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: