Judul : Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center
link : Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center
Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center
in 1676, seventy years after virginia wasfounded, a hundred years before it supplied leadership for the american revolution, thatcolony faced a rebellion of white frontiersmen, joined by slaves and servants, a rebellionso threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of jamestown, and englanddecided to send a thousand soldiers across the atlantic, hoping to maintain order amongforty thousand colonists.
Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center, this was bacon's rebellion. after the uprising was suppressed, its leader,nathaniel bacon, dead, and his associates hanged, bacon was described in a royal commissionreport: he was said to be about four or five and thirtyyears of age, indifferent tall but slender,
black haired and of an ominous, pensive, melancholyaspect, of a pestilent and prevalent logical discourse tending to atheism. he seduced the vulgar and most ignorant peopleto believe (two thirds of each county being of that sort) so that their whole hearts andhopes were set now upon bacon. next he charges the governor as negligentand wicked, treacherous and incapable, the lawes and taxes as unjust and oppressive andcries up absolute necessity of redress. thus bacon encouraged the tumult and as theunquiet crowd follow and adhere to him, he listeth them as they come in upon a largepaper, writing their name circular wise, that their ringleaders might not be found out.
having coned them into this circle, giventhem brandy to wind up the charm, and enjoined them by an oath to stick fast together andto him and the oath being administered, he went and infected new kent county ripe forrebellion. bacon's rebellion began with conflict overhow to deal with the indians, who were close by, on the western frontier, constantly threatening. whites who had been ignored when huge landgrants around jamestown were given away had gone west to find land, and there they encounteredindians. were those frontier virginians resentful thatthe politicos and landed aristocrats who controlled the colony's government in jamestown firstpushed them westward into indian territory,
and then seemed indecisive in fighting theindians? that might explain the character of theirrebellion, not easily classifiable as either anti aristocrat or anti indian, because itwas both. and the governor, william berkeley, and hisjamestown crowd-were they more conciliatory to the indians (they wooed certain of themas spies and allies) now that they had monopolized the land in the east, could use frontier whitesas a buffer, and needed peace? the desperation of the government in suppressingthe rebellion seemed to have a double motive: developing an indian policy which would divideindians in order to control them (in new england at this very time, massasoit's son metacomwas threatening to unite indian tribes, and
had done frightening damage to puritan settlementsin "king philip's war"); and teaching the poor whites of virginia that rebellion didnot pay-by a show of superior force, by calling for troops from england itself, by mass hanging. violence had escalated on the frontier beforethe rebellion. some doeg indians took a few hogs to redressa debt, and whites, retrieving the hogs, murdered two indians. the doegs then sent out a war party to killa white herdsman, after which a white militia company killed twenty-four indians. this led to a series of indian raids, withthe indians, outnumbered, turning to guerrilla
warfare. the house of burgesses in jamestown declaredwar on the indians, but proposed to exempt those indians who cooperated. this seemed to anger the frontiers people,who wanted total war but also resented the high taxes assessed to pay for the war. times were hard in 1676. "there was genuine distress, genuine poverty. all contemporary sources speak of the greatmass of people as living in severe economic straits," writes wilcomb washburn, who, usingbritish colonial records, has done an exhaustive
study of bacon's rebellion. it was a dry summer, ruining the corn crop,which was needed for food, and the tobacco crop, needed for export. governor berkeley, in his seventies, tiredof holding office, wrote wearily about his situation: "how miserable that man is thatgoverns a people where six parts of seven at least are poor indebted discontented andarmed." his phrase "six parts of seven" suggests theexistence of an upper class not so impoverished. in fact, there was such a class already developedin virginia. bacon himself came from this class, had agood bit of land, and was probably more enthusiastic
about killing indians than about redressingthe grievances of the poor. but he became a symbol of mass resentmentagainst the virginia establishment, and was elected in the spring of 1676 to the houseof burgesses. when he insisted on organizing armed detachmentsto fight the indians, outside official control, berkeley proclaimed him a rebel and had himcaptured, whereupon two thousand virginians marched into jamestown to support him. berkeley let bacon go, in return for an apology,but bacon went off, gathered his militia, and began raiding the indians. bacon's "declaration of the people" of july1676 shows a mixture of populist resentment
against the rich and frontier hatred of theindians. it indicted the berkeley administration forunjust taxes, for putting favourites in high positions, for monopolizing the beaver trade,and for not protecting the western formers from the indians. then bacon went out to attack the friendlypamunkey indians, killing eight, taking others prisoner, plundering their possessions. there is evidence that the rank and file ofboth bacon's rebel army and berkeley's official army were not as enthusiastic as their leaders. there were mass desertions on both sides,according to washburn.
