The amazing story of an indentured servant (slave white guy) thrown off the Mayflower and saved.

[Theowl32]

His name was John Howland.

It is truly an amazing story. Yes, an indentured servant. I mean can you believe it? A white slave? Huh, I did not know they were allowed to be slaves. Go figure.

Aaaanyway, he was thrown overboard by powerful waves during the voyage of the Mayflower to the new world. He was somehow saved and this is what happened.



List of famous descendants.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
President George H. W. Bush
President George W. Bush
Chevy Chase
Alexander 'Alec' Baldwin
Humphrey Bogart
Christopher Lloyd
Sarah Palin
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Benjamin Spock

 

[OldLady]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

 

[MacTheKnife]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

 

[Theowl32]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

Yeah, that is what it was. They worked for NO pay. That, is a slave. That is what THOSE PEOPLE call the first INDENTURED SERVANTS brought here to Jamestown in 1619. That is what they were and black history month always tells me that is when the first slaves arrived to NORTH America.

 

[MacTheKnife]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

Yeah, that is what it was. They worked for NO pay. That, is a slave. That is what THOSE PEOPLE call the first INDENTURED SERVANTS brought here to Jamestown in 1619. That is what they were and black history month always tells me that is when the first slaves arrived to NORTH America.

You are correct....they were slaves and most of them were treated far worse than black slaves....black slaves were property and a person takes care of their property.

White slaves would eventually be freed....usually are supposedly after 7 yrs. but that was not always the case.

On the surface it seemed like a terrific way for the luckless English poor to make their way to prosperity in a new land. Beneath the surface, this was not often the case.

Only about 40 percent of indentured servants lived to complete the terms of their contracts. Female servants were often the subject of harassment from their masters. A woman who became pregnant while a servant often had years tacked on to the end of her service time. Early in the century, some servants were able to gain their own land as free men. But by 1660, much of the best land was claimed by the large land owners. The former servants were pushed westward, where the mountainous land was less arable and the threat from Indians constant. A class of angry, impoverished pioneer farmers began to emerge as the 1600s grew old. After BACON'S REBELLION in 1676, planters began to prefer permanent African slavery to the headright system that had previously enabled them to prosper.

'They Were White and They Were Slaves'-- is a thoroughly researched challenge to the conventional historiography of colonial and industrial labor, a stunning journey into a hidden epoch, the slave trade of Whites, hundreds of thousands of whom were kidnapped, chained, whipped and worked to death in the American colonies and during the Industrial Revolution. This is a chronicle that has never been fully told, part of a vital heritage that has until now comprised the dustiest shelf in the darkest corner of suppressed history.

https://www.amazon.com/They-Were-White-Slaves-Enslavement/dp/0929903056&tag=ff0d01-20


Differential Tolerances and Accepted Punishments for Indentured Servants
A page as serious as its title. Written by a student at Lafayette College, the site explores what happened when crimes were committed by either owners of servants or the servants themselves. For you AP types that come here, you'll get some real insight into the lives of indentured servants, and more particularly the "different punishments of servants and their masters in colonial courts by examining various court cases from 18th-century Pennsylvania and Maryland courts." No pictures but plenty of statistical data. This is what awaits any of you folks thinking of majoring in history.


Gottlieb Mittelberger: On the Misfortune of Indentured Servants (1754)
Life was dreadful for Indentured Servants even before they started working. Gottlieb Mittelberger of the Netherlands describes the situation of indentured servants coming from his country, the Netherlands, to America. A sickening slice of what you'll find: "But during the voyage there is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of sea-sickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and the like, all of which come from old and sharply salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably." Next time you're tempted to say your folks treat you like a slave, think of this page.


Indentured Servants and Transported Convicts
A page which briefly explores the lives of indentured servants at Stratford Hall, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee. Some interesting factoids to be found here.




The misery reaches the climax when a gale rages for 2 or 3 nights and days, so that every one believes that the ship will go to the bottom with all human beings on board. In such a visitation the people cry and pray most piteously. -Gottlieb Mittelberger, On the Misfortune of Indentured Servants, 1754
Learn More...

 

[OldLady]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

 

[MacTheKnife]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

 

[OldLady]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

Yeah, that is what it was. They worked for NO pay. That, is a slave. That is what THOSE PEOPLE call the first INDENTURED SERVANTS brought here to Jamestown in 1619. That is what they were and black history month always tells me that is when the first slaves arrived to NORTH America.

