FOOTNOTES:
[1] Ante, p. 266.
[2] Local conditions and circumstances dictated and directed the form of subjection. For this same reason, both servitude and slavery differed in different sections of the country. Nieboer brings out the local character of subjection when he holds that slavery does not exist as formally among fishing and hunting peoples as among agricultural and that subjection is milder in an open country than in a closed. Nieboer, Slavery as an Industrial Institution, p. 55.
[3] Ballagh, Hist. of Slavery in Va., p. 37.
[4] It is not meant that all Negroes became servants and then slaves. Many Negroes became servants and followed the course of servants while others became slaves and remained slaves. At any period, however, during his first three-quarter century at least in the colonies, the most pronounced status of the Negro consisted of a cross-section of a transition from servitude to slavery.
[5] On the significance of the expiration of the white servant's term, Bruce has this to say: "Unless the planter had been careful to make provision against their departure by the importation of other laborers, he was left in a helpless position without men to reap his crops or to widen the area of his new grounds.... Perhaps in a majority of cases, his object was to obtain laborers whom he might substitute for those whose term were on the point of expiring. It was this constantly recurring necessity which must have been the source of much anxiety and annoyance as well as heavy pecuniary outlay, that led the planters to prefer youths to adults among the imported English agricultural servants, for while their physical strength might have been less, yet the periods for which they were bound extended over a longer time." Bruce, Econ. Hist. of Va., II, pp. 58-59.
[6] Ballagh, Hist, of Slavery in Va., pp. 37-38. "Negro servants were sometimes compelled by threats and browbeating to sign indentures for longer terms after they had served out their original terms." (Russell, The Free Negro in Va., p. 33.) Indian servants, too, were held and reduced to slaves whenever possible. Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times, pp. 196-201.
[7] Ballagh, Hist, of Slavery in Va., pp. 29, 30, 31.
[8] Russell, The Free Negro in Va., pp. 32, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38-39.
[9] "Petition of a negro for redress To the Rt. Hon'ble Sir William Berkeley, Knt., Goverr and Cap. Genl of Virga, with the Hon. Councell of State. The Petiti'on of Phillip Corven, a negro, in all humility showeth: That yor petr being a servant to Mrs. Annye Beazley, late of James, City County, widow, deed. The said Mrs. Beazley made her last will and testament in writing, under her hand and seal, bearing date of April, An Dom. 1664, ... that yor petr by the then name of negro boy Philip, should serve her cousin, ... the terme of eight yeares ... and then should enjoy his freedom and be paid three barrels of corne and a sute of clothes." Cowen was sold, it appears, to Lucas who kept him and forced him to sign the long indenture. Palmer, Calendar of State Papers, I, p. 10.
Russell corrects "Corven" to "Cowan," The Free Negro in Va., p. 34.
[10] "This practice of holding negroes for a longer term than white persons, which lasted for a longer time than had originally been contemplated, since it was allowed to apply to negroes brought into Pennsylvania from other states, bade fair to perpetuate itself and last longer still." Turner, The Negro in Penn., pp. 93, 95, 99-100.
[11] Ibid., 95.
[12] Stevens, Hist. of Ga., I, p. 306.
[13] Henning, Statutes at Large, pp. 145, 146, 252, 433, 551, 552; Ibid., II, 115; Ibid., III, 87, 453; Ballagh, Hist. of Slavery in Va., p. 57; Turner, The Negro in Penn., pp. 112-113; McCormac, White Servitude in Md., pp. 67-70.
[14] Ballagh, Hist. of Slavery in Va., p. 57; McCormac, White Servitude in Md., p. 67.
[15] Ballagh, Hist. of Slavery in Va., p. 39.
[16] Ibid., pp. 57-58.
[17] Stroud, Laws Relating to Slavery, pp. 8-9; Turner, The Negro in Penn., pp. 24-25, 92; Moore, Notes on the Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 54.
[18] The transition is exhibited in another case still more completely. "This position rendered them especially eligible for gross purposes, both in their intimate contact with the negroes and in their relations to their employers. The law had unwittingly set a premium upon immorality, as the female mulatto not only added an additional term to her period of service, but her offspring was by a law of 1723 in its turn forced to serve the master until the age of thirty-one years. Such mulatto servants, then, were scarcely better off as to prospective freedom than the negro slave. Custom tended to reduce them to a state of slavery. About the middle of the eighteenth century (circa 1765) the practice arose of actually disposing of their persons by sale, both in the colony and without, as slaves. So flagrant was the practice that further legislation was demanded to check the illegal proceeding by appropriate penalties. It would appear that the offenders were those who were entitled to the mulattoes only as servants, but used the power of intimidation or deceit, which could be easily practiced in the case of minor bastards born in their service." Ballagh, Hist. of Slavery in Va., pp. 59-60.
[19] From the very first, the Indians and Negroes as servants came in contact. Also, there seems to have been a "common bond of union" between Indians and Negroes. Again the colony laws concerning runaway servants generally took care of the Negro and Indian servants in the same act. Russell, The Free Negro in Va., pp. 128-129; Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times, pp. 218, 220-221.
[20] Russell, The Free Negro in Va., pp. 29-30.
[21] "With the change of the status of servitude to the status of slavery, certain of the attributes of the former condition were continued and connected with the latter chief of these, and the fundamental idea on which the change was effected, was the conception of property right which, from the idea of the ownership of an individual's service resting upon contract implied or expressed, came to be that of ownership of an individual's person." Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times, p. 215.
[22] Ballagh, Hist. of Slavery in Va., pp. 39-40.
[23] Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times, pp. 226, 227, 230; Turner, The Negro in Penn., p. 25. "With the loss of the ultimate right to freedom, the contractual element and the incidents essential to it were swept away, and as the idea of personality was obscured, the conception of property gained force, so that it became an easy matter to add incidents more strictly defining the property right and insuring its protection."