in the fall, bacon, aged twenty-nine, fellsick and died, because of, as a contemporary put it, "swarmes of vermyn that bred in hisbody." a minister, apparently not a sympathizer,wrote this epitaph: bacon is dead i am sorry at my heart,that lice and flux should take the hangman’s part. the rebellion didn't last long after that. a ship armed with thirty guns, cruising theyork river, became the base for securing order, and its captain, thomas grantham, used forceand deception to disarm the last rebel forces. coming upon the chief garrison of the rebellion,he found four hundred armed englishmen and
negroes, a mixture of free men, servants,and slaves. he promised to pardon everyone, to give freedomto slaves and servants, whereupon they surrendered their arms and dispersed, except for eightynegroes and twenty english who insisted on keeping their arms. grantham promised to take them to a garrisondown the river, but when they got into the boat, he trained his big guns on them, disarmedthem, and eventually delivered the slaves and servants to their masters. the remaining garrisons were overcome oneby one. twenty-three rebel leaders were hanged.
it was a complex chain of oppression in virginia. the indians were plundered by white frontiersmen,who were taxed and controlled by the jamestown elite. and the whole colony was being exploited byengland, which bought the colonists' tobacco at prices it dictated and made 100,000 poundsa year for the king. berkeley himself, returning to england yearsearlier to protest the english navigation acts, which gave english merchants a monopolyof the colonial trade, had said: we cannot but resent, that forty thousandpeople should be impoverished to enrich little more than forty merchants, who being the onlybuyers of our tobacco, give us what they please
for it, and after it is here, sell it howthey please; and indeed, have forty thousand servants in us at cheaper rates, than anyother men have slaves. from the testimony of the governor himself,the rebellion against him had the overwhelming support of the virginia population. a member of his council reported that thedefection was "almost general" and laid it to "the lewd dispositions of some personsof desperate fortunes" who had "the vain hopes of taking the country wholly out of his majesty'shands into their own." another member of the governor's council,richard lee, noted that bacon's rebellion had started over indian policy.
but the "zealous inclination of the multitude"to support bacon was due, he said, to "hopes of levelling." "levelling" meant equalizing the wealth. levelling was to be behind countless actionsof poor whites against the rich in all the english colonies, in the century and a halfbefore the revolution. the servants who joined bacon's rebellionwere part of a large underclass of miserably poor whites who came to the north americancolonies from european cities whose governments were anxious to be rid of them. in england, the development of commerce andcapitalism in the 1500s and 1600s, the enclosing
of land for the production of wool, filledthe cities with vagrant poor, and from the reign of elizabeth on, laws were passed topunish them, imprison them in workhouses, or exile them. the elizabethan definition of "rogues andvagabonds" included: all persons calling themselves scholler’sgoing about begging, all seafaring men pretending losses of their ships or goods on the seagoing about the country begging, all idle persons going about in any country eitherbegging or using any subtle craft or unlawful games common players of interludes and minstrelswandering abroad all wandering persons and common labourers being persons able in bodyusing loitering and refusing to work for such
reasonable wages as is taxed or commonly given. such persons found begging could be strippedto the waist and whipped bloody, could be sent out of the city, sent to workhouses,or transported out of the country. in the 1600s and 1700s, by forced exile, bylures, promises, and lies, by kidnapping, by their urgent need to escape the livingconditions of the home country, poor people wanting to go to america became commoditiesof profit for merchants, traders, ship captains, and eventually their masters in america. abbot smith, in his study of indentured servitude,colonists in bondage, writes: "from the complex pattern of forces producing emigration tothe american colonies one stands out clearly
as most powerful in causing the movement ofservants. this was the pecuniary profit to be made byshipping them." after signing the indenture, in which theimmigrants agreed to pay their cost of passage by working for a master for five or sevenyears, they were often imprisoned until the ship sailed, to make sure they did not runaway. in the year 1619, the virginia house of burgesses,born that year as the first representative assembly in america (it was also the yearof the first importation of black slaves), provided for the recording and enforcing ofcontracts between servants and masters. as in any contract between unequal powers,the parties appeared on paper as equals, but
enforcement was far easier for master thanfor servant. the voyage to america lasted eight, ten, ortwelve weeks, and the servants were packed into ships with the same fanatic concern forprofits that marked the slave ships. if the weather was bad, and the trip tooktoo long, they ran out of food. the sloop sea-flower, leaving belfast in 1741,was at sea sixteen weeks, and when it arrived in boston, forty-six of its 106 passengerswere dead of starvation, six of them eaten by the survivors. on another trip, thirty-two children diedof hunger and disease and were thrown into the ocean.