What's your angle, here, Owl? Why are you so intent on proving that white people were "slaves," too? They weren't. They were under contract to repay their PASSAGE to the new world, and were given room, board and in some cases, training, until their obligations were fulfilled.

 

[MacTheKnife]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

Yeah, that is what it was. They worked for NO pay. That, is a slave. That is what THOSE PEOPLE call the first INDENTURED SERVANTS brought here to Jamestown in 1619. That is what they were and black history month always tells me that is when the first slaves arrived to NORTH America.

What's your angle, here, Owl? Why are you so intent on proving that white people were "slaves," too? They weren't. They were under contract to repay their PASSAGE to the new world, and were given room, board and in some cases, training, until their obligations were fulfilled.

 

[OldLady]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

Show me where their children and all their descendants were sold into "indentured servitude."
Obviously they took their cases to court when greedy owners violated the contract, or we wouldn't know about them, would we?
My points aren't bullshit and calling indentured servants "slaves" is not accurate.
I still want to know why you insist.

 

[MacTheKnife]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

Show me where their children and all their descendants were sold into "indentured servitude."
Obviously they took their cases to court when greedy owners violated the contract, or we wouldn't know about them, would we?
My points aren't bullshit and calling indentured servants "slaves" is not accurate.
I still want to know why you insist.

Sadly, A Great Many Of Them Were Mistreated And Died

Working on a plantation was difficult work. Many indentured servants were overworked, and, when they were even remotely insubordinate, they were beaten. This violence – along with disease – led to a high mortality rate among indentured servants. Some masters also sexually assaulted their female servants or beat them to death. In fact, there were instances where some servants organized protests for the way they were treated... only to be hanged in response.

 

[MacTheKnife]

Dominic Sandbrook reviews White Cargo: the Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh

In April 1775, two days after the American War of Independence began, a notice appeared in the Virginia Gazette offering rewards for the return of 10 runaways. Two were "Negro slaves", but the other eight were white servants, including Thomas Pearce, a 20-year-old Bristol joiner, and William Webster, a middle-aged Scottish brick-maker. Whether they were ever found remains a mystery; almost nothing is known about them but their names. But their irate master was to become very famous indeed, for the man pursuing his absconding servants was called George Washington.

Pearce and Webster were indentured servants, the kind of people often ignored in patriotic accounts of colonial America. In the 17th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of men, women and children lived as ill-paid, ill-treated chattels, bound in servitude to their colonial masters. It is a sobering illustration of human gullibility that, in return for vague promises of a better life, men would sign away their lives for 10 years or more. Once in the New World, they were effectively items of property to be treated as their masters saw fit. Brutal corporal punishment was ubiquitous: every Virginia settlement had its own whipping post. One man was publicly scourged for four days with his ears nailed to the post. He had been flirting with a servant girl.

 

[Theowl32]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

Ask the old lady about the Barbary Coast Slave Trade, or the Trans Sahara Slave Trade. She thinks white Europeans went to Africa with nets and kidnapped the Africans.

She does not know that nearly every black person shipped to the new word were already slaves. The Trans Sahara trade was going on for nearly 700 years before the Trans Atlantic even began.

LOL

They of course never discuss the Barbary Coast slave trade where nearly 1.5 million Europeans (WHITES) were enslaved, during BLACK HISTORY MONTH. (more left wing black patronizing month)

They of course never discuss the Trans Sahara Slave Trade during BLACK HISTORY MONTH.

I wonder why.

As a result, we have people like Old Lady, all comfortable in their ignorance.

 

[MacTheKnife]

The sale of White human beings in the market on board the ship is carried on thus: Every day Englishmen, Dutchmen and High-German people come from the city of Philadelphia and other places, in part from a great distance, say 20, 30, or 40 hours away, and go on board the newly arrived ship that has brought and offers for sale passengers from Europe, and select among the healthy persons such as they deem suitable for their business, and bargain with them how long they will serve for their passage money, which most of them are stffl in debt for. When they have come to an agreement, it happens that adult persons bind themselves in writing to serve 3, 4, 5 or 6 years for the amount due by them, according to their age and strength. But very young people, from 10 to 15 years, must serve till they are 21 years old.

