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REDEMPTIONERS

Slavery, properly so called, appears to have been from the earliest ages, and in almost every country, the condition of a large portion of the human race; the weakest had ever to serve the strong – whether the slave was a captive in battle, or an impecunious debtor unable to satisfy the claims of his creditor, save with his body. Climate made no difference. Slavery existed in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in our own ‘right little, tight little island,’ our early annals show that a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon population was in a state of slavery. These unfortunate bondsmen, who were called theows, thrœls, and esnes,²⁶ were bought and sold with land, and were classed in the inventory of their lord’s wealth, with his sheep, swine, and oxen, and were bequeathed by will, precisely as we now dispose of our money, or furniture.

The condition of the Anglo-Saxon slaves was very degraded indeed; their master might put them in bonds, might whip them, nay, might even brand them, like cattle, with his own distinguishing mark, a state of things which existed until Alfred the Great enacted some laws, whereby the time of the servitude of these unhappy people was limited to six years, and the institution of slavery received such a blow, that it speedily became a thing of the past. They were no longer slaves, but redemptioners, i. e., they had the hope of redemption from servitude, and the law gave them the power to enforce their freedom.

We have only to turn to the pages of holy writ to find slavery flourishing in rank luxuriance in the time of the patriarchs, and before the birth of Moses. Euphemistically described in Scripture history as servants, they were mostly unconditional and perpetual slaves. They were strangers, either taken prisoners in war or purchased from the neighbouring nations; but the Jews also had a class of servants who only were in compulsory bondage for a limited time, and they were men of their own nation.

These were men who, by reason of their poverty, were obliged to give their bodies in exchange for the wherewithal to support them, or they were insolvent debtors, and thus sought to liquidate their indebtedness, or men who had committed a theft, and had not the means of making the double, or fourfold, restitution that the law required. Their thraldom was not perpetual, they might be redeemed, and, if not redeemed, they became free on the completion of their seventh year of servitude.

Exodus, chap. 21, vv. 2-6. ‘If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children: I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve for ever.’

Here, then, we have a redemptioner, one whose servitude was not a hopeless one, and we find this limited bondage again referred to in Leviticus, chap. 25, vv. 39, 40, 41.

‘And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond servant: but as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee. And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.’

Here in England we are accustomed to look upon the slave from one point of view only, as an unhappy being of a different race and colour to ourselves, few of us knowing that there has been a time (and that not so very long ago) when members of our own nation, so utterly forlorn and miserable from the rude buffetings Fortune had given them in their way through the world, have been glad to sell their bodies for a time, to enable them to commence afresh the struggle for existence, in another land, and, perchance, under more favourable circumstances.

In ‘his Majesty’s plantations’ of Virginia, Maryland, and New England, and in the West Indies, these unfortunates were first called servants, and as such are officially described; but in America in later times they received the appellation of redemptioners, a name by which they were certainly called in the middle of this century, for in Dorsey’s ‘Laws of Maryland,’ published in 1840, we find an Act²⁷ (cap. 226) was passed in 1817 to alleviate the condition of these poor people. The preamble sets forth, ‘Whereas it has been found that German and Swiss emigrants, who for the discharge of the debt contracted for their passage to this country are often obliged to subject themselves to temporary servitude, are frequently exposed to cruel and oppressive impositions by the masters of the vessels in which they arrive, and likewise by those to whom they become servants,’ &c.

It is impossible to fix any date when this iniquitous traffic first began. It arose, probably, from the want of labourers in the plantations of our colonies in their early days, and the employment of unscrupulous agents on this side to supply their needs in this respect. A man in pecuniary difficulties in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries was indeed in woeful plight: a gaol was his certain destination, and there he might rot his life away, cut off from all hope of release, unless death came mercifully to his relief. All knew of the horrors of a debtor’s prison, and, to escape them, an able-bodied man had recourse to the dreadful expedient of selling himself into bondage, for a term of years, in one of the plantations, either in America or the West Indies, or he would believe the specious tales of the ‘kidnappers,’ as they were called, who would promise anything, a free passage, and a glorious life of ease and prosperity in a new land.

Thoroughly broken down, wretched, and miserable, his thoughts would naturally turn towards a new country, wherein he might rehabilitate himself, and, in an evil hour, he would apply to some (as we should term it) emigration agent, who would even kindly advance him a trifle for an outfit. The voyage out would be an unhappy experience, as the emigrants would be huddled together, with scant food, and, on his arrival at his destination, he would early discover the further miseries in store for him; for, immediately on landing, or even before he left the ship, his body would be seized as security for passage money, which had, in all probability, been promised him free, and for money lent for his outfit; and, having no means of paying either, utterly friendless, and in a strange country, he would be sold to slavery for a term of years to some planter who would pay the debt for him.