gottlieb mittelberger, a musician, travelingfrom germany to america around 1750, wrote about his voyage:during the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress-smells, fumes, horrors,vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation,boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth rot, and similar afflictions, all of them caused by the ageand the high salted state of the food, especially of the meat, as well as by the very bad andfilthy water add to all that shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, fear,misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles. on board our ship, on a day on which we hada great storm, a woman about to give birth
and unable to deliver under the circumstances,was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea. indentured servants were bought and sold likeslaves. an announcement in the virginia gazette, march28, 1771, read: just arrived at leedstown, the ship justitia,with about one hundred healthy servants, men women & boys. the sale will commence on tuesday the 2ndof april. against the rosy accounts of better livingstandards in the americas one must place many others, like one immigrant's letter from america:"whoever is well off in europe better remain
there. here is misery and distress, same as everywhere,and for certain persons and conditions incomparably more than in europe." beatings and whippings were common. servant women were raped. one observer testified: "i have seen an overseerbeat a servant with a cane about the head till the blood has followed, for a fault thatis not worth the speaking of...." the maryland court records showed many servantsuicides. in 1671, governor berkeley of virginia reportedthat in previous years four of five servants
died of disease after their arrival. many were poor children, gathered up by thehundreds on the streets of english cities and sent to virginia to work. the master tried to control completely thesexual lives of the servants. it was in his economic interest to keep womenservants from marrying or from having sexual relations, because childbearing would interferewith work. benjamin franklin, writing as "poor richard"in 1736, gave advice to his readers: "let thy maidservant be faithful, strong and homely." servants could not marry without permission,could be separated from their families, could
be whipped for various offenses. pennsylvania law in the seventeenth centurysaid that marriage of servants "without the consent of the masters .. . shall be proceededagainst as for adultery, or fornication, and children to be reputed as bastards." although colonial laws existed to stop excessesagainst servants, they were not very well enforced, we learn from richard morris's comprehensivestudy of early court records in government and labor in early america. servants did not participate in juries. masters did.
(and being property-less, servants did notvote.) in 1666, a new england court accused a coupleof the death of a servant after the mistress had cut off the servant's toes. the jury voted acquittal. in virginia in the 1660s, a master was convictedof raping two women servants. he also was known to beat his own wife andchildren; he had whipped and chained another servant until he died. the master was berated by the court, but specificallycleared on the rape charge, despite overwhelming evidence.
sometimes servants organized rebellions, butone did not find on the mainland the kind of large- scale conspiracies of servants thatexisted, for instance, on barbados in the west indies. (abbot smith suggests this was because therewas more chance of success on a small island.) however, in york county, virginia, in 1661,a servant named isaac friend proposed to another, after much dissatisfaction with the food,that they "get a matter of forty of them together, and get guns & he would be the first & leadthem and cry as they went along, 'who would be for liberty, and free from bondage', & thatthere would enough come to them and they would go through the county and kill those thatmade any opposition and that they would either
be free or die for it." the scheme was never carried out, but twoyears later, in gloucester county, servants again planned a general uprising. one of them gave the plot away, and four wereexecuted. the informer was given his freedom and 5,000pounds of tobacco. despite the rarity of servants' rebellions,the threat was always there, and masters were fearful. finding their situation intolerable, and rebellionimpractical in an increasingly organized society, servants reacted in individual ways.
the files of the county courts in new englandshow that one servant struck at his master with a pitchfork. an apprentice servant was accused of "layingviolent hands upon his master, and throwing him down twice and fetching blood of him,threatening to break his neck, running at his face with a chair" one maidservant wasbrought into court for being "bad, unruly, sullen, careless, destructive, and disobedient." after the participation of servants in bacon'srebellion, the virginia legislature passed laws to punish servants who rebelled. the preamble to the act said:whereas many evil disposed servants in these
late times of horrid rebellion taking advantageof the looseness and liberty of the time, did depart from their service, and followedthe rebills in rebellion, wholly neglecting their masters employment whereby the saidmasters have suffered great damage and injury. two companies of english soldiers remainedin virginia to guard against future trouble, and their presence was defended in a reportto the lords of trade and plantation saying: "virginia is at present poor and more populousthan ever. there is great apprehension of a rising amongthe servants, owing to their great necessities and want of clothes; they may plunder thestorehouses and ships." escape was easier than rebellion.
"numerous instances of mass desertions bywhite servants took place in the southern colonies," reports richard morris, on thebasis of an inspection of colonial newspapers in the 1700s. "the atmosphere of seventeenth-century virginia,"he says, "was charged with plots and rumours of combinations of servants to run away." the maryland court records show, in the 1650s,a conspiracy of a dozen servants to seize a boat and to resist with arms if intercepted. they were captured and whipped. the mechanism of control was formidable.
strangers had to show passports or certificatesto prove they were free men. agreements among the colonies provided forthe extradition of fugitive servants- these became the basis of the clause in the u.s.constitution that persons "held to service or labor in one state escaping into anothershall be delivered up." sometimes, servants went on strike. one maryland master complained to the provincialcourt in 1663 that his servants did "peremptorily and positively refuse to go and do their ordinarylabor." the servants responded that they were fedonly "beans and bread" and they were "so weak, we are unable to perform the employments heputs us upon."
they were given thirty lashes by the court. more than half the colonists who came to thenorth american shores in the colonial period came as servants. they were mostly english in the seventeenthcentury, irish and german in the eighteenth century. more and more, slaves replaced them, as theyran away to freedom or finished their time, but as late as 1755, white servants made up10 percent of the population of maryland. what happened to these servants after theybecame free? there are cheerful accounts in which theyrise to prosperity, becoming landowners and
important figures. but abbot smith, after a careful study, concludesthat colonial society "was not democratic and certainly not equalitarian; it was dominatedby men who had money enough to make others work for them." and: "few of these men were descended fromindentured servants, and practically none had themselves been of that class." after we make our way through abbot smith'sdisdain for the servants, as "men and women who were dirty and lazy, rough, ignorant,lewd, and often criminal," who "thieved and wandered, had bastard children, and corruptedsociety with loathsome diseases," we find
that "about one in ten was a sound and solidindividual, who would if fortunate survive his 'seasoning,' work out his time, take upland, and wax decently prosperous." perhaps another one in ten would become anartisan or an overseer. the rest, 80 percent, who were "certainly... shiftless, hopeless, ruined individuals," either "died during their servitude, returnedto england after it was over, or became 'poor whites.'" smith's conclusion is supported by a morerecent study of servants in seventeenth-century maryland, where it was found that the firstbatches of servants became landowners and politically active in the colony, but by thesecond half of the century more than half
the servants, even after ten years of freedom,remained landless. servants became tenants, providing cheap laborfor the large planters both during and after their servitude. it seems quite clear that class lines hardenedthrough the colonial period; the distinction between rich and poor became sharper. by 1700 there were fifty rich families invirginia, with wealth equivalent to 50,000 pounds (a huge sum those days), who livedoff the labor of black slaves and white servants, owned the plantations, sat on the governor'scouncil, served as local magistrates. in maryland, the settlers were ruled by aproprietor whose right of total control over
the colony had been granted by the englishking. between 1650 and 1689 there were five revoltsagainst the proprietor. in the carolinas, the fundamental constitutionswere written in the 1660s by john locke, who is often considered the philosophical fatherof the founding fathers and the american system. locke's constitution set up a feudal-typearistocracy, in which eight barons would own 40 percent of the colony's land, and onlya baron could be governor. when the crown took direct control of northcarolina, after a rebellion against the land arrangements, rich speculators seized halfa million acres for themselves, monopolizing the good farming land near the coast.
poor people, desperate for land, squattedon bits of farmland and fought all through the pre-revolutionary period against the landlords'attempts to collect rent. carl bridenbaugh's study of colonial cities,cities in the wilderness, reveals a clear-cut class system. he finds:the leaders of early boston were gentlemen of considerable wealth who, in associationwith the clergy, eagerly sought to preserve in america the social arrangements of themother country. by means of their control of trade and commerce,by their political domination of the inhabitants through church and town meeting, and by carefulmarriage alliances among themselves, members
of this little oligarchy laid the foundationsfor an aristocratic class in seventeenth century boston. at the very start of the massachusetts baycolony in 1630, the governor, john winthrop, had declared the philosophy of the rulers:in all times, some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity;others mean and in subjection." rich merchants erected mansions; persons "ofquality" travelled in coaches or sedan chairs, had their portraits painted, wore periwigs,and filled themselves with rich food and madeira. a petition came from the town of deerfieldin 1678 to the massachusetts general court: "you may be pleased to know that the veryprinciple and best of the land; the best for
soil; the best for situation; as laying inye centre and middle of the town: and as to quantity, near half, belongs unto eight ornine proprietors." in newport, rhode island, bridenbaugh found,as in boston, that "the town meetings, while ostensibly democratic, were in reality controlledyear after year by the same group of merchant aristocrats, who secured most of the importantoffices." a contemporary described the newport merchantsas “men in flaming scarlet coats and waistcoats, laced and fringed with brightest glaring yellow. the sly quakers, not venturing on these charmingcoats and waistcoats, yet loving finery, figured away with plate on their sideboards."
the new york aristocracy was the most ostentatiousof all, bridenbaugh tells of "window hangings of camlet, japanned tables, gold-framed lookingglasses, spinets and massive eight-day clocks richly carved furniture, jewels and silver-plate. black house servants." new york in the colonial period was like afeudal kingdom. the dutch had set up a patroonship systemalong the hudson river, with enormous landed estates, where the barons controlled completelythe lives of their tenants, in 1689, many of the grievances of the poor were mixed upin the farmers' revolt of jacob leisler and his group.
leisler was hanged, and the parcelling outof huge estates continued. under governor benjamin fletcher, three-fourthsof the land in new york was granted to about thirty people. he gave a friend a half million acres fora token annual payment of 30 shillings. under lord cornbury in the early 1700s, onegrant to a group of speculators was for 2 million acres. in 1700, new york city church wardens hadasked for funds from the common council because "the cries of the poor and impotent for wantof relief are extremely grievous." in the 1730s, demand began to grow for institutionsto contain the "many beggarly people daily
suffered to wander about the streets." a city council resolution read:whereas the necessity, number and continual increase of the poor within this city is verygreat and frequently commit divers misdemeanours within the said city, who living idly andunemployed, become debauched and instructed in the practice of thievery and debauchery. for remedy whereof resolved that there beforthwith built a good, strong and convenient house and tenement. the two-story brick structure was called "poorhouse, work house, and house of correction." a letter to peter zenger's new york journalin 1737 described the poor street urchin of
new york as "an object in human shape, half-starvedwith cold, with clothes out at the elbows, knees through the breeches, hair standingon end. from the age about four to fourteen they spendtheir days in the streets then they are put out as apprentices, perhaps four, five, orsix years." the colonies grew fast in the 1700s. english settlers were joined by scotch-irishand german immigrants. black slaves were pouring in; they were 8percent of the population in 1690; 21 percent in 1770. the population of the colonies was 250,000in 1700; 1,600,000 by 1760.
agriculture was growing. small manufacturing was developing. shipping and trading were expanding. the big cities-boston, new york, philadelphia,charleston-were doubling and tripling in size. through all that growth, the upper class wasgetting most of the benefits and monopolized political power. a historian who studied boston tax lists in1687 and 1771 found that in 1687 there were, out of a population of six thousand, aboutone thousand property owners, and that the top 5 percent- 1 percent of the population-consistedof fifty rich individuals who had 25 percent
of the wealth. by 1770, the top 1 percent of property ownersowned 44 percent of the wealth. as boston grew, from 1687 to 1770, the percentageof adult males who were poor, perhaps rented a room, or slept in the back of a tavern,owned no property, doubled from 14 percent of the adult males to 29 percent. and loss of property meant loss of votingrights. everywhere the poor were struggling to stayalive, simply to keep from freezing in cold weather. all the cities built poorhouses in the 1730s,not just for old people, widows, crippled,
and orphans, but for unemployed, war veterans,new immigrants. in new york, at mid-century, the city alms-house,built for one hundred poor, was housing over four hundred. a philadelphia citizen wrote in 1748: "itis remarkable what an increase of the number of beggars there is about this town this winter." in 1757, boston officials spoke of "a greatnumber of poor ... who can scarcely procure from day to day daily bread for themselves& families." kenneth lockridge, in a study of colonialnew england, found that vagabonds and paupers kept increasing and "the wandering poor" werea distinct fact of new england life in the
middle 1700s. james t. lemon and gary nash found a similarconcentration of wealth, a widening of the gap between rich and poor, in their studyof chester county, pennsylvania, in the 1700s. the colonies, it seems, were societies ofcontending classes-a fact obscured by the emphasis, in traditional histories, on theexternal struggle against england, the unity of colonists in the revolution. the country therefore was not "born free"but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich. as a result, the political authorities wereopposed "frequently, vociferously, and sometimes
violently," according to nash. "outbreaks of disorder punctuated the lastquarter of the seventeenth century, toppling established governments in massachusetts,new york, maryland, virginia, and north carolina." free white workers were better off than slavesor servants, but they still resented unfair treatment by the wealthier classes. as early as 1636, an employer off the coastof maine reported that his workmen and fishermen "fell into a mutiny" because he had withheldtheir wages. they deserted en masse. five years later, carpenters in maine, protestingagainst inadequate food, engaged in a slowdown.
at the gloucester shipyards in the 1640s,what richard morris calls the "first lockout in american labor history" took place whenthe authorities told a group of troublesome shipwrights they could not "work a strokeof work more." there were early strikes of coopers, butchers,bakers, protesting against government control of the fees they charged. porters in the 1650s in new york refused tocarry salt, and carters (truckers, teamsters, carriers) who went out on strike were prosecutedin new york city "for not obeying the command and doing their duties as becomes them intheir places." in 1741, bakers combined to refuse to bakebecause they had to pay such high prices for
wheat. a severe food shortage in boston in 1713 broughta warning from town selectmen to the general assembly of massachusetts saying the "threateningscarcity of provisions" had led to such "extravagant prices that the necessities of the poor inthe approaching winter must needs be very pressing." andrew belcher, a wealthy merchant, was exportinggrain to the caribbean because the profit was greater there. on may 19, two hundred people rioted on theboston common. they attacked belchers ships, broke into hiswarehouses looking for corn, and shot the
lieutenant governor when he tried to interfere. eight years after the bread riot on the common,a pamphleteer protested against those who became rich "by grinding the poor," by studying"how to oppress, cheat, and overreach their neighbours." he denounced "the rich, great and potent"who "with rapacious violence bear down all before them." in the 1730s, in boston, people protestingthe high prices established by merchants demolished the public market in dock square while (asa conservative writer complained) "murmuring against the government & the rich people."
