Text C Slavery in Colonial America
1. In colonial America, there was no sharp division between a slave South and a free-labor North. New England was involved in the Atlantic slave trade from the mid-1600s to the 1780s. In the years preceding the American Revolution, slavery could be found in all the American colonies. By the mid 18thcentury, slaves made up almost 8 percent of the population in Pennsylvania, 40 percent in Virginia, and 70 percent in South Carolina. During the second quarter of the 18th century, a fifth of Boston’s families owned slaves; and in New York City in 1746, slaves performed about a third of the city’s manual labor.
2. In the North, slaves were used in both agricultural and non-agricultural employment, especially in highly productive farming and stock-raising for the West Indian market in southern Rhode Island, Long Island, and New Jersey. Slaves not only served as household servants for an urban elite – cooking, doing laundry, and cleaning stables – they also worked in rural industry, in salt works, iron works, and tanneries. In general, slaves were not segregated into distinct racial ghettoes; instead, they lived in back rooms, lofts, attics, and alley shacks. Many slaves fraternized with lower-class whites. But in the mid-18th century, racial separation increased, as a growing proportion of the white working-class began to express bitter resentment over competition from slave labor. The African American response in the North to increased racial antagonism and discrimination was apparent in a growing consciousness and awareness of Africa and the establishment of separate African churches and benevolent societies.
1. Questions for Discussion or Reflection
(1) What would have happened if there were no Indentured Servants or Slaves in colonial America? How would America be different?
(2) Can you tell the reasons why the black people were destined to be slaves of the white when the latter settled down there?
2. Written Work
Directions: Read the following letter first, and then write a letter to a friend in England describing your living situation either as an indentured servant or slave in the American colonies. Be sure to describe living conditions, financial conditions, relationships with others, and any other information that you think is important.
Elizabeth Sprigs
Maryland, Sept’r 22’d 1756
Honored Father
My being forever banished from your sight, will I hope pardon the Boldness I now take of troubling you with these, my long silence has been purely owning to my undutifulness to you, and well knowing I had offended in the highest Degree, put a tie to my tongue and pen, for fear I should be extinct from your good Graces and add a further Trouble to you, but too well knowing your care and tenderness for me so long as I retain’d my Duty to you, induced me once again to endeavor if possible, to kindle up that flame again. O Dear Father, believe what I am going to relate the words of truth and sincerity, and Balance my former bad Conduct my suffering here, and then I am sure you’ll pity your Distress Daughter, What we unfortunately English People suffer here is beyond the probability of you in England to Conceive, let it suffice that I one of the unhappy Number, am toiling almost Day and Night, and very often in the Horses drudgery, with only this comfort that you Bitch you do not half enough, and then tied up and whipp’d to that Degree that you’d not serve an Animal, scarce any thing but Indian Corn and Salt to eat and that even begrudged nay many Negroes are better used, almost naked no shoes nor stockings to wear, and the comfort after slaving during Masters pleasure, what rest we can get is to rap ourselves up in a Blanket and upon the Ground, this is the deplorable Condition your poor Betty endures, and now I beg you have any Bowels of Compassion left show it by sending me some Relief, Clothing is the principal thing wanting, which if you should condescend to, may easily send them to me by any of the ships bound to Baltimore Town Patapsco River Maryland, and give me leave to conclude in Duty to you and Uncles and Aunts, and Respect to all Friends
Honored Father
Your undutiful and Disobedient
Proper Names
Connecticut 康涅狄格
Delaware 德拉华
Georgia 佐治亚
Jamestown 詹姆斯敦
Maryland 马里兰
Massachusetts Bay Colony 马萨诸塞湾殖民地
New Hampshire 新罕布什尔
New Jersey 新泽西
New York 纽约
North Carolina 北卡罗来纳
Pennsylvania 宾夕法尼亚
Pilgrims 朝圣者
Plymouth 普利茅斯
Rhode Island 罗德岛
South Carolina 南卡罗来纳
the Mayflower Compact 《五月花号公约》
Virginia 弗吉尼亚
Notes
1. The indentured servant: An indentured servant was one who agreed to work for his master for a couple of years without pay. In return, the master provided the servant with food, clothing and shelter. When the years was served, the master gave him a piece of land and he became a free man.
2. The Mayflower Compact: It is a written agreement composed by the new Settlers arriving at New Plymouth in November of 1620. The Mayflower Compact was drawn up with fair and equal laws, for the general good of the settlement and with the will of the majority. All 41 of the adult male members on the Mayflower signed the Compact. Being the first written laws for the new land, the Compact determined authority within the settlement and was observed as such until 1691. It was devised to set up a government from within themselves and was written by those to be governed.
3. Pilgrims (Pilgrim Fathers): The term “Pilgrims” is commonly applied to the early settlers of the Plymouth Colony in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1620 one hundred Puritans boarded the ‘Mayflower’ bound for the New World. The colony, established in1620, became the second successful English settlement (after the founding of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607) in what was to become the United States of America