Having obtained his flesh and blood at such a cheap rate, his owner would not part with him lightly, and it was an easy thing to arrange matters so that he was always kept in debt for clothes and tobacco, &c., in order that he never should free himself. It was a far cry to England, and with no one to help him, or to draw public attention to his case, the poor wretch had to linger until death mercifully released him from his bondage; his condition being truly deplorable, as he would be under the same regulations as the convicts, and one may be very sure that their lot was not enviable in those harsh and merciless times. It was not for many years, until the beginning of this century, that the American laws took a beneficial turn in favour of these unhappy people; and it was then too late, for the institution of redemptioners died a speedy death, owing to the influx of free emigration.

One of the earliest notices of these unfortunates is in a collection of Old Black letter ballads, in the British Museum, where there is one entitled, ‘The Trappan’d Maiden, or the Distressed Damsel,’ (c. 22, e. 2)/186 in which are depicted some of the sorrows which were undergone by these unwilling emigrants, at that time. The date, as nearly as can be assigned to it, is about 1670.

 
The Girl was cunningly trapan’d,
Sent to Virginny from England;
Where she doth Hardship undergo,
There is no cure, it must be so;
But if she lives to cross the main,
She vows she’ll ne’er go there again.
 
 
Give ear unto a Maid
That lately was betray’d,
And sent into Virginny, O:
In brief I shall declare,
What I have suffered there,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
When that first I came
To this Land of Fame,
Which is called Virginny, O:
The Axe and the Hoe
Have wrought my overthrow,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
Five years served I
Under Master Guy,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Which made me for to know
Sorrow, Grief, and Woe,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
When my Dame says, Go,
Then must I do so,
In the land of Virginny, O:
When she sits at meat
Then I have none to eat,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
The cloathes that I brought in,
They are worn very thin,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Which makes me for to say
Alas! and well-a-day,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
Instead of Beds of Ease,
To lye down when I please,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Upon a bed of straw,
I lay down full of woe,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
Then the Spider, she
Daily waits on me,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Round about my bed
She spins her tender web,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
So soon as it is day,
To work I must away,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Then my Dame she knocks
With her tinder-box,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
I have played my part
Both at Plow and Cart,
In the land of Virginny, O;
Billats from the Wood,
Upon my back they load,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
Instead of drinking Beer,
I drink the waters clear,
In the land of Virginny, O;
Which makes me pale and wan,
Do all that e’er I can,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
If my Dame says, Go,
I dare not say no,
In the land of Virginny, O;
The water from the spring
Upon my head I bring,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
When the Mill doth stand,
I’m ready at command,
In the land of Virginny, O;
The Morter for to make,
Which made my heart to ake,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
When the child doth cry,
I must sing, By-a-by,
In the land of Virginny, O;
No rest that I can have
Whilst I am here a slave,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
A thousand Woes beside,
That I do here abide,
In the land of Virginny, O;
In misery I spend
My time that hath no end,
When that I was weary, O.
 
 
Then let Maids beware,
All by my ill-fare,
In the land of Virginny, O:
Be sure thou stay at home,
For if you do here come,
You will all be weary, O.
 
 
But if it be my chance,
Homeward to advance,
From the land of Virginny, O:
If that I once more
Land on English shore,
I’ll no more be weary, O.
 

Some of these complaints would seem to us to be rather of the ‘crumpled rose-leaf’ order, but probably there was enough humanity left in their owners to treat their female ‘servants’ more tenderly than the male, whose sorrows were genuine enough.

Ned Ward, in his ‘London Spy,’ 1703, gives a most graphic account of the sort of men who enticed these human chattels to the plantations. He was pursuing his perambulations about the City, exercising those sharp eyes of his, which saw everything, and was in the neighbourhood of the Custom-house, when he turned down a place called Pig Hill (so called, he says, from its resembling the steep descent down which the Devil drove his Hogs to a Bad Market).