no one was arrested, after the demonstratorswarned that arrests would bring "five hundred men in solemn league and covenant" who woulddestroy other markets set up for the benefit of rich merchants. around the same time, in new york, an electionpamphlet urged new york voters to join "shuttle" the weaver, "plane" the joiner, "drive" thecarter, "mortar" the mason, "tar" the mariner, "snip" the tailor, "small rent" the fair-mindedlandlord, and "john poor" the tenant, against "gripe the merchant, squeeze the shopkeeper,spin text and quibble the lawyer." the electorate was urged to vote out of office"people in exalted stations" who scorned "those they call the vulgar, the mob, the herd ofmechanics."
in the 1730s, a committee of the boston townmeeting spoke out for bostonians in debt, who wanted paper money issued to make it easierto pay off their debts to the merchant elite. they did not want, they declared, to "haveour bread and water measured out to us by those who riot in luxury & wantonness on oursweat & toil." bostonians rioted also against impressment,in which men were drafted for naval service. they surrounded the house of the governor,beat up the sheriff, locked up a deputy sheriff, and stormed the town house where the generalcourt sat. the militia did not respond when called toput them down, and the governor fled. the crowd was condemned by a merchants' groupas a "riotous tumultuous assembly of foreign
seamen, servants, negroes, and other personsof mean and vile condition." in new jersey in the 1740s and 1750s, poorfarmers occupying land, over which they and the landowners had rival claims, rioted whenrents were demanded of them. in 1745, samuel baldwin, who had long livedon his land and who held an indian tide to it, was arrested for non-payment of rent tothe proprietor and taken to the newark jail. a contemporary described what happened then:"the people in general, supposing the design of the proprietors was to ruin them went tothe prison, opened the door, took out baldwin." when two men who freed baldwin were arrested,hundreds of new jersey citizens gathered around the jail.
a report sent by the new jersey governmentto the lords of trade in london described the scene:two of the new captains of the newark companies by the sheriffs order went with their drums,to the people, so met, and required all persons there, belong to their companies, to followthe drums and to defend the prison but none followed, though many were there. the multitude between four and five of theclock in the afternoon lighted off their horses, and came towards the gaol, huzzahing and swingingtheir clubs till they came within reach of the guard, struck them with their clubs, andthe guard (having no orders to fire) returned the blows with then- guns, and some were woundedon both sides, but none killed.
the multitude broke the ranks of the soldiers,and pressed on the prison door, where the sheriff stood with a sword, and kept themoff, till they gave him several blows, and forced him out from thence. they then, with axes and other instruments,broke open the prison door, and took out the two prisoners. as also one other prisoner, that was confinedfor debt, and went away. through this period, england was fightinga series of wars (queen anne's war in the early 1700s, king george's war in the 1730s). some merchants made fortunes from these wars,but for most people they meant higher taxes,
unemployment, poverty. an anonymous pamphleteer in massachusetts,writing angrily after king george's war, described the situation: "poverty and discontent appearin every face (except the countenances of the rich) and dwell upon every tongue." he spoke of a few men, fed by "lust of power,lust of fame, lust of money," who got rich during the war. "no wonder such men can build ships, houses,buy farms, set up their coaches, chariots, live very splendidly, purchase fame, postsof honour." he called them "birds of prey-enemies to allcommunities, wherever they live."
the forced service of seamen led to a riotagainst impressment in boston in 1747. then crowds turned against thomas hutchinson,a rich merchant and colonial official who had backed the governor in putting down theriot, and who also designed a currency plan for massachusetts which seemed to discriminateagainst the poor. hutchinson's house burned down, mysteriously,and a crowd gathered in the street, cursing hutchinson and shouting, "let it burn!" by the years of the revolutionary crisis,the 1760s, the wealthy elite that controlled the british colonies on the american mainlandhad 150 years of experience, had learned certain things about how to rule.
