Ch. 2.1. Primary Sources: Servitude in the Early Colonies

Early Servitude in Virginia

Colonial Servitude: Legally, servants were considered much like children, being fully subject to the authority of their master, who could discipline them with corporal punishment and limit their movements outside of the household. Servants could not vote, engage in trade, or marry without their master’s consent, and masters could buy and sell their labor, or trade them to other masters. They were essentially slaves for the time being. Conditions of service, however, varied widely. Both most Africans and many poor European immigrants lacked any written contract, or indenture, spelling out the terms of their service. In these cases, the period and conditions of service were set by local customs or courts. Among African and African-American servants, some became free after a period of service, while others were subjected to life-long servitude, i.e., early forms of slavery.

Slavery’s Obscure Legal Origins: The origins of slavery in America are obscured by the fact that, on the one hand, the English and other Europeans had been seizing and trading in African slaves for up to a century before the establishment of the first surviving English colonies in North America in the early 1600s. On the other hand, slavery was unknown in England itself and there was no legal framework for slavery on which the early settlers could draw. Thus when the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619 and for several decades thereafter, they were most often treated as servants, the only system of unfree labor that the English fully understood.

Culture vs. Race: To grasp the ambiguity of Africans’ and African-Americans’ legal status in the seventeenth century, it is important to understand that the nineteenth-century idea that humanity is divided into a few large groups based on skin color and other visible ‘biological’ criteria (black, white, red, etc.) had not yet been fully developed. Although they perceived physical differences among people, most Europeans and Euro-Americans before ca. 1700 instead usually regarded differences of culture, religion, and social status as being more important, e.g.: English vs. Spanish vs. ‘savages’; Christians vs. ‘pagans’; Protestant vs. Catholic; freemen vs. servants; etc. By the later 1600s new, more racially-conscious ideas had begun to emerge, but without yet displacing earlier ideas.

A. Punishment of Seven Runaway Servants: In re Emanuel, Minutes of the General Court of Virginia, July 22, 1640 (McIlwaine 467)

Captain William Pierce, Esq., complained that six of his servants and a negro of Mr. Reginold’s have plotted to run away unto the Dutch… They had taken the skiff of the said Captain Pierce their master, and corn, powder, and shot and guns… The Court ordered that Christopher Miller, a Dutchman, should receive the punishment of whipping and to have thirty stripes, and to be burnt in the cheek with the letter R, and work with a shackle on his leg for one whole year… And after his full term of service is expired with his said master, to serve the colony for seven whole years. Peter Wilcocke to receive thirty stripes and to be burnt on the cheek with the letter R, and to serve the colony for three years. Richard Cookson to serve the colony for two years and a half… Richard Hill to remain upon his good behavior until the next offense… Andrew Noxe to receive thirty stripes… John Williams, a Dutchman, to serve the colony for seven years… Emanuel the Negro to receive thirty stripes and to be burnt on the cheek with the letter R, and to work in shackle one year or more as his master shall see cause…

B. A Free Negro: Re Edward Mozingo, Minutes of the General Court of Virginia, March 1656 (McIlwaine 316)

Whereas it appears by divers witnesses…that Edward Mozingo, a Negro man, had been and was an apprentice by indenture to Colonel John Walker, and that by computation of his term of servitude for twenty-eight years is now expired, the Court after a full hearing of the matter in difference between the said Edward Mozingo and Doctor Stone, who married Col. Walker’s widow, it is adjudged by this Court that the said Edward Mozingo be and remain free to all intents and purposes by order of this Court.

C. An Act Concerning How Long Servants Without Indentures Shall Serve. March 1657-58, Act 18 (1 Henning 441-42)

Whereas divers controversies have risen between masters and servants being brought into this colony without indentures or covenants to testify to their agreements…, [it is enacted that] such persons as shall be imported having no indenture or covenant, either men or women, if they be above sixteen years old shall serve four years; if under fifteen to serve until he or she shall be one and twenty years of age, and the courts to be judges of their ages.

D. An Act Concerning Runaway Servants. March 1661-62, Act 102 (2 Hening 116-17)

…All runaways…shall be liable to make satisfaction by service…, double their times of service so neglected… And in case any English servant shall run away in company of any negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by addition of time, the English so running away…shall at the time of service to their own masters expired, serve the masters of the said negroes for their absence so long as the [said negroes] should have done by this act if they had not been slaves… If the negroes be lost or die in such time of their being run away, the Christian servants in company with them shall…either pay 4500 pounds of tobacco…, or four years [of] service for every negro so lost or dead.