land. The "Diary of a French Refugee in Boston," in 1687, says: "There
is an absolute Need of Hired help;" and that savages were employed in
the fields at eighteen-pence a day. This latter form of service was
naturally the first way of solving the vexed question. The captives in
war were divided in lots and assigned to housekeepers. We find even
gentle Roger Williams asking for "one of the drove of Adam's degenerate
seed" as a slave. Hugh Peters, of Salem, wrote to a Boston friend: "Wee
haue heard of a diuidence of women & children in the baye & would bee
glad of a share viz.: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke
good." Two years later he wrote: "My wife desires my daughter to send to
Hanna that was her maid now at Charlestowne to know if she would dwell
with us, for truly wee are now so destitute (having now but an Indian)
that wee know not what to do." Lowell thus comments on such savage
ministrations:
"Let any housewife of our day who does not find the Keltic element
in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature,
imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with
by signs, for its maid-of-all-work, and take courage. Those were
serious times indeed when your cook might give warning by taking
your scalp or chignon, as the case might be, and making off with it
into the woods."
We frequently glean from diaries of the times hints of the pleasures of
having a wild Nipmuck or Narragansett Indian as "help." Rev. Peter
Thatcher, of Milton, Mass., bought an Indian in 1674 for £5 down and £5
more at the end of the year--a high-priced servant for the times. One of
her duties was, apparently, the care of a young Thatcher infant. Shortly
after the purchase, the reverend gentleman makes this entry in his
diary: "Came home and found my Indian girl had liked to have knocked my
Theodorah on the head by letting her fall. Whereupon I took a good
walnut stick and beat the Indian to purpose till she promised to do so
no more." Mr. Thatcher was really a very kindly gentleman and a good
Christian, but the natural solicitude of a young father over his
firstborn provoked him to the telling use of the walnut stick as a
civilizing influence.
When we reach newspaper days we find Indian servants frequently among
the runaways; as Mather said, they could not endure the yoke; and,
indeed, it would seem natural enough that any such wild child of the
forests should flee away from the cramped atmosphere of a Puritan
household and house. We read pathetic accounts of the desertion of aged
colonists by their Indian servants. One writes that he took his "Pecod
girle" as a "chilld of death" when but two years old, had reared her
kindly, nursed her in sickness, and now she had run away from him when
he sorely needed her, and he wished to buy a blackamoor in her place.
Sometimes the description of the costumes in which these savages took
their flitting, is extremely picturesque. This is from the _Boston News
Letter_ of October, 1707:
"Run away from her master Baker. A tall Lusty Carolina Indian woman
named Keziah Wampum, having long straight Black Hair tyed up with a
red Hair Lace, very much marked in the hands and face. Had on a
strip'd red blue & white Homespun Jacket & a Red one. A Black &
White Silk Crape Petticoat, A White Shift, as Also a blue one with
her, and a mixt Blue and White Linsey Woolsey Apron."
A reward of four pounds was offered for this barbaric creature.
Another Indian runaway in 1728 was thus bedizened, showing a startling
progress in adornment from the apron of skins and blanket of her
wildwood home.
"She wore off a Narrow Stript pinck Cherredary Goun turn'd up with
a little flour'd red & white Callico. A Stript Homespun Quilted
Petticoat, a plain muslin Apron, a suit of plain Pinners & a red &
white flower'd knot, also a pair of green Stone Earrings with White
Cotton Stockings & Leather heel'd Wooden Shoes."
Indian men often left their masters dishonestly dressed in their
masters' fine apparel, and even wearing beribboned flaxen wigs, which
must have been comic to a degree over their harsh, saturnine
countenances--"as brown as any bun."