they had various fears, but also had developedtactics to deal with what they feared. the indians, they had found, were too unrulyto keep as a labor force, and remained an obstacle to expansion. black slaves were easier to control, and theirprofitability for southern plantations was bringing an enormous increase in the importationof slaves, who were becoming a majority in some colonies and constituted one-fifth ofthe entire colonial population. but the blacks were not totally submissive,and as their numbers grew, the prospect of slave rebellion grew. with the problem of indian hostility, andthe danger of slave revolts, the colonial
elite had to consider the class anger of poorwhites-servants, tenants, the city poor, the property less, the taxpayer, the soldier andsailor. as the colonies passed their hundredth yearand went into the middle of the 1700s, as the gap between rich and poor widened, asviolence and the threat of violence increased, the problem of control became more serious. what if these different despised groups-theindians, the slaves, the poor whites-should combine? even before there were so many blacks, inthe seventeenth century, there was, as abbot smith puts it, "a lively fear that servantswould join with negroes or indians to overcome
the small number of masters." there was little chance that whites and indianswould combine in north america as they were doing in south and central america, wherethe shortage of women, and the use of indians on the plantations, led to daily contact. only in georgia and south carolina, wherewhite women were scarce, was there some sexual mixing of white men and indian women. in general, the indian had been pushed outof sight, out of touch. one fact disturbed: whites would run off tojoin indian tribes, or would be captured in battle and brought up among the indians, andwhen this happened the whites, given a chance
to leave, chose to stay in the indian culture,indians, having the choice, almost never decided to join the whites. hector st. jean crevecoeur, the frenchmanwho lived in america for almost twenty years, told, in letters from an american farmer,how children captured during the seven years' war and found by their parents, grown up andliving with indians, would refuse to leave their new families. "there must be in their social bond," he said,"something singularly captivating, and far superior to anything to be boasted among us;for thousands of europeans are indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigineshaving from choice become europeans."
but this affected few people. in general, the indian was kept at a distance. and the colonial officialdom had found a wayof alleviating the danger: by monopolizing the good land on the eastern seaboard, theyforced landless whites to move westward to the frontier, there to encounter the indiansand to be a buffer for the seaboard rich against indian troubles, white becoming more dependenton the government for protection. bacon's rebellion was instructive: to conciliatea diminishing indian population at the expense of infuriating a coalition of white frontiersmenwas very risky. better to make war on the indian, gain thesupport of the white, divert possible class
conflict by turning poor whites against indiansfor the security of the elite. might blacks and indians combine against thewhite enemy? in the northern colonies (except on cape cod,martha's vineyard, and rhode island, where there was close contact and sexual mixing),there was not much opportunity for africans and indians to meet in large numbers. new york had the largest slave populationin the north, and there was some contact between blacks and indians, as in 1712 when africansand indians joined in an insurrection. but this was quickly suppressed. in the carolina's, however, whites were outnumberedby black slaves and nearby indian tribes;
in the 1750s, 25,000 whites faced 40,000 blackslaves, with 60,000 creek, cherokee, choctaw, and chickasaw indians in the area. gary nash writes: "indian uprisings that punctuatedthe colonial period and a succession of slave uprisings and insurrectionary plots that werenipped in the bud kept south carolinian's sickeningly aware that only through the greatestvigilance and through policies designed to keep their enemies divided could they hopeto remain in control of the situation." the white rulers of the carolina's seemedto be conscious of the need for a policy, as one of them put it, "to make indians & negrosa cheque upon each other lest by their vastly superior numbers we should be crushed by oneor the other."
and so, laws were passed prohibiting freeblacks from traveling in indian country. treaties with indian tribes contained clausesrequiring the return of fugitive slaves. governor lyttletown of south carolina wrotein 1738: "it has always been the policy of this government to create an aversion in them[indians] to negroes." part of this policy involved using black slavesin the south carolina militia to fight indians. still, the government was worried about blackrevolt, and during the cherokee war in the 1760s, a motion to equip five hundred slavesto fight the indians lost in the carolina assembly by a single vote. blacks ran away to indian villages, and thecreeks and cherokees harboured runaway slaves
by the hundreds. many of these were amalgamated into the indiantribes, married, produced children. but the combination of harsh slave codes andbribes to the indians to help put down black rebels kept things under control. it was the potential combination of poor whitesand blacks that caused the most fear among the wealthy white planters. if there had been the natural racial repugnancethat some theorists have assumed, control would have been easier. but sexual attraction was powerful, acrossracial lines.
in 1743, a grand jury in charleston, southcarolina, denounced "the too common practice of criminal conversation with negro and otherslave wenches in this province." mixed offspring continued to be produced bywhite-black sex relations throughout the colonial period, in spite of laws prohibiting interracialmarriage in virginia, massachusetts, maryland, delaware, pennsylvania, the carolina's, georgia. by declaring the children illegitimate, theywould keep them inside the black families, so that the white population could remain"pure" and in control. what made bacon's rebellion especially fearsomefor the rulers of virginia was that black slaves and white servants joined forces.
the final surrender was by "four hundred englishand negroes in arms" at one garrison, and three hundred "freemen and african and englishbond servants" in another garrison. the naval commander who subdued the four hundredwrote: "most of them i persuaded to go to their homes, which accordingly they did, exceptabout eighty negroes and twenty english which would not deliver their arms." all through those early years, black and whiteslaves and servants ran away together, as shown both by the laws passed to stop thisand the records of the courts. in 1698, south carolina passed a "deficiencylaw" requiring plantation owners to have at least one white servant for every six maleadult negroes.