Many parents must sell and trade away their children like so many head of cattle; for if their children take the debt upon themselves, the parents can leave the ship free and unrestrained; but as the parents often do not know where and to what people their children are going, it often happens that such parents and children, after leaving the ship, do not see each other again for many years, perhaps no more in all their lives.



It often happens that whole families, husband, wife, and children, are separated by being sold to different purchasers, especially when they have not paid any part of their passage money.

When a husband or wife has died at sea, when the ship has made more than half of her trip, the survivor must pay or serve not only for himself or herself, but also for the deceased.

When both parents have died over half-way at sea, their children, especially when they are young and have nothing to pawn or to pay, must stand for their own and their parents' passage, and serve tffi they are 21 years old. When one has served his or her term, he or she is entitled to a new suit of clothes at parting; and if it has been so stipulated, a man gets in addition a horse, a woman, a cow.

When a serf has an opportunity to marry in this country, he or she must pay for each year which he or she would have yet to serve, 5 to 6 pounds. But many a one who has thus purchased and paid for his bride, has subsequently repented his bargain, so that he would gladly have returned his exorbitantly dear ware, and lost the money besides.

If some one in this country runs away from his master, who has treated him harshly, he cannot get far. Good provision has been made for such cases, so that a runaway is soon recovered. He who detains or returns a deserter receives a good reward.

If such a runaway has been away from his master one day, he must serve for it as a punishment a week, for a week a month, and for a month half a year.

Gottlieb Mittelberger, On the Misfortune of Indentured Servants, 1750-1754 : AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History

 

[MacTheKnife]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

Ask the old lady about the Barbary Coast Slave Trade, or the Trans Sahara Slave Trade. She thinks white Europeans went to Africa with nets and kidnapped the Africans.

She does not know that nearly every black person shipped to the new word were already slaves. The Trans Sahara trade was going on for nearly 700 years before the Trans Atlantic even began.

LOL

They of course never discuss the Barbary Coast slave trade where nearly 1.5 million Europeans (WHITES) were enslaved, during BLACK HISTORY MONTH. (more left wing black patronizing month)

They of course never discuss the Trans Sahara Slave Trade during BLACK HISTORY MONTH.

I wonder why.

As a result, we have people like Old Lady, all comfortable in their ignorance.

Lots of white folk over-wrought with white guilt and willing to excuse blacks for their egregious behavior and high crime rate because their great, great, great, great grandfather was a slave have no idea that they themselves are very likely descendants of slaves.

The method that most Americans made their way to the New World was via selling themselves into slavery...so called indentured servitude.

My great,great,great grandfather came over as an indentured servant along with two of his brothers. When they were close to shore in Charleston, S.C. one of his brother jumped overboard in an attempt to swim to shore to avoid becoming a slave...it is unknown whether he made it or not...he was never seen or heard from again...but it is quite possible he made it and since he would have been a wanted man...somehow managed to start a new life with a new name and thus would not attempt to contact his brothers for fear of being captured.

When did indentured servitude end?
Indentured servitude reappeared in the Americas in the mid-nineteenth century as a means of transporting Asians to the Caribbean sugar islands and South America following the abolition of slavery. Servitude then remained in legal use until its abolition in 1917.

 

[MacTheKnife]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

Ask the old lady about the Barbary Coast Slave Trade, or the Trans Sahara Slave Trade. She thinks white Europeans went to Africa with nets and kidnapped the Africans.

She does not know that nearly every black person shipped to the new word were already slaves. The Trans Sahara trade was going on for nearly 700 years before the Trans Atlantic even began.

LOL

They of course never discuss the Barbary Coast slave trade where nearly 1.5 million Europeans (WHITES) were enslaved, during BLACK HISTORY MONTH. (more left wing black patronizing month)

They of course never discuss the Trans Sahara Slave Trade during BLACK HISTORY MONTH.

I wonder why.

As a result, we have people like Old Lady, all comfortable in their ignorance.

I think it is willful ignorance...even when presented with the evidence...they deny it...it just does not fit their liberal agenda of black victimhood.

 

[OldLady]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

Show me where their children and all their descendants were sold into "indentured servitude."
Obviously they took their cases to court when greedy owners violated the contract, or we wouldn't know about them, would we?
My points aren't bullshit and calling indentured servants "slaves" is not accurate.
I still want to know why you insist.

