The American Dream - Before The Revolution: Jamestown 1600-1672

THE AMERICAN DREAM - BEFORE THE REVOLUTION: JAMESTOWN 1600-1672
by: Paul D. Goree

Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith historical work, ‘Africans in America’, provide a simple overview which details facts, explaining how African slavery started in America and is associated with economic. In 1606 king James granted the Virginia Company a charter. The company planned getting settlers to work the land and the combined produced would be divided to all members by the number of shares they had. In 1607, 900 settlers founded Jamestown and the Virginia company paid to developed the business venture. But nothing occurred for 3 years. Along with lost profits 840 of the settlers had dies mostly from starvation.
Suddenly desperate to return profit the settlers planted tobacco and by 1617 the Virginia Company and Jamestown was successful. King James attempted to restrict tobacco sales by raising import duty. But England and Europe was too addicted by then and the demand rose rapidly. The demand for tobacco resulted in a supply issues of which more labor was needed to work the tobacco fields. The two options for the planters were to 1.) Massachusetts model: relocate entire families from England to Virginia to work the farms as co-owners. (Selling some of their existing property and increase to larger plantation) 2.) ‘Capitalize’ on England’s lower class citizens making them indentured servants. The latter was most used. But it within itself caused issues in England.


People began to incriminate others, kidnap them, place false charges against them to have them placed on contract of which they would get paid a finder’s fee. The contract with the Virginia Company was 4-7 years and included shelter, and food. After the contract was completed one would be friended and given a parcel of land a suit and a bushel of corn. The laws that govern the indentured workers were few as they were killed, sold (reconstructed) and punished for poor production. Things changed in 1619 when the Dutch entered the picture. A Dutch ship robbed a Spain ship of Africans took it to Jamestown and sold the African cargo for food. Many of those Africans were contracted out to the Virginia Company and received the same contractual terms as the indentured workers from England. At this time to be a free person all one had to do was converting to Christianity. There was a blind racial class difference. Class structure was based on economics so there were the planters, Christian colonist and servants. Some servants were permanent to a household while most were under contract. The term slave was not used.

For me this was one of the only times in American history that race was not an issue. 1600-1639. In 1639 a chain of events changed America the beautiful ugly. A perfect reference is Anthony Johnson, His story was the norm. American the beautiful turns ugly. In 1639 Maryland declared that a Christian baptism did not make a slave free, starting the end of religious salvation on America. In 1640 planter Hugh Gwyn’s had 3 indentured servants escaped. All three were captured, 2 were white one was black. The two white ones had one year extended to their contract (which was the norm sentence for escape attempts) while the black one, John Punch was sentenced the rest of his natural life to Mr. Gwyn’s. No white servant ever was sentenced to life.

Note that environmental and social progress also fueled these changes, such as Europe had less indentured servants to offer seeming other countries offered competitive contracts. Africans and Indians worked the fields better. Stories of labor ownership in the gulf island suggested higher profit returns. Maritime laws govern slave cargo dimensioned. As all of this unfolded demand for tobacco and other raw products from America increased. The world had come to witness the degradation of African people. And in America African people would never again have a real EQUAL STANDING IN THE LAND OF LIBERTY AND FREEDOM, no matter what the declarations of independence, references as the alienable rights of all men.
America wrote its own ugly inhuman treatment as follows.

 In 1641 Massachusetts set the trend by legally recognizing slavery as a legal institution of commerce. Connecticut followed in 1650; Virginia in 1661 and the rest followed through. In 1663 Virginia courts decided any child born to a slave would be enslaved for life. This became a major factor as it became the norm that one parent would be free, yet another caught up in some life servitude sentence would have a child born into slavery. Ironic was the tides that overcame some successful African Americans like Anthony Johnson who himself had indentured servants one of whom turned against him and landed a case in courts which would forever change/restrict blacks from courts.

The laws continued in 1669 Virginia made it lawful to kill a slave. In 1670 it became legal to kill a runaway slave. The society of America had stratified itself from it simple prior class structure than in the earlier parts of the century. Now there where planters, whites, poor whites, free blacks, indentured contracted blacks, indentured life blacks, slaves (purchased) and slaves (born into slavery). The world often looks at Spain as a major slave trade but England was just as bad. In 1672 England started the Royal African Company which lead the world in slave trading, transporting 45,000 slaves a year. Finally in 1698 Parliament abolished slavery in England and the company was dissolved.

REFERENCES:
African Population 2013.(2013). Retrieved from http://worldpopulationreview.com/africa-population-2013/
Johnson, Charles, Smith, Patricia. (1998). Africans In America: America’s Journey Through Slavery. Harcourt Trade Publishing, Boston.
Minister Louis Farrakhan. (2013). Saviours’ Day. Nation of Islam. Retrieved from http://www.economicblueprint.org/#
Morgan, M. Charles. (1985). Redneck Liberal: Thoedore G. Bilbo and the New Deal. Louisiana State University Press, http://books.google.com/books?id=f8_t3_Ss0_MC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Stefflova, Klara, Dulik, C. Matthew, Barnholtz-Sloan, Jill, Pai A. Athma, Walker, H. Amy & Rebbeck, R. Timothy. (2011). Dissecting the Within-Africa Ancestry of Populations of African Descent in the Americas. Journal Pone. Retrieved from http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0014495

US Census Bureau. (2013). Black African America. CDC. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/populations/REMP/black.html