a letter from the southern colonies in 1682complained of "no white men to superintend our negroes, or repress an insurrection ofnegroes." in 1691, the house of commons received "apetition of divers merchants, masters of ships, planters and others, trading to foreign plantationssetting forth, that the plantations cannot be maintained without a considerable numberof white servants, as well to keep the blacks in subjection, as to bear arms in case ofinvasion." a report to the english government in 1721said that in south carolina "black slaves have lately attempted and were very near succeedingin a new revolution and therefore, it may be necessary to propose some new law for encouragingthe entertainment of more white servants in
the future. the militia of this province does not consistof above 2000 men." apparently, two thousand were not consideredsufficient to meet the threat. this fear may help explain why parliament,in 1717, made transportation to the new world a legal punishment for crime. after that, tens of thousands of convictscould be sent to virginia, maryland, and other colonies. it also makes understandable why the virginiaassembly, after bacon's rebellion, gave amnesty to white servants who had rebelled, but notto blacks.
negroes were forbidden to carry any arms,while whites finishing their servitude would get muskets, along with corn and cash. the distinctions of status between white andblack servants became more and more clear. in the 1720s, with fear of slave rebelliongrowing, white servants were allowed in virginia to join the militia as substitutes for whitefreemen. at the same time, slave patrols were establishedin virginia to deal with the "great dangers that may happen by the insurrections of negroes." poor white men would make up the rank andfile of these patrols, and get the monetary reward.
racism was becoming more and more practical. edmund morgan, on the basis of his carefulstudy of slavery in virginia, sees racism not as "natural" to black-white difference,but something coming out of class scorn, a realistic device for control. "if freemen with disappointed hopes shouldmake common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anythingbacon had done. the answer to the problem, obvious if unspokenand only gradually recognized, was racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerousblack slaves by a screen of racial contempt." there was still another control which becamehandy as the colonies grew, and which had
crucial consequences for the continued ruleof the elite throughout american history. along with the very rich and the very poor,there developed a white middle class of small planters, independent farmers, city artisans,who, given small rewards for joining forces with merchants and planters, would be a solidbuffer against black slaves, frontier indians, and very poor whites. the growing cities generated more skilledworkers, and the governments cultivated the support of white mechanics by protecting themfrom the competition of both slaves and free negroes. as early as 1686, the council in new yorkordered that "no negro or slave be suffered
to work on the bridge as a porter about anygoods either imported or exported from or into this city." in the southern towns, too, white craftsmenand traders were protected from negro competition. in 1764 the south carolina legislature prohibitedcharleston masters from employing negroes or other slaves as mechanics or in handicrafttrades. middle-class americans might be invited tojoin a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. the new yorker cadwallader golden, in hisaddress to the freeholders in 1747, attacked the wealthy as tax dodgers unconcerned withthe welfare of others (although he himself
was wealthy) and spoke for the honesty anddependability of "the middling rank of mankind" in whom citizens could best trust "our liberty& property." this was to become a critically importantrhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of "our" liberty,"our" property, "our" country. similarly, in boston, the rich james otiscould appeal to the boston middle class by attacking the tory thomas hutchinson. james henretta has shown that while it wasthe rich who ruled boston, there were political jobs available for the moderately well-off,as "cullers of slaves," "measure of coal baskets," "fence viewer."
aubrey land found in maryland a class of smallplanters who were not "the beneficiary" of the planting society as the rich were, butwho had the distinction of being called planters, and who were "respectable citizens with communityobligations to act as overseers of roads, appraisers of estates and similar duties." it helped the alliance to accept the middleclass socially in "a round of activities that included local politics dances, horse racing,and cockfights, occasionally punctuated with drinking brawls." the pennsylvania journal wrote in 1756: "thepeople of this province are generally of the middling sort, and at present pretty muchupon a level.
they are chiefly industrious farmers, artificersor men in trade; they enjoy and are fond of freedom, and the meanest among them thinkshe has a right to civility from the greatest." indeed, there was a substantial middle classfitting that description. to call them "the people" was to omit blackslaves, white servants, displaced indians. and the term "middle class" concealed a factlong true about this country, that, as richard hofstadter said: "it was a middle-class societygoverned for the most part by its upper classes." those upper classes, to rule, needed to makeconcessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expenseof slaves, indians, and poor whites. this bought loyalty.
and to bind that loyalty with something morepowerful even than material advantage, the ruling group found, in the 1760s and 1770s,a wonderfully useful device. that device was the language of liberty andequality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a revolution against england, withoutending either slavery or inequality.
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