Sadly, A Great Many Of Them Were Mistreated And Died

Working on a plantation was difficult work. Many indentured servants were overworked, and, when they were even remotely insubordinate, they were beaten. This violence – along with disease – led to a high mortality rate among indentured servants. Some masters also sexually assaulted their female servants or beat them to death. In fact, there were instances where some servants organized protests for the way they were treated... only to be hanged in response.

All I can say is, it's a damned good thing someone invented tractors and harvesters, because if they weren't around, there would still be greedy, immoral capitalists using their fellow humans as disposable livestock. Probably actual slavery, too.

 

[MacTheKnife]

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

Show me where their children and all their descendants were sold into "indentured servitude."
Obviously they took their cases to court when greedy owners violated the contract, or we wouldn't know about them, would we?
My points aren't bullshit and calling indentured servants "slaves" is not accurate.
I still want to know why you insist.

Sadly, A Great Many Of Them Were Mistreated And Died

Working on a plantation was difficult work. Many indentured servants were overworked, and, when they were even remotely insubordinate, they were beaten. This violence – along with disease – led to a high mortality rate among indentured servants. Some masters also sexually assaulted their female servants or beat them to death. In fact, there were instances where some servants organized protests for the way they were treated... only to be hanged in response.

All I can say is, it's a damned good thing someone invented tractors and harvesters, because if they weren't around, there would still be greedy, immoral capitalists using their fellow humans as disposable livestock. Probably actual slavery, too.

An 1878 schoolbook's depiction of tobacco cultivation at Jamestown,
In 1624, Jane Dickenson petitioned the governor of Virginia for relief from bondage. Four years earlier, her husband had signed a contract of indenture to pay for his immigration from England; it obliged him to labor for a man named Nicholas Hide for a period of seven years.


Before the indenture was up, however, Jane’s husband was killed in the Second Anglo-Powhatan War, and she was taken captive by the Pamunkey Indians. Held for 10 months, she was finally ransomed for two pounds of beads by one of the Virginia Company’s grandees. Jane now found herself bound to labor“with a towefold Chaine,” one “for her late husband’s obligation,” the other “for her ransome.” Seeking her own release, Jane testified that her indentured service “differeth not from her slavery [with] the Indians.”

Read the full article.....very interesting. America's Long History of Exploiting Migrant Workers - The Atlantic

 

[OldLady]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

That is the spiel and many think of them somewhat like those characteers in the T.V. series upstairs downstair where the servants were treated like family...very kindly and the master was just so genteel.

Reality is quite different....and though many,many Americans can over as indentured servants...most do not even know that and know even less about the very harsh conditions they endured.

First of all they had no legal rights....they were at the mercy of their master...some were good...many if not most were not. They were supposed to be released after 7 yrs. but often this was not the case...the master would scheme to keep them in his debt and then force them to keep working to supposedly pay off the debt.

'In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.'White Cargo

Thanks for the details. I know it wasn't by any means an idyllic existence, but their children were not property and there was a way out at the end of their servitude--and courts to hold owners to their obligations.
I don't really think it is accurate to refer to them as "slaves." They have a name, "indentured servants." Use it.

Politically correct bullshit.

Ask the old lady about the Barbary Coast Slave Trade, or the Trans Sahara Slave Trade. She thinks white Europeans went to Africa with nets and kidnapped the Africans.

She does not know that nearly every black person shipped to the new word were already slaves. The Trans Sahara trade was going on for nearly 700 years before the Trans Atlantic even began.

LOL

They of course never discuss the Barbary Coast slave trade where nearly 1.5 million Europeans (WHITES) were enslaved, during BLACK HISTORY MONTH. (more left wing black patronizing month)

They of course never discuss the Trans Sahara Slave Trade during BLACK HISTORY MONTH.

I wonder why.

As a result, we have people like Old Lady, all comfortable in their ignorance.

I know about it, but I don't see that it lets anyone off the hook for the slave trade in this country. How does it? It's okay to buy slaves because someone else in a foreign country had already enslaved them? Alrighty, then. Great argument.

 

[jon_berzerk]

Cool beans.
He was never a "slave," though. Indentured servants had a contract, served their time, and were free.

John newton once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in West Africa went on to pen amazing grace


as for indentured servants

that was the case here too until

Anthony Johnson a black plantation property owner that owned slaves, and was one of the first people in Virginia to have his right to own a slave legally recognized