Posted on 12/18/2021 7:06:36 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Indentured Servitude and many types of apprenticeship are just another form of slavery.
New York, or New Amsterdam at the time, had African slaves imported in 1626 according to what I’ve found online. They didn’t completely outlaw slavery until 1827 but even then they didn’t acquire full civil rights.
Do a little research and you will find your attitude and beliefs don’t hold up.
Declaring independence and being free are 2 separate things. Our leaders claimed their independence and the creation of a new country, but achieving that status must accomplished after your adversary quits.
King George III finally relented after Cornwallis surrendered. It took months for the final surrender from King George III to be negotiated.
This makes sense to me but a footnote would have been appreciated. Was the requirement an act of Parliament or was it in the colonial charters?
Nothin new duuuhhhh....It would appear that some Native American tribes kept prisoners of war and other different tribal members as slaves for thousands of years before the Europeans even set foot in Massachusetts? During the St. Anne`s War & French and Indian War, Native American tribes would kidnap women and children from Massachusetts towns and keep them as slaves. Even some tribes bought and sold African-Americans as slaves after 1620? French kept records now in St. Sulpice, Canada, of buying off/rescuing white slaves from Massachusetts, etc. from Iroquois and Algonkoin captivity.
soory typo Queen Annes War
“America never had slavery in the North”
Not true.
A lot of male Native Americans captured during and after after the King Phillip’s War were put on boats to spend the rest of their lives in enslav ement on plantations in the Caribbean.
Let’s not forget the first Indian who talked to the Pilgrims was Squanto who had escaped enslavement in England and made his way back to Plymouth before the Pilgrims arrived.
I think the author was phrasing this to exclude French and Spanish colonies that also allowed slavery but weren't a part of the American Independency movement.
-PJ
There were many slaves in Massachusetts. One of my ancestors in Lexington was one of the last slave owners. He had enough money to pay for the food and housing of that person.The slave did not have the skills or land to support himself.
The legislature in the colonies or early Massachusetts never outlawed slavery with a law or laws. It was the courts that freed individual slaves that petitioned their freedom. Can any knowledgeable person comment?
By the way, if a white person in Massachusetts couldn't support themselves and their family, they were auctioned off by the town to someone with money. They were enslaved to that family until they were able to support themselves. Of course, if they had no land, how would they feed and house their family?
One of my ggggggrandfathers and his daughter:
“Apr 1633 John Sayles sic convicted of taking fish and corn from neighbors, also clapboards, was whipped and bound as a servant for 3 years until 1647 and his dau Phebe sic (only 7 years old) bound with Mr. C. for 14 yrs. until 1647 and she was to receive a calf at the end of her period of being bound.”
John Sayles’ son John married Roger Williams’ daughter Mary, interesting family. In fact one of his g-grandsons, a Col John Sayles, voted on numerous times against RI joining the Union until it outlawed slavery. George Washington put an end to that, join the Union or get absorbed by Massachusetts and join anyway.
Hence RI is known motto is “First in War, Last in Peace”.
No one ever confronts these people with the facts!
An abbreviated history ...
Black slave owners have not been studied as a part of American history, rather as a datum to American history, and yet slavery as a perpetual institution is legalized based on a case brought before the House of Burgess by an African, who had been indentured in Jamestown, Virginia 1621 and was known as Antonio the Negro according to the earliest records.
Anthony Johnson was a Black man, one of the original 20 brought to Jamestown in 1619. By 1623, he had achieved his freedom and by 1651 was prosperous enough to import five “servants” of his own, for which he was granted 250 acres as “headrights”.
Johnson was captured in his native Angola by an enemy tribe and sold to Arab slave traders. He was eventually sold as an indentured servant to a merchant working for the Virginia Company.
He arrived in Virginia in 1621 aboard the James.
Johnson was sold to a white planter named Bennet as an indentured servant to work on his Virginia tobacco farm.
He was the first black indentured servant, the first free black, and the first to establish the first black community, first black landowner, first black slave owner, and the first person based on his court case to establish slavery legally in North America.
One could argue that he was the founder of slavery in Virginia.