A limited substitute for Indian housemaids was found at an early day in
"help," as it was called even then. Roger Williams, writing of his
daughter, said: "She desires to spend some time in service & liked much
Mrs. Brenton who wanted." John Tinker, who himself was help, wrote thus
to John Winthrop; "Help is scarce, hard to get, difficult to please,
uncertain, &c. Means runneth out and wages on & I cannot make choice of
my help." Children of well-to-do citizens thus worked in domestic
service. Members of the family of the rich Judge Sewall lived out as
help. The sons of Downing and of Hooke went with their kinsman, Governor
Winthrop, as servants. Sir Robert Crane also sent his cousin to the
governor as a farm-servant. In Andover an Abbott maiden lived as help
for years in the house of a Phillips. Children were bound out when but
eight years old. These neighborly forms of domestic assistance were
necessarily slow of growth and limited in extent, and negro slavery
appeared to the colonists a much more effectual and speedy way of
solving the difficulty; and the Indian war-prisoners, who proved such
poor and dangerous house-servants, seemed a convenient, cheap, and
God-sent means of exchange for "Moores," as they were called, who were
far better servants. Emanuel Downing wrote in 1645 that he thought it
"synne in us having power in our hand to suffer them (the Indians) to
mayntayne the worship of the devill," that they should be removed from
their pow-wows, and suggests the exchange for negroes, saying: "I doe
not see how wee can thrive vntill wee into gett a stock of slaves
sufficient to doe all our business."
Downing had a personal interest in the gaining of Moors; for he had had
almost as much trouble in obtaining servants as he did in marrying off
his children. We find him and his wife writing to Winthrop for help,
buying Indians, sending home more than once to England for "godlye
skylful paynstakeing girles," beseeching their neighbors to send them
servants "of good caridg and godly conuersation;" and at last buying
negroes, to try in every way to solve the vexed question.
Though the early planters came to New England to obtain and maintain
liberty, and "bond slaverie, villinage," and other feudal servitudes
were prohibited under the ninety-first article of the Body of Liberties,
still they needed but this suggestion of Downing's to adopt quickly what
was then the universal and unquestioned practice of all Christian
nations--slavery. Josselyn found slaves on Noddle's Island in Boston
Harbor at his first visit, though they were not held in a Puritan
family. By 1687 a French refugee wrote home:
"You may also here own Negroes and Negresses, there is not a house
in Boston however small may be its means, that has not one or
two.... Negroes cost from twenty to forty Pistoles."
In Connecticut the crime of man-stealing was made punishable by death;
and in 1646 the Massachusetts General Court awoke to the growing
condition of affairs and bore witness "by the first Optunity, ag't the
hainous & crying sinn of man-stealing," and undertook to send back to
"Gynny" negroes who had been kidnapped by a slaver and brought to New
England, and to send a letter of explanation and apology with them.
Though in the beginning he refused to harbor or tolerate negro-stealers,
the Massachusetts Puritan of that day, enraged at the cruelty of the
savage red men, did not hesitate to sell Indian captives as slaves to
the West Indies. King Philip's wife and child were thus sold and there
died. Their story was told in scathing language by Edward Everett. In
1703 it was made legal to transport and sell in the Barbadoes all Indian
male captives under ten, and Indian women captives. Perhaps these
transactions quickly blunted whatever early feeling may have existed
against negro slavery, for soon the African slave-trade flourished in
New England as in Virginia, Newport being the New England centre of the
Guinea Trade. From 1707 to 1732 a tax of three guineas a head was
imposed in Rhode Island on each negro imported--on "Guinea blackbirds."
It would be idle to dwell now on the cruelty of that horrid traffic, the
sufferings on board the slavers from lack of room, of food, of water,
of air. But three feet three, inches was allowed between decks for the
poor negro, who, accustomed to a free, out-of-door life, thus crouched
and sat through the passage. No wonder the loss of life was great. It
was chronicled in the newspapers and letters of the day in cold,
heartless language that plainly spoke the indifference of the public to
the trade and its awful consequences. I have never seen in any Southern
newspapers advertisements of negro sales that surpass in heartlessness
and viciousness the advertisements of our New England newspapers of the
eighteenth century. Negro children were advertised to be given away in
Boston, and were sold by the pound as was other merchandise. Samuel
Pewter advertised in the _Weekly Rehearsal_ in 1737 that he would sell
horses for ten shillings pay if the horse sale were accomplished, and
five shillings if he endeavored to sell and could not; and for negroes
"_sixpence a pound_ on all he sells, and a reasonable price if he does
not sell."
Many letters still exist of advices from ship-owners to ship-captains,
advice as to the purchase, care, and choice of captives, "to get one old
man for a Lingister; to worter ye Rum & sell by short mesuer &c. &c."
