Newport, and Boston-the majority of the enslaved laborers worked in agricultural areas in New England and the Mid-Atlantic Colonies. In southern New England, the Hudson Valley, Long Island, and northern New Jersey, enslaved persons tended crops on farms with their master, white indentured servants, and hired workers. Farms designed to produce goods for the provisioning trade, not commercial plantations, dotted the countryside. Africans and their descendants also worked in rural industries-tanneries, saltworks, lead and copper mines, and iron furnaces-with white laborers. Slaves in New England and the Mid-Atlantic Colonies usually slept in garrets, back rooms, closets, and cellars.

At the end of the seventeenth century, a few divisions between whites and blacks in the Mid-Atlantic Colonies and New England appeared. In 1699, less than twenty years after the first slaves arrived in Philadelphia (the capital of Pennsylvania, the Quaker colony), there was a decision to allocate a separate area in the Strangers' Burial Ground for blacks. The following year, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island established race-based slavery.

Between 1725 and 1775 slavery became more significant in sections of the Northern Colonies as the residents-including shipbuilders, middle-class artisans, entrepreneurs, and small-scale farmers-became incorporated into the Atlantic economy to a greater degree. The change had a greater impact on the Mid-Atlantic Colonies than in New England where the economy was based on family and wage labor. Also, the transformation was stronger in the region's urban centers and other areas that experienced economic expansion. In Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution, Gary B. Nash details the work of slaves and lower class white laborers in the port cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Nash finds that female slaves worked as domestics as did a few male slaves. Most enslaved men and poor white men were artisans, wagoners, carters, stockmen in warehouses, sailors, or workers in ropewalks, shipyards, and sail factories.

The number of slaves also grew in grain producing areas of Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey, the Hudson Valley, and Long Island. In addition, farmers in Southern New England, around Narragansett Bay, increased their enslaved laborers by mid-century. However, farmers in the Mid-Atlantic Colonies and New England did not create plantations. Enslaved men still labored in small groups made up of indentured servants and wage laborers, black and white. Some enslaved women continued to work in the fields while others became domestic workers.

Residents of the Mid-Atlantic Colonies and New England began to purchase slaves who had been imported directly from Africa to meet their labor needs. As Africans began to predominate in the black population in the North, masters in this region followed the practices of owners in the Chesapeake and the Lowcountry. Slaveowners increased discipline to control their labor force and also imposed harsher work requirements. Lawmakers also reacted to challenges to the slave system. An investigation of the 1712 Insurrection in New York City found that a free black and slaves played pivotal roles in the revolt. A generation later, New York City experienced unrest again. In March and April 1741, New York City experienced a rash of fires and thefts.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, areas of the Northern Colonies began to resemble the slave societies in the Chesapeake and the Lowcountry. Urban centers in the Mid-Atlantic Colonies and New England had larger slave populations than did the rural areas in these colonies. However, Berlin observes that the Mid-Atlantic Colonies and New England did not complete the transformation from a society with slaves to a slave society. Slavery did not become central to the economy of New England and the Middle Colonies as it was on the plantations in the Chesapeake and the Lowcountry.

Conclusion

On the eve of the American Revolution, slavery was legal in each of the thirteen colonies. The regional variation in the institution of slavery reflected the different ways in which owners managed the labor of slaves, the size of the enslaved population, and the role that slavery played in the social and economic organization of the Chesapeake, the Lowcountry, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic Colonies. In spite of the regional differences, slavery in the British North American colonies had some things in common. Each colony passed statutes to legalize the practice of enslaving another human being. The increased commitment by many residents to slavery in the eighteenth century led to the importation of a greater number of slaves, most of whom arrived directly from Africa. However, members of the Methodist and Baptist faiths began to question the morality of slavery and the established social and political order after the "Great Awakening" spread evangelical religion throughout the colonies.

Slaves in each of the three regions shared a desire for freedom and resisted the institution of slavery in a variety of ways. Enslaved men, women, and children might negotiate with their master, pretend to be sick, work slowly, break tools, or run away. In addition, some slaves decided to rebel against their masters and the slave system in order to gain their freedom. Virginia slaves seized an opportunity for freedom in 1676, enslaved laborers in South Carolina tried to escape to Florida for their freedom in 1739, and New York City's slaves rebelled against the institution in 1712 and 1741.

It is a paradox that the leaders of the American colonies described themselves as slaves to Great Britain as their disputes with King George III and Parliament intensified in the 1770s. As political leaders in the Chesapeake and the Lowcountry moved toward the decision to secure their independence, they also realized that they had to deny freedom to their slaves because their economic prosperity and social structure depended on slave labor. In contrast, the leaders of several northern states began to abolish slavery during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

After the Revolution, America's political leaders questioned whether slavery should be allowed to spread into unsettled areas of the country. In 1784, Congress voted by a narrow margin against Thomas Jefferson's proposal to ban slavery from all western territories after 1800. Three years later, Congress decided to ban slavery from the Northwest Territory. In September 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention debated slavery and the regulation of trade. The country's leaders crafted a series of compromises, not a strong stand against the institution. The United States Constitution included the "Three-Fifths Compromise" that allowed southern states to count a slave as three-fifths of a person to determine taxes and representation in the House of Representatives.

By 1861, slavery was a longstanding American institution. Slaves had worked in the fields of southern plantations for more than two hundred years. This system of commercial agriculture was part of American society. For generations, white masters depended on fertile land and enslaved African labor to add to their wealth. Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, lamented that slavery transforms masters "into despots" and slaves "into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. . . . I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; [and] that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . ."

Bibliography and Recommended Readings

Bibliography

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1998.

Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. William Peden. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1982.

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1975.

Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1998.

Nash, Gary B. Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Recommended Readings

Each of the three books discussed below provide information about the economic and social changes that took place in the British North American colonies between 1607 and 1776. The authors synthesize many books and articles about the colonies and the footnote section in each volume contains references to the sources that the historians used to present their arguments.

Jack P. Greene challenges the idea that the northern colonies represented the social norm in Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (1988). He focuses on the social and economic development of the colonies between 1660 and 1760. Greene concludes that the main characteristics of American culture on the eve of the American Revolution can be found by examining the history of all the colonies, not just the New England colonies.

In Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1998), Ira Berlin details regional differences in the establishment and growth of slavery in the thirteen colonies, Spanish Florida, and the Gulf Coast. Berlin places the North American colonies in the context of the Atlantic World of the fifteenth to early nineteenth centuries. This context enables Berlin to examine the ways in which regional differences in colonial economies influenced the need for labor and the evolution of slavery. In addition, he includes discussion about the production of staple crops in the Southern Colonies.

Jon Butler argues that a distinctly American society emerged between 1680 and the time of the American Revolution in his book entitled Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776 (2000). Butler begins his book with an examination of the variety of peoples-Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans-who lived in the thirteen colonies. He argues that all three regions-New England, the Middle Colonies, and the Southern Colonies-played a part in the changes that took place between the late seventeenth century and 1776. Butler details the emergence of an American culture in chapters that focus on politics, economics, religion, and material culture.