(03-18-2024, 03:47 PM)SomeJackleg Wrote: there was one big difference in the indentured status. although similar it was not the first africans choice to become indentured the first ones were slaves taken from Portuguese slave ships and forced to become indentured, and before 1620 the the practice of indenturing was more of a punishment for vagrancy and petty theft and other minor crimes or being unwanted orphans. it only became more voluntary in 1620, although if i remember correctly forced indentured contracts continued for a while after that.
not only that just because you were indentured didn't mean your were treated like a normal person. you could be treated just like a slave, forced to work long hours, fed what they owners saw fit, and beaten like a dog, contracts could be extended for breaking laws, running away and even for women becoming pregnant.
True. As a matter of fact, the John Punch I mentioned as being the first documented slave in 1640 ran away in the company of two Europeans, one a German and the other a Scotsman. The Europeans had their indentures extended for 4 years total - I year to their Master and 3 additional years to "the colony", as punishment for their runaway attempt. John Punch had his indenture extended for the term of the rest of his life.
Now, some folks will point to that as evidence for blacks being treated differently from whites in colonial days, and make the claim that it was "racist" to give him what appears at first blush to be a harsher sentence, but in fact race didn't really enter into the equation except as a means of identifying him. It didn't factor into the sentencing. In reality, the judiciary couldn't legally extend the indentures of the Europeans to a life term, or else they certainly would have,
The reason for that was not racial, but religious. There were laws on the books preventing one "Christian" from enslaving another "Christian" for life. Non-Christians had no such protection. So, all 3 had the book thrown at them, but the Black guy, not being a Christian, got slaved for life just because they could. Had they slaved the Europeans as well, the Virginia Colony would certainly have faced diplomatic repercussions from Germany, and another uprising in Scotland, so they left it alone. It was just too dangerous for them to slave up a couple of Christians, but the African (probably some form of Animist or Voudoun follower) had no such luck.
The next "slave for life" case I find was that of John Casor, in Northampton County, VA - a Virginia county on the "eastern shore" of VA, the Delmarva Peninsula. He was indentured to another Black man, a free Black named Anthony Johnson who came over indentured in 1621, but who worked through his indenture and was released with his rewards. He purchased the indentures of other incoming Africans, but when it cane time to release them, he reneged and took the case of Casor to the courts, gaining a "slave for life" through legal maneuverings. He thus enslaved fellow Africans, and a fledgling institution of slavery was born..
Only non-Christians could be enslaved for life under the then current laws, and so it was that only Africans (and some American Indians) got mired up in the slave trade. Under the laws at the time, English Common Law only covered Englishmen, with everyone else being termed "aliens" in the English colonies, and so it came to be that the local Indian populations were labeled as "aliens" in their own ancestral lands.
Another group of my ancestors (the Norman family) came over as religious refugees from France (French Heuegenots), and settled at Manakin Town outside of what later became Richmond, VA. They, too were "aliens" by virtue of being Frenchmen instead of Englishmen. The crucial difference was that they were "Christians", and so could not legally be enslaved even though they were "aliens".
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