‘As we walked up the Hill, as Lazily as an Artillery Captain before his Company upon a Lord Mayor’s Day, or a Paul’s Labourer up a Ladder, with a Hod of Mortar, we peeped in at a Gateway, where we saw two or three Blades, well drest, but with Hawkes’ Countenances, attended with half-a-dozen Ragamuffingly Fellows, showing Poverty in their Rags and Despair in their Faces, mixt with a parcel of young, wild striplings, like runaway ‘Prentices. I could not forbear enquiring of my Friend about the ill-favoured multitude, patched up of such awkward Figures, that it would have puzzled a Moor-Fields Artist,²⁸ well-read in physiognomy, to have discovered their Dispositions by their Looks.

‘“That House,” says my Friend, “which they there are entering is an Office where Servants for the Plantations bind themselves to be miserable as long as they live, without a special Providence prevents it. Those fine Fellows, who look like Footmen upon a Holy day, crept into cast suits of their Masters, that want Gentility in their Deportments answerable to their Apparel, are Kidnappers, who walk the ‘Change and other parts of the Town, in order to seduce People who want services and young Fools crost in Love, and under an uneasiness of mind, to go beyond the seas, getting so much a head of Masters of Ships and Merchants who go over, for every Wretch they trepan into this Misery. These young Rakes and Tatterdemallions you see so lovingly hearded are drawn by their fair promises to sell themselves into Slavery, and the Kidnappers are the Rogues that run away with the Money.”’

And again, when he goes on ‘Change, he further attacks these villains.

‘“Now,” says my Friend, “we are got amongst the Plantation Traders. This may be call’d Kidnapper’s Walk; for a great many of these Jamaicans and Barbadians, with their Kitchen-stuff Countenances, are looking as sharp for servants as a Gang of Pick-pockets for Booty… Within that Entry is an Office of Intelligence, pretending to help Servants to Places, and Masters to Servants. They have a knack of Bubbling silly wenches out of their Money; who loiter hereabouts upon the expectancy, till they are pick’d up by the Plantation Kidnappers, and spirited away into a state of misery.”’

And yet once more Ward, in his ‘Trip to America,’ says,

‘We had on board an Irishman going over as Servant, who, I suppose, was Kidnapped. I asked him whose Servant he was, “By my Fait,” said he, “I cannot tell. I was upon ’Change, looking for a good Master, and a brave Gentleman came to me, and asked me who I was, and I told him I was myn own self; and he gave me some good Wine and good Ale, and brought me on Board, and I have not seen him since.”’

Then, as since, the emigration from Great Britain was mostly fed by the poorer classes of Ireland; and, in the latter part of William III.‘s reign, such was the numbers that were sent over to the plantations as ‘servants,’ or in other words, slaves, that it was found necessary to enact special laws, in Maryland, to check the excessive importation, it being considered a source of danger to the State, as tending to introduce Popery. Accordingly, several acts were passed, placing a duty of twenty shillings per head on each Irish person landed; which, proving insufficient for the purpose, was further increased to forty shillings a few years afterwards.

In 1743, there was a cause célèbre, in which James Annesley, Esq., appeared as the plaintiff, and claimed the earldom of Anglesey from his uncle Richard, who, he maintained (and he got a verdict in his favour), had caused him to be kidnapped when a lad of thirteen years of age, and sent to America, there to be sold as a slave. That this was absolutely the fact, no one who has read the evidence can possibly doubt, and the hardships endured by the ‘servants’ at that time are plaintively alluded to in a little book, called, ‘The Adventure of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman,’ published 1743. ‘Here the Captain repeating his former Assurances, he was sold to a rich Planter in Newcastle County called Drummond, who immediately took him home, and entered him in the Number of his Slaves.

‘A new World now opened to him, and, being set to the felling of Timber, a Work no way proportioned to his Strength, he did it so awkwardly, that he was severely corrected. Drummond was a hard, inexorable Master, who, like too many of the Planters, consider their Slaves, or Servants, as a different Species, and use them accordingly. Our American Planters are not famous for Humanity, being often Persons of no Education, and, having been formerly Slaves themselves, they revenge the ill-usage they received on those who fall into their Hands. The Condition of European Servants in that Climate is very wretched; their Work is hard, and for the most part abroad, exposed to an unwholesome Air, their Diet coarse, being either Poul or bread made of Indian Corn, or Homine or Mush, which is Meal made of the same kind, moistened with the Fat of Bacon, and their Drink Water sweetened with a little Ginger and Molasses.’

Although, as before stated, Mr. Annesley won his case with regard to his legitimacy and property, for some reason or other he never contested the title with his usurping uncle, who continued to be recognized as Earl of Anglesey until his death.