In 1651 Anthony Johnson was given 250 acres as “head rights” for purchasing five incoming white redemptioners.
By July 1651 Johnson had five indentured servants of his own.
(four white and one black)
In 1654, he brought a case before Virginia courts in which he contested a suit launched by one of his indentured servants, a Negro who adopted the name of John Casor.
Johnson won the suit and retained Casor as his servant for life, who thus became the first official and true slave in America.
This officially made Johnson the first legal slave owner in the British colonies that would eventually become the United States.
Virginia made this practice legal for everyone in 1661, by making it state law for any free white, black, or Indian, to be able to own slaves, along with indentured servants.
While Johnson is generally considered by most historians to be the first legal slave owner in the British colonies that would become the United States, there was one person who preceded him in 1640 who owned a slave in all but name.
The virtual slave was John Punch, ordered to be an indentured servant for life, though by law was still considered an indentured servant with all the rights that went with that.
In Punch’s case, he was made a lifelong indentured servant owing to the fact that he tried to leave before his contract was up. When he was captured and brought back, the judge in the matter decided a suitable punishment was to have Punch’s contract continue for the rest of his life.
In 1652 John Johnson, Anthony Johnson’s eldest son, purchased eleven incoming white males and females, and received 550 acres adjacent to his father.
There were a number of additional Virginia land patents representing grants to free blacks of from fifty to 550 acres for purchasing white redemptioners.
Like many wealthy landowners of the pre-Civil War South, Sherrod Bryant owned slaves. They probably worked much of Bryant’s 700 acres in Middle Tennessee, an area larger than that of Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage plantation.
The slaves under Bryant helped raise hogs for their owner, who had a large family and was always looking to buy more property. Unlike many slave owners, however, Sherrod Bryant was black.
Most indentured servants in the British colonies in America were actually Irish, English, German, and Scottish, rather than African.
I don’t have any links for the above.
This is from some of my saved college notes from years ago when I studied African American history.
Too: According to economic historian Stanley Engerman, In Charleston, South Carolina about 42 percent of free blacks owned slaves in 1850, and about 64 percent of these slaveholders were women.
These were difficult times. There was no welfare. If you didn’t work, you didn’t eat.
It’s difficult to evaluate the behaviors and lives of our ancestors using 20th century values. Had my ancestor in Lexington freed his slave, he probably would not have survived. He had no skills and no land. As a slave he was indoor household help with food and a roof over his head.
The slaves in our country were the lucky slaves. The life expectancy of those enslaved in the Caribbean was very poor. Many died of disease and overwork.
It outlawed slavery in 1780. (Four Years after the United States was formed in 1776.)
And it did not do so by legislation or public referendum. Anti-slavery kooks asserted that because the Newly written Massachusetts constitution said "All men are created free and equal", this meant that slavery was abolished.
They took it to court, and a Judge decided that because the drafters of the Massachusetts constitution put that in there, slavery was instantly abolished.
This is a bullsh*t argument, and what they did is "Judicial activism." They redefine laws by judicial decree rather than by legislation.
Massachusetts has long been insane nut country starting with the Puritans and their witch trials and even into the present with their "first in the nation" gay marriage bullsh*t.
The United States would have been much better off if Massachusetts had stayed with England.
Massachusetts has seemingly always been full of insane Massholes.
-PJ
Had it been the intent of the Drafters of the Massachusetts constitution to abolish slavery, they would have written it plainly. Trying to use the language they borrowed from the Declaration as an argument that slavery was abolished is just lying and deceitful.
Judicial activism is what happened in Massachusetts. It was not democracy or legislation which did it, but judges.
Courts should not be tolerated in making law. That is not their job, and when they are allowed to do that, it is a threat to everyone because Laws don't mean what they say.
Courts are ex post facto law, and that is specifically forbidden.
A lot of error in your statements. It would take too long to address all the issues with what you said, so I won't.
Some of what you said is correct, but some is misleading.
They claimed slavery was abolished by that time, but in truth, slaves remained in many of those states all the way up to 1860.
They certainly started the independence movement, but why in hell do they have to be so insane about everything?
Maybe the Kennedys did it?
-PJ
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.