Negro-stealing by Americans continued till 1864, when a brig sailing
westward from Africa on that iniquitous errand, was lost at sea--a grim
ending to three centuries of incredible and unchristian cruelty.
The first anti-slavery tract published in America was written by Judge
Sewall in the year 1700--"The Selling of Joseph." His timid protest but
little availed, though he persevered in his belief and his opposition to
the day of his death. Other colonists who were opposed to the traffic
were willing to buy slaves, that the poor heathen might be brought up in
a Christian land, be led away from their idols--Abraham and the
patriarchs were given as authorities in justification of thus doing. One
respectable Newport elder, who sent many a profitable venture to the
Gold Coast for "black ivory," always gave pious thanks in meeting on the
Sunday after the safe arrival of a slaver, "that a gracious overruling
Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another
cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel
dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his
congregation, and himself into believing that there was some truth and
decency in the specious words that framed a lie in every clause. Many
ministers were slave owners; Daille--the French Huguenot, Dr. Hopkins,
Dr. Williams, Ezra Stiles, and Jonathan Edwards being noted examples.
The ministers from Eliot down were kind to the blacks, preaching special
sermons to them, and forming religious associations for them. A negro
school for reading, writing, and catechizing was established in Boston
in 1728.
Cotton Mather had a negro worth fifty pounds given him by his
congregation, and that "most notorious benefactor," with his
never-ceasing "essay to doe good," at once, in gratitude for the gift,
devoted the negro to God's service, and made many a noble resolve to
save, through God's grace, his bondsman's soul. It is painful to read at
a later date that he found his unregenerate slave "horribly arrested by
spirits," by which he did not mean captured by the dreaded emissaries of
the devil who pervaded the air of Boston and Salem at that time, but
simply very drunk.
Slaves were more plentiful in Connecticut and Rhode Island than in
Massachusetts. Madam Knight gives a glimpse of Connecticut slave life in
1704, and of awkward table traits in both master and slave as well, when
she says that the negroes were too familiar, were permitted to sit at
the table with the master, and "into the Dish goes the black Hoof as
freely as the white Hand." Hawthorne says of New England slaves:
"They were not excluded from the domestic affections; in families
of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the
circle closed around the evening hearth its blaze glowed on their
dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's
children. It must have contributed to reconcile them to their lot,
that they saw white men and women imported from Europe as they had
been from Africa, and sold, though only for a term of years, yet as
actual slaves to the highest bidder."
In the main, New England slaves were not unhappy, for they were well
treated; and the race has the gift to be merry in the worst of
circumstances. Occasionally one would be brought to the northern land,
one of higher sensibilities, more sensitive affections, greater pride;
one who could not live a slave. Such a one was the haughty Congo Pomp,
who escaped to a swamp near Truro on Cape Cod--a swamp now called by his
name--and placing at the foot of a tree a jug of water and loaf of bread
to sustain him on his last long journey, hanged himself from the
low-hanging limbs, and thus obtained freedom. Such also was Parson
Williams's slave Cato in Longmeadow, Mass. He bore repeated whippings
for his high-spirited disobedience, "for speaking out loud in meeting,
drinking too much cider, going on a rampage," and finally drowned
himself in a well.
Waitstill Winthrop wrote thus of one suicidal Moor to Fitz John Winthrop
in 1682.
"I fear Black Tom will do but little seruis. He usued to make a
show of hangeing himselfe before folkes, but I believe he is not
very nimble about it when he is alone. Tis good to have an eye to
him & you think it not worth while to keep him eyether sell him or
send him to Virginia or the Barbadoes."
William Pyncheon had also a slave who was "assiduous in hangeing." To be
sold to Virginia was a standard threat to New England slaves, as work in
Southern tobacco-fields was thought much more severe than in northern
cornfields.
Slavery lingered in New England until after Revolutionary days. It is
said that its death blow was dealt in Worcester, Mass., in 1783, when a
citizen was tried for assaulting and beating his negro servant. The
defence was that the black man was a slave, and the beating was but
necessary restraint and correction. The master was found guilty in the
Worcester County Court and fined forty shillings.
Though there were few slaves who were willing to leave life in order to
be free, many were willing to try to leave their masters. The early New
England newspapers abound in advertisements of runaway blacks--in gay
attire, with fiddles and guns, bewigged and silk-stockinged, well
dressed if not well treated.