Defoe, writing in 1738 in his ‘History of Colonel Jack,’ makes his hero to be kidnapped by the master of a vessel at Leith, and carried to Virginia, where he was consigned to a merchant, and disposed of as he saw fit – in fact, treated with the same nonchalance us an ordinary bale of goods would be. He was sold to a planter for five years, and had three hard things to endure, viz., hard work, hard fare, and hard lodging. He describes the arrival of a ship from London with several ‘servants,’ and amongst the rest were seventeen transported felons, some burnt in the hand, and some not, eight of whom his master purchased for the time specified in the warrant for their transportation, so that the unfortunate men were in no better position than, and were under the same severe laws as, the convict. Their ranks were recruited by many gentlemen concerned in the Rebellion, and taken prisoners at Preston, who were spared from execution and sold into slavery at the plantations, a condition which must often have made them dissatisfied with the clemency extended to them. In many cases, with kind masters, their lot was not so hard, and when their time of bondage was expired they had encouragement given them to plant for themselves, a certain number of acres being allotted to them by the State; and, if they could get the necessary credit for clothes, tools, &c., they were in time enabled to put by money, and, in some rare instances, became men of renown in the colony.

The usage these poor people endured on their passage to the plantations was frequently abominable, and a writer in 1796 describes the arrival, at Baltimore, of a vessel containing three hundred Irish ‘passengers’ who had been nearly starved by the captain, the ship’s water being sold by him at so much a pint, and this treatment, combined with other cruelties too shocking to relate, caused a contagious disorder to break out on board, which carried off great numbers, whilst most of these unhappy folk who were spared at that time, subsequently died whilst performing quarantine in the Delaware.

The redemptioners mainly sailed from the northern ports of Ireland, Belfast or Londonderry, though this country by no means enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this traffic: Holland and Germany sending their wretched quota of white slaves. The particular class of vessels employed in this iniquitous trade were known by the name of ‘White Guineamen,’ and belonged to the ‘free and enlightened’ citizens of the sea-ports in America, who had their kidnappers stationed at certain parts of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and also in Holland, to provide them with human cargoes. Seduced by the glowing descriptions of a trans-Atlantic paradise, with bright and alluring visions of American happiness and liberty, the miserable, the idle, and the unwary among the lower classes of Europe were entrapped into the voyage, the offer of gratuitous conveyance being an additional bait, which was eagerly accepted; but we have seen how, on their arrival at the promised land, they were speedily disillusioned. The difficulty of hiring tolerable servants was so great, that many persons were obliged to deal with their fellow-creatures in this way, who would otherwise have utterly abhorred the thought of being slave-dealers.

Some of the laws for their regulation in the colonies are curious. For instance, in Virginia, after they had served their time, they were obliged to have a certificate from their master to say that they had done so, and if any person should entertain any hired servant running away without such a certificate, he had to pay the master of such servant thirty pounds weight of tobacco for every day and night he should so harbour him.

Pursuit after runaway servants was made at the public expense, and, if caught, they had to serve for the time of their absence, and the charge disbursed. In case the master refused to pay the charge, the servant was sold, or hired out, until by their services they had reimbursed the amount expended in capturing them, after which they were returned to their master to serve out their time. Whoever apprehended them was to have as reward two hundred pounds weight of tobacco, if the capture took place about ten miles from the master’s house, or one hundred pounds weight if above five miles, and under ten. This reward was to be paid by the public, and the servant had to serve some one four months for every two hundred pounds weight of tobacco paid for him.

‘Every Master that hath a Servant that hath run away twice, shall keep his Hair close cut, and not so doing, shall be fined one hundred pounds weight of Tobacco for every time the said Fugitive shall, after the second time, be taken up.’

If they ran away in company with any negro, then they had to serve the master of that negro as long as the negro was at large. If any servant laid violent hands on his master, mistress, or overseer, and was convicted of the same in any court, he had to serve one year longer at the expiration of his term.

‘A Woman-servant got with Child by her Master, shall, after her time of indenture or custom is expired, be, by the Church-wardens of the Parish where she lived, sold for two Years, and the Tobacco employed for the use of the Parish.’

‘No Minister shall publish the Banns, or celebrate the Contract of Marriage between any Servants, unless he hath a Certificate from both their Masters that it is with their consent, under the Penalty of 10,000 lbs. of Tobacco. And the Servants that procure themselves to be married without their Masters’ consent, shall each of them serve their respective Master a year longer than their time; and if any person, being free, shall marry with a Servant without the Master’s Licence, he or she so marrying shall pay the Master 1500 lbs. of Tobacco, or one year’s service.’

