American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia

This chapter examines Raleigh’s intended first English colony at Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina’s Outer Banks. In 1584 an initial expedition scouted the location to report good Indians, bountiful land, and a natural harbor. The one negative was possible Spanish attack, given Roanoke’s proximity to Spanish Florida.

Raleigh wanted his colony to be a “base of action against the Spanish” (28), a position Hakluyt supported. Both men envisioned enslaved Africans and Indians ready to work with the English to defeat Spain. Their purpose was merely to supplant the Spanish, not to allow the enslaved to choose their own path to freedom. England wanted the colony to address its domestic problem of population growth in a sluggish economy, which caused significant unemployment. The idea was that England, which had “more people than jobs,” and the Cimarrons could join as one under England’s “benevolent rule, in a new English empire on American soil” (31). Queen Elizabeth I agreed and decided to “unleash” Drake on the New World in September 1585 (31).

Morgan argues that the expedition made mistakes. First, they sent military-style expeditions, but expedition leaders were in the “business of war” and thus unable to “win the natives by [their] gentleness and courtesy” (32). Second, since most seamen were impressed, meaning they were forced on the expedition, and also “undesirable inhabitants” (33), they were unskilled and ill-prepared for life in the wilderness. Although Raleigh and Drake sought the New World for “power, profit, and plunder,” they did it cloaked in the ideal of freedom (36).

The Indians were fewer in number, not “courteous or as fond of clothes,” and quiet (38). But the “myth of the noble savage was matched by the […] myth of the godlike white man” (38)—two ideas on a collision course in the New World. And after an Indian stole a silver cup and refused to return it, the settlers burned down the village even though they relied on the Indians for corn. The English starved, as they refused to or could not grow corn, and the Indians grew barely enough for subsistence and could not be convinced to give away what they had or to grow more. A year later, the English learned of an Indian plot against them, days before Drake arrived, so they killed the Indian king and his advisors.

Roanoke was abandoned when the original colonists joined Drake’s fleet and set sail for England in August 1587.

This chapter shows how opposing ideas about the Indians—that they were “all alike” and that “the only good Indian is a dead one” (44)—date to 1606, when the Virginia Company of London formed then settled the Jamestown colony in the Chesapeake Region.

The company sailed for Virginia to “develop a trade in any product” (45) by combining the labor of all settlers; its shareholders expected to be paid dividends. The unemployed settlers aboard the ship owed the company seven years of labor in exchange for transportation. The nobility, driven by profits, expected to show “beneficence toward the natives” (46), to bring “civility and Christianity” to the Indians, and to provide England’s unemployed “redemption from idleness and crime” (47). Their expectations failed.

Indians and the English differed. Indian leaders ruled by custom, with less direct rule. Culturally, Indians had no permanent houses, they thought hunting was a sport, and their primary foodstuff was gathered nuts and fruits as well as vegetables and beans, which women grew. They let fields return to forest to protect the soil and “shaped the land to their purposes” (54). Their lifestyle was “a minimum of labor, especially for men” (56).

England’s monarch also ruled with custom (common law), which they could override. Only the nobility sat in Parliament; however, the English system provided all Englishmen with security. They also believed in the “superiority of their religion,” which characterized idleness as a vice; Indians saw idleness as a “masculine virtue” (61). Indeed, English Parliament’s Statute of Artificers of 1563 required minimum work hours for all workers.

Yet, Morgan shows that English workers, most working in agriculture, were lazy. In England farmers worked hard and “expected their servants to work hard” (64). But pastureland farmers were accused of idleness when England’s population was growing. When Parliament established “conservation of employment” to generate “underemployment” by forcing employers to hire men by the year (65), a man could have only one job, so when idle, farmers could not take another. Those who “learned to work under these conditions learned to work not very hard” (67).

By the end of the 16th century, colonization was tasked to help diversify England’s economy, and colonists expected the Indians to help. But as Morgan concludes, when the English aboard the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery came ashore, the “Virginia Company had sent the idle to teach the idle,” and the men aboard were “quarrelsome,” which was a “formula for disaster” (70).

This chapter discusses why the Jamestown settlers failed to integrate the Indians, feed themselves, and diversify exports in the colony’s first 10 years.

First, Morgan argues that the colony was poorly organized. A council invested with power from King James I included an elected president, who had no power. It was John Smith, not the council president, who “kept the colony going” in the very early years (75). Importantly, Smith believed in the company’s mission and integrating the Indians into the colony’s working life, but he believed that “kindness was wasted on savages” (77). Smith’s leadership was unofficial since he lacked the social status. At the end of 1608, he led the colony, as council members slowly died off. Smith may have “bullied and threatened and browbeat” the Indians, but no records exist to show that he “committed atrocities” (79).

The company rejected Smith’s leadership; they needed firmer leadership to force colonists to work. The king gave the company “full control” through a governor who would establish laws with work standards and “military discipline and no pretense of gentle government” (79). But the Indians were excluded, and the new laws were “an effort to keep settlers and Indians apart” (80).