I know no records that show more fully, though wholly unconsciously, the
vast simplicity of our ancestors than these advertisements of runaway
servants. Fancy giving as a possible means of identification of any
human being such an item of descriptions as this: "When he gets drunk or
drinks much he is red in the face"--as if that were an extraordinary or
peculiar trait in any drunken man! Another runaway is said to have had
"sometimes a sly look in his eye and wears the button of his hat in
front;" another to have been a liar; another to have been "somewhat
impudent if crossed, and has a leering look under his eyes." Others were
"awkward in manners," "somewhat morose in countenance," "had long
finger-nails," "had one or two pimples on the face," "is too fond of
talking." It seems almost incredible that intelligent persons should
have given such childish and easily obliterated or varied particulars of
description.
Diverse names were applied to these runaways: "Sirrinam Indianman
Slave," "Mustee-fellow," "Molatto," "Moor," "Maddagerscar-boy,"
"Guinyman," "Congoman," "Coast-fellow," "Tawny," "Black-a-moor"--all
apparently conveying some distinction of description universally
comprehended at the time.
We have a few records of worthy black servants who remind us of the
faithful, loving house-servants of old Southern families. Such a one was
Judge Sewall's man, Boston--a freeman--to a master who deserved faithful
service, if ever master did. The entries in the Judge's diary, meagre as
they are, somehow show fully to us that faithful life of service. We see
Boston taking the Sewall children out sledding; we see him carrying one
of the little daughters out of town in his arms when the neighbors were
suddenly smitten with that colonial plague, the small-pox. We find him,
in later years, a tender nurse, sleeping by the fire in languishing
Hannah Sewall's sick-chamber; and, after her death, we hear him
protesting against the removal of her dead form from her chamber; and we
can see him weeping as he sat through the lonely nights with his dead
and dearly loved mistress, till she was hidden from his view. It is
pleasing to know that though he lived a servant, he was buried like a
gentleman; he received that token of final respect so highly prized in
Boston--a ceremonious funeral, with a good fire, and chairs set in rows,
and plenty of wine and cake, and a notice in the _News Letter_, and
doubtless gloves in decent numbers.
Other black men led noble lives in service, if we can trust the records
on their tombstones.
This elegant epitaph is upon a gravestone in Concord, Mass.:
"GOD WILLS US FREE; MAN WILLS US SLAVES
I WILL AS GOD WILLS, GODS WILL BE DONE.
HERE LIES THE BODY OF
JOHN JACK
A NATIVE OF AFRICA, WHO DIED
MARCH 1773 AGED ABOUT SIXTY YEARS.
THOUGH BORN IN A LAND OF SLAVERY
HE WAS BORN FREE
THOUGH HE LIVED IN A LAND OF LIBERTY
HE LIVED A SLAVE.
TILL BY HIS HONEST (THOUGH STOLEN) LABORS
HE ACQUIRED THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY
WHICH GAVE HIM FREEDOM
THOUGH NOT LONG BEFORE
DEATH, THE GRAND TYRANT
GAVE HIM HIS FINAL EMANCIPATION
AND PUT HIM ON A FOOTING WITH KINGS.
THOUGH A SLAVE TO VICE
HE PRACTISED THOSE VIRTUES
WITHOUT WHICH KINGS ARE BUT SLAVES."
At Attleborough, Mass., near the old Hatch Tavern, may be seen this
epitaph:
"HERE LIES THE BEST OF SLAVES
NOW TURNING INTO DUST,
CÆSAR THE AETHIOPIAN CLAIMS
A PLACE AMONG THE JUST.
HIS FAITHFUL SOUL HAS FLED
TO REALMS OF HEAVENLY LIGHT,
AND BY THE BLOOD THAT JESUS SHED
IS CHANGED FROM BLACK TO WHITE.
JAN. 15TH HE QUITTED THE STAGE
IN THE 77TH YEAR OF HIS AGE.
1781."
Besides slaves, Indians, and help, a species of nexal servitude also
existed in all the colonies. At the beginning of colonization bound or
indentured white servants were sent in large numbers to the new land.