In Maryland, the laws respecting servants were somewhat milder, but, if they ran away, they had to serve ten days for every one day’s absence. In this colony, however, ‘Every Man-Servant shall have given him at the time of the expiration of his Service, one new Hat, a good Cloath Suit, a new Shift of White Linnen, a pair of new French full Shooes and Stockings, two Hoes, and one Axe, and one gun of 20s. price, not above four foot Barrel, nor less than three and a half. And every Woman-Servant shall have given her, at the expiration of her Servitude, the like Provision of Cloaths, and three Barrels of Indian Corn.’

In New England they dealt still more tenderly and fairly by their servants. If a servant fled from the cruelty of his or her master, he or she was to be protected and harboured, provided that they fled to the house of some free man of the same town, and ‘If any Man or Woman Hurt, Maim, or Disfigure a Servant, unless it be by mere Casualty, the Servant shall go free, and the Master or Mistress shall make such recompense as the Court shall award. Servants that have serv’d diligently, and faithfully, to the end of their Times, shall not be sent away empty; and such as have been unfaithful, negligent, or unprofitable shall not be sent away unpunished, but shall make such satisfaction as Authority shall direct.’

In Jamaica the laws were pretty fair, and in Barbadoes there was a very just enactment. ‘Whatever Master or Mistress shall turn off a Sick Servant, or not use, or endeavour, all lawful means for the recovery of such servant, during the time of Servitude, he or she shall forfeit 2,200 lbs of Sugar. To be levyed by Warrant of a Justice of Peace, and disposed towards the maintenance of such Servant, and the said Servant so neglected, or turned off, shall be Free.’

In the last few years of the eighteenth century, it was no uncommon thing to meet with advertisements in the American papers, couched in the following strain: ‘To be disposed of, the indentures of a strong, healthy Irishwoman; who has two years to serve, and is fit for all kinds of house work. Enquire of the Printer.’

‘STOP THE VILLAIN!

‘Ran away this morning, an Irish Servant, named Michael Day, by trade a Tailor, about five feet eight inches high, fair complexion, has a down look when spoken to, light bushy hair, speaks much in the Irish dialect, &c. Whoever secures the above-described in any gaol, shall receive thirty dollars reward, and all reasonable charges paid. N.B. – All masters of Vessels are forbid harbouring or carrying off the said Servant at their peril.’

The laws which regulated them were originally framed for the English convicts before the Revolution, and were not repealed. They were, of necessity, harsh and severe, so much so that, towards the end of the eighteenth century, several societies sprang up, both Irish and German, whose members did all in their power to mitigate the severity of these laws, and render their countrymen, during their servitude, as comfortable as circumstances would permit. These societies were in all the large towns south of Connecticut.

When the yellow fever was raging in Baltimore in the year 1793, but few vessels would venture near the city, and every one that could do so fled from the doomed place. But a ‘White Guinea-man,’ from Germany, arrived in the river, and, hearing that such was the fatal nature of the infection that for no sum of money could a sufficient number of nurses be procured to attend the sick, conceived the philanthropic idea of supplying this deficiency from his redemption passengers, and, sailing boldly up to the city, he advertised his cargo for sale thus: ‘A few healthy Servants, generally between seventeen and twenty-one years of age; their times will be disposed of by applying on board the brig.’ It was a truly generous thought to thus nobly sacrifice his own countrywomen pro bono publico!

As the eighteenth century drew to a close a more humane state of things came into existence; and in Maryland, in 1817, as before stated, a law was passed for the relief of the German and Swiss redemptioners. It was enacted that there should be, in every port, a person to register the apprenticeship, or servitude, of these emigrants, and, unless drawn up or approved by him, no agreement to service was binding. Minors, under twenty-one, were not allowed to be sold, unless by their parents or next-of-kin, and the indentures covenanted that at least two months schooling must be given, annually, to them by their masters. No emigrant was bound to serve more than four years, except males under seventeen, and females under fourteen, who were to serve, respectively, till twenty-one and eighteen. There were many other clauses that related both to their better treatment on board the vessels and on land, and, if this law had been strictly acted up to, the condition of these poor people would have been much ameliorated.

But, happily, in course of years, as the prosperity of the United States of America grew by ‘leaps and bounds,’ attracting labour in abundance from all parts of Europe, there was no longer any need for the traffic in human flesh and blood, and the redemptioner became a thing of the past.