Second, Morgan examines “the collective organization of labor in the colony” (81). The goal to work together to produce food failed, as did the switch to private plots. By 1619, they still had to buy food from the Indians.

Third, Morgan addresses the “character of the immigrants” (83). Many “gentlemen” were among the settlers, but neither they nor their servants did manual labor (84). Since they paid their way, the company had little choice but to allow them onboard, but it resulted in too many men who could not do the work “essential to settling in a wilderness” (86). The expectation was that settlers would live off the land, make products, and mine for minerals, but they found no “riches to extract” (87).

The men who could work and grow food did not, likely because the Indians did, so they bought the Indians’ food. Yet the settlers saw themselves as superior to the Indians, so when settlers ran away to live with the Indians, they burned the villages and killed the Indians to prove their “superiority in spite of [their] failures” (90). Thus, after 10 years, the colonists did not grow their own food, Indians were not part of the colony, and tobacco was their only hope.

This chapter shows the company’s evolution in managing the colony to give each settler a “larger stake in the country” (93).

The company’s investors were divided into three factions: “big merchants,” who saw Virginia as one among many business ventures; those concerned with how the colony could protect their ships; and “smaller men” whose investment was most of their wealth and who were dissatisfied with big farmers’ leadership (93).

The company instituted three main changes. First, land distribution gave “headright” of 50 acres to each man who came on their own or paid for the transportation of another person (94). The company took a “quitrent” on each 50 acres, a small amount that gave the company income (94). Any “sharecropping tenants under the direction of a company agent” received their headright after the term ended (94).

Second, the company allowed subcorporations, or “magazines,” to sell goods to settlers in exchange for the settlers’ produce (95).

Third, in 1621 the company gave the colony a “more liberal, more English frame of government” (96). An annual assembly comprised of two elected representatives (burgesses) from each settlement was formed to make laws, which the company had to approve (96). To avoid taxation, and to make the colony even more attractive, each government office was granted land and tenants (a seven-year contract on a 50-50 split). Indians were also included in some provisions. But the settlers’ increasing numbers and encroachment on Indian land led Indian leader Opechancanough to massacre 347 settlers on March 22, 1622, and any thoughts of integrating the Indians ended.

Importantly, the number of settlers was not increasing. Between 1616 and 1619, 3,000 mostly indigent men and boys were sent to the colony to add to the 700 persons already in Virginia. After the massacre, only 1,240 were alive. Food scarcity was part of the problem. Given the company’s failure to care for immigrants, the king sent a commission to investigate. But upon learning that overloaded ships were dumping immigrants at Jamestown half dead with scurvy, the king dissolved the company and took control in 1624.

Morgan asserts that the concern was not whether food was available but who could afford it. Most men arrived without sufficient supplies, then hired at high wages since “established settlers were so eager for more workers” (106). Thus, the company’s failure was not solely due to transporting new settlers who were ill-equipped to survive, since some colonists were clearly doing well.

Morgan details the boom year, spanning 1629-1630, caused by high tobacco prices.

The settlers got richer, but most did not plant corn and could not feed themselves. The small planters spent their money on liquor and began to trade with outsiders; the company could not prevent it and so gave up trying in 1620. Although the magazines initially exchanged goods for produce or tobacco, eventually sales made on promises were never kept. Settlers traded their tobacco with outsiders for drink, while the economy changed to credit. But settlers also became traders, buying up commodities and reselling them at “monopoly prices” (114).

Unlike other colonial boom areas, success in Jamestown depended on acquiring workers, not land. The high mortality rate meant that only some immigrants survived. The tenant immigrant was the “most advantageous status” (116) because they could keep half of what they earned. Least attractive were the “Duty Boys” (named for the ship they arrived on), who worked in bondage for seven years then as tenants for another seven; planters paid 10 pounds for each (116). Men who arrived with no contract were easily exploited; they were “hired out to private planters” (117), and their provisions were taken, causing malnutrition and disease.

Big merchants grew rich from theft of the company’s coffers and exploitation of their tenants. They maintained their spoils by controlling the politics, vigorously meeting “every challenge to their authority” (124) and, when necessary, “participating in discussions that favored their interests” (125). Servitude in Virginia, then, was far nastier than in England. For example, servants were subject to degrading practices like the buying and selling of contracts without the servant’s consent, which was tantamount to being treated like “things” (129) because of “extreme demand for labor” and the “long terms of service” (128).

Morgan cannot determine the precise moment when racial hatred toward Indians emerged, as Englishmen were always “xenophobic,” which likely shaped their attitudes toward the Indians from the start (130). Their “scorn” for the Indians sounded more like racism; hatred, “fed on fear, probably affected all white Virginians” (130). But the deeper the hatred, the less likely servants were to leave to join the Indians, which allowed planters even more control over the labor market and enabled them to buy and sell servants as they wished. Although some servants believed they were “treated ‘Like a damnd slave,’” it had nothing to do with their “race or nationality” (130); the linking of slavery and freedom would come later.