Thirty came to the Bay Colony as early as 1625. Some of the terms of
service were very long, even for ten years. These indentured servants
were in three classes: "free-willers," or "redemptioners," or voluntary
emigrants; "kids," who had been seduced through ignorance or duplicity
on board ships that carried them off to America; and convicts
transported for crime. The latter expatriated vagabonds were sent
chiefly to Virginia. The "kids" were trapanned, by the fair promises of
crimps or "spirits," in Scotland, Ireland, and England, where kidnapping
formed an extensive and incredibly bold business. The Scots were brought
over and sold at the time of English wars. At one time "Scots, Indians,
and Negars" were not allowed to train in the militia in Massachusetts.
Many curious and romantic stories are told of these kidnapped servants.
One day, in 1730, a number of Boston gentlemen went to the Long Wharf to
examine a cargo of Irish transports then offered for sale. Among the
lads who ran up and down the wharf to show his strength and condition
was one who had gone to sea on another ship. The captain, his uncle,
died at sea, and the crew sold the boy to this transport-ship, which
chanced to pass them. The boy faithfully served out his time to his
purchaser, and became a gallant officer in the wars with the Indians.
These indentured servants were just as trying as the Indians and the
negroes, and in particular showed a lawless disregard for their masters'
property, an indifference to the authority of the weal-public, and a
lazy disinclination to work; one writer describes them as "tender
fingered in cold weather." The Mt. Wollaston lot that followed Morton to
Merry Mount were but the forerunners of hundreds of others. The
Bradstreets' servant, John, may be taken as a type of many refractory
bound servants. He was brought to trial in 1661, for "stealing several
things as pigges, capons, mault, bacon, butter, eggs, etc., and breaking
open a seller door several times." John, when pulled up for trial,
affirmed that he had really a very small appetite, but the food
furnished by that colonial blue-stocking, Anne Bradstreet, was not fit
to eat, the bread being black and heavy and sour, and he only took an
occasional surreptitious bite to keep himself from starvation. But it
was proved that he had feasted not only himself, but comrades, and that
a neighbor, who had a "great fat Turkey against his daughter's marriage"
hung up in a locked room, was relieved of it by the hungry and agile
John, who got some of his fellows to let him down the chimney to steal
the turkey and good store of beer, with which they all caroused; and he
was fitly punished.
The laws were strict enough at first as to the behavior of servants, and
occasionally a topping young maid felt their force. In Hartford, "Susan
Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to
the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to
be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publicquely corrected and so
to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary."
In York, Me., in 1645, "Alexander Maxwell for his grosse offence in his
exorbitant and abusive carriages towards his master Mr. George Leader
shall be publicly brought forth to the Whipping Post, where he shall be
fastened till 30 lashes be given him upon his bare skin." Maxwell was
ordered to satisfy his master for the money paid for his board in
prison, and, if he further misbehaved, Mr. Leader could sell him to
Virginia.
In later days New England housewives must have longed for the good old
times of the whipping-post and coarse diet and hard work for disorderly
and insubordinate redemptioners. Hear what gentle Mary Dudley endured
with one of her maids. She had written many pathetic entreaties to her
mother, Madam Winthrop, to send her a "good girle, a strong lusty
servant," one "vsed to all kind of work who would refuse none," and we
learn what she got, from a letter written a few months later, with a
new-born babe by her side:
"A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now
I am like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first
coming me she carried her selfe dutifully as became a servant; but
since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for
small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen so insolent
that her carriage towards vs especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If
I bid her doe a thinge she will bid me to doe it myselfe, and she
sayes how she can give content as wel as any servant but shee will
not, and sayes if I love not quietnes I was never so fitted in my
life for she would make mee have enough of it. If I should write to
you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language she hath vsed
towards me I should but grieve you. My husband hath vsed all meanes
for to reforme her, reasons and perswasions, but shee doth profess
that her heart and her nature will not suffer her to confesse her
faults. If I tell my husband of her behavior towards me, vpon
examination she will denie all she hath done or spoken, so that we
know not how to proceed against her."
We must not forget that the Winthrops had the best opportunity of any in
the land to have good servants; for not only were help placed in their
families, but the best of English servants were consigned to them; yet
neither the Governor's sister, Madam Downing, nor his daughter, Madam
Dudley, could be "suited." And hear the plaint of John Winthrop to his
father in 1717: