Chapter 2.0. The Lower Classes, Introduction

Freemen: The Highest “Rank.” As Eric Foner remarks, while colonial American society had no official ranks above that of “freeman,” there were many ranks below that (see above, M3.2.2; or American Freedom, p. 10). To understand the first part of this statement, one must realize that it does not mean that all freemen were equal in social or economic terms. Social and economic hierarchies still existed. Some freemen had much more land, for example, than others, and only a small proportion of freemen ordinarily served in the highest offices. But in America there were no official, legalized hereditary upper classes like the nobility in Europe. In fact, the early United States prohibited the granting of any “titles of nobility,” both in the Articles of Confederation (Art. VI) and in the U.S. Constitution (Art. I, sections 9 and 10).

Excluded and Lower-Ranking People. The second part of Foner’s statement is more straightforward: many types of people in early America lacked the full set of freedoms and rights that freemen–at least those with sufficient property–enjoyed. This obviously applied to slaves and most Native Americans, and these excluded groups are discussed in more detail in other chapters or modules. This Module (ch. 2-4) focuses on the lower classes who were not set apart primarily for racial or cultural reasons, like African-Americans and Native Americans–though in fact “class” and racial boundaries could overlap in complex ways in early America (see ch. 2.1 and 2.2). Similarly, although women were of course excluded in many ways based on their gender, women’s material quality of life depended heavily on the socio-economic (or “class”) level of their families (see ch. 4).

Freemen and Voting Qualifications.  The amount of land or property needed not to be considered poor is suggested by the qualifications that most colonies and early states required for voting. We will examine these qualifications in more detail in an upcoming Module, but for now one can say that these qualifications usually targeted the amount of land that could sustain a family, which amounted to about 40 or 50 acres of land, or the equivalent value in town (a house and shop, for example). Estimates of the proportion of adult white males that could vote, and thus had at least this much property, vary among colonies and over time, but by the eighteenth century in many colonies probably about half could meet these requirements, and in New England perhaps as much as three-quarters.

Poor Freemen. As suggested above, the proportion of adult white males with insufficient property to meet voting qualifications varied between about a quarter and a half. Thus the “lower” classes discussed in this Module included both sexes and both servants and many “poor” freemen who had no land or only a little. Most poor families eked out an existence by combining some work as servants with whatever farmland or crafts skills they might have. Another option open to those with little or no property was to claim land on early America’s slowly westward-shifting frontier. This is of course a well known feature of early American life, one that set America apart from Europe. But it is important to keep in mind that, by the mid-eighteenth century only a small minority of Anglo-Americans lived on or very near the frontier. The vast majority lived in long-settled, more densely populated areas. Nonetheless, the widespread availability of land, on the frontier and elsewhere, was the major driver of the colonies’ rapid population growth. And even if at any one time only a small minority of colonial society was engaged in settling on the frontier, it was enough to keep the frontier continually expanding.

The Indigent Poor. We can also distinguish a separate category of people who had no landed property and could not find work as servants. There were usually relatively few such people, and most of them were either elderly or disabled in some way. In most cases families took care of their own old or infirm members, but for various reasons that are usually impossible to document, some fell between the cracks and required public assistance, which was organized at the local level in early America (see ch. 2.3).

Servants. Most poor freemen worked as servants, at least during some period of their lives. Technically a servant was by legal definition not free, but this lack of freedom applied only during the period of work as a servant. In other words, while at any given moment one might be able to distinguish poor freemen from servants, in fact individuals transitioned in and out of these two categories over the course of their lives. Although “indentured” servants are the most well known type of colonial servant (see ch. 3), many servants lacked any written contract or “indenture.” With the coming of the Revolution, the practice of indentured servitude gradually faded away, no doubt because it seemed contradictory to the liberty freemen were supposed to enjoy. However, employment as a servant, whether temporary or long-term, remained the most common type of work for a large segment of the population through most of the nineteenth century. The formalities of the contracts changed more than the work itself.

** Social Change in the Early U.S. It should be noted that, despite the momentous events of the Revolutionary era (ca. 1776-90), for most of the lower-ranking groups discussed in this Module (servants, the poor, and women), life changed very slowly. This is why we can still use documents from the late colonial period, like many of those included in this Module, to learn about American society just before, during, and even after the Revolutionary period. The Revolution did help to spark some important changes; the decline of indentured servitude, which virtually disappeared by 1800, was certainly among the most dramatic of these changes. But most other social changes in this period were modest. For example, from 1776 onwards there was a trend in many states to reduce the property qualifications required for voting. Some states’ legal reforms granted women more rights in property and divorce. And as discussed in the Hunt reading (ch. 1), public punishments of the kind mandated by colonial poor laws (see ch. 2.3) fell out of fashion and mostly faded away after 1776. Nonetheless, most of the social relations and attitudes revealed in this Module’s documents remained, with some qualifications, substantially similar across the Revolutionary and into the early national period (ca. 1790-1830).