Journal entries on colonial America, 1650-1800: Black societies and slavery

¶ … Randolph Smithers December 30, 1676

It is amazing how great a difference a single incident can make in the lives of so many different people from different places. Ever since Bacon's Rebellion was quelled here in Jamestown, there has been a significant increase in the amount of African and West Indian slaves who are being used as the preferred source of labor around these parts. This is just my personal opinion, but I think it is because of the fact that Nate was able to rally so many poor farmers and indentured servants to help him in his rampage against the Native Americans, that these chattel slaves have now become even more popular as a means of working in the fields. But unlike indentured servants, who can eventually be freed and given land and tools with which to farm, African and West Indian slaves have very little hope of ever achieving anything but more slave labor. They cannot speak English or any other European language, and are driven that much harder in the fields where they tend to tobacco and other crops.

The poor slaves can be beaten for as long as their owners see fit, and are forced to work from sunup to sundown. They have no rights and cannot be allowed to gather for any public display except to practice religion -- which had better be Christianity. They are separated from the rest of the plantation workers and have their own private quarters that are made of inexpensive wood that is not very durable (Jamestown Settlement, no date). Slaves are greatly discouraged (by the pain of the lash) from talking in their native tongues or from practicing their native religions. Things may be a little better for some of the slaves who work in the plantation homes, and who wait upon the master and his family. Although they seem to be beaten less and are spared the grueling manual labor and the merciless heat and external weather conditions of their brethren in the fields, they are still treated like property. The masters can do whatever they want with the women, including sexual acts, and there a crop of fairer skinned slaves is starting to sprout up from the children produced by such acts. On occasion, however, some house slaves are taught English commands and, in rare instances, from what I have heard, they may be taught how to read and write. But generally, educating slaves is also discouraged.

Raymond Price November 22, 1992 Massachusetts Bay

I sure am glad that witchcraft hysteria has finally died down. The whole stupidity, which they insist on calling the Salem Witch Trials, started due to some West Indian slave named Tituba, who first confessed to being a witch and later on recanted her confession. She probably confessed in the first place due to all the beatings she got from her master, Samuel Parris, after his little girl Betty became strangely sick. Such beatings are nothing new for slaves, although in the northern part of the country, what with all the Puritans and religious fanatics around, such beatings are not as bad as those given to slaves in the southern part of the country -- at least not from what my uncle Smithers has told me. For example, Puritan slave owners generally try to keep slave families together (Famous American Trials, 2009). They do not like to separate any husbands from their wives, even slaves. When Tituba was finally released from jail after a new owner bought her, it is widely believed that that new owner had also bought her husband, John, to keep the couple together.

Edward Harris, Savannah Georgia, Sept 1, 1744

It seems funny, but I knew that political stuff would not last long in this part of the New World. When James Oglethorpe, who founded Savannah in 1733, first began the colony of Georgia, he was very adamant about not tolerating slavery, being friendly to the Native Americans, and having strict laws prohibiting alcohol and limiting the amount of land settlers could have. Well, Oglethorpe went back to England last year, and it is not difficult to see why. Once the political powers saw how much money could be made with slave labor and plantations, virtually all of those former laws were circumvented. Slaves, of course, have absolutely no rights, not even in a political sense. They certainly cannot vote or do anything like that. It very well may be a good thing, there are so many of them around. By 1739, for example, they made up the majority of the population in South Carolina.

Frederick Toliver, New York City, December 3, 1787