Britain Populating its American Colony:

The need for labor in its American colony stimulated not only the indentured servitude detailed below, but also slave trading by England’s Royal African Company. This was formed in 1662 with the king’s brother, the Duke of York, as president. It would have an outright monopoly on bringing enslaved Africans to the New World until 1697, when the British Crown permitted private traders to carry slaves to British colonies and paying a 10 percent duty.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net

Britain Populating its American Colony:

“A principal source of labor for the [American] plantations during the seventeenth century were the white indentured servants brought from England. In the mother country the farm hands and laboring classes received miserably low wages….[and] found it almost impossible to save [6 pounds], the average cost of passage to America. The only method by which they could transfer their labor from a cheap market in England to a dear market in America was the indenture system, really a credit, or installment system to pay the passage money of crossing the Atlantic. The servant signed a contract by which he sold his labor to a master for a period usually of four or five years.

Immigration into the colonies was vastly stimulated by the profitable business of securing servants for the American market. John Harrower, an indentured servant in Virginia, described in his diary which he kept from 1773-1776, a class of merchants called Soul Drivers, who met immigrant and convict ships at the docks to buy servants, whom they would drive through the colonies “like a parcel of Sheep” to sell to the highest bidder. Such servants were sold for prices ranging from [20 pounds] for the highest type, Scottish soldiers captured after the Jacobite revolt, to [4 pounds] for Irish vagrants.

Most of the indentured servants were young men and women under twenty-five years of age. Under some masters the indentured servitude approximated the conditions of slavery. The master had the right to punish his white servant by whipping, and the servant could not leave the plantation without permission. If a servant married without consent or if a maidservant had an illegitimate baby, the term of service was extended for one year. If a servant ran away and was arrested, he or she was punished by extending the term of service two days extra in Virginia and ten days in Maryland for every day of absence.

The labor shortage in America was so great that it led to the dark crime of kidnapping. There were professional agents in England known a “spirits” who kidnapped “drunks” in taverns and young persons on the streets to ship them to America for sale as servants. The British government used the Southern colonies as well as the islands of Jamaica and Barbados as a dumping ground for convicts.

(A History of the Old South, The Emergence of a Reluctant Nation, Clement Eaton, MacMillan Publishing, 1975, pp. 23-31)

Was it worth it?

By David Ware

The Yankee takes delight in celebrating the War to Prevent Southern Independence as the time when the slaves were set free, yet his defense of freedom takes a dive when it comes to extending freedom to Southerners to establish their own country and to the establishment of martial law in the South during reconstruction..

In this month’s (Sept-Oct 2010) Confederate Veteran magazine, there is a wonderful article about slavery by Don Livingstone. Hopefully, all of you will read it. Also, Compatriot Bill Vallante has written a rather compelling article much about the same situation available here:
http://www.petersburgexpress.com/myth.html

It seems to me that there is another less explored aspect of the idea that this war was all about slavery. As this time period is discussed in the coming months and years, as we commemorate the sesquicentennial, we will not be given equal time to state our case. Instead, we will be shouted over and shouted down in the style of a Fox news or CNN debate. For the ten or so seconds we might get, our response might well be: “Then, was it worth it?”

An affirmative reply to the question would imply, at least the idea that the killing, burning, looting and destruction of our region was necessary and just. That all those that died and were wounded, on both sides, had to endure this ordeal to resolve the issue of slavery. That the issuance of statehood to West Virginia, the period of Reconstruction which followed, including the unconstitutional adoption of the 14th Amendment was all necessary and “worth it.”

At a deeper level, the idea that it was “worth it” would imply that the “ends justify the means.” The is one of the most vile and corrupt principles fostered on the civilized world. If the cause can be marketed as just, then any means to achieve it, is also just. Just causes include: making the world safe for democracy, weapons of mass destruction, possession of nuclear weapons, getting rid of unfavorable rulers (others, not those of the United States unfortunately), diversity, health, education, defense, old age, retirement, the environment, energy, oil rights, human rights, civil rights, woman’s rights, general welfare, wealth redistribution , good nutrition, East Germany, the Soviet Union, Viet Nam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Haiti, Grenada, Philippines, war on drugs and so on.

A negative response would require that further examination be done to discern other possible remedies for what this war and all wars since, “accomplished.” It was also challenge the doctrine of the ends justify the means.

Sometimes the best questions are the shortest.

White Slavery

For more than one hundred years or longer, before the first black slave was sent to America, there was white slavery. This is a subject our United States history books will not touch with a 10 foot pole. If they covered it in its fullest scope black`s having been slaves could no longer be used as political leverage & undeserved gain today.

At best our government school books only briefly touch on the subject of " indentured servants." What they do not tell you is that to many whites there was no such thing, they were lifetime slaves. Those who did sign themselves into bondage & servitude through the system of indentured servitude were subjected to rules which if broken extended their slave status for years up to & including permanent slavery. Of course, charges were usually trumped - up to see that most of them did remain slaves indefinitely as their production was needed by the commerce of the colonies. Which proves slavery was an economical institute & not one based on the hatred of a persons race.

From my research & contacts with numerous people in the United Kingdom outright white slavery was the preferred manner in which people were sent to the colonies, not as indentured servants. Poor destitute families sold children into slavery with the promise to the parents that a better life awaited them in America, this was a lie. People were drugged or hit over the head in local pubs to only find that when they awakened that they were aboard a wooden sailing ship on their way to a life of permanent slavery in America. The jails & prisons were emptied of many into slavery because their only crimes was that they were so poor that they could not pay their debts & were sentenced to prison terms in " Debtors Prisons."

I had a friend I worked with who told of his German ancestors having been captured in battle by the English & shipped to New York City before it was a city, to harvest pitch tar from white pine trees for the Royal Navy. They were put ashore during the winter & were given a 20 ft. x 20 ft. piece of land to build a cabin on for protection from the elements.

Later it was discovered that yellow pine trees in the Southern United States produced much more pitch tar than white pines did which brought on even more white slavery.

So the next time you are researching your ancestry & hit a dead-end remember some of your family & mine could have been & probably were white slaves. There is no shame or embarrassment in it because it only confirms that the United States government hasn`t had the common courtesy or decency to tell us about this sorry episode of its history. I demand reparations! LOL

Billy E. Price
Ashville Alabama