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The Growth of the South

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Rocio Hinojosa
Historical Problems Paper #2
Brad Duren
4/25/2009
After tobacco proved profitable in Virginia, plantations grew. The landowners needed
laborers to work the fields; they called for indentured servants. These servants were brought
over by the shipload and auctioned off at the dock upon their arrival. The more of these servants
a plantation owner had the more he could produce. The more a landowner could produce the
more capital with which to purchase more land and more servants.
Virginia differed from later American boom areas in that success depended not on acquiring the
right piece of land but on acquiring men. Land that would grow tobacco was everywhere, so
abundant that people frequently did not bother at first to secure patents for the amounts they
were entitled to. Instead men rushed to stake out claims to men, stole them, lured them, fought
over them, and bought and sold them, bidding up the prices to four, five, and six times the initial
cost
1
.
Life for these servants was horrible. If the malaria outbreaks didn’t kill them within a few years,
then the work routine imposed by their masters did. These indentured servants were the property
of a small group of tough, ambitious planters in whom political and social power was so
concentrated that they did not contain their behavior. If a freeman were to speak against those in
power the punishment would be very sever. They would have their limbs broken and their
tongues mutilated; they would be beaten and thrown out of the fort. If an indentured servant
defied the will of those in power, the punishment was much more sever. Back in Brittan the
courts protected the rights of the servants against unduly oppressive masters. It was different in
the new world with nothing to restrain these masters from treating the servants as property. For
more than half a century, in Virginia and Maryland, it was primarily white indentured servants
1 Gary B. Nash, Red, White, & Black: The People of Early North America. Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1982, pg 51.

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that were used by the land owners. When the Dutch brought to Jamestown a number of black
people in 1619, they were not seen as slaves.
These Africans had been baptized and therefore could not be sold as slaves. Nor, although
interpretations were a bit murky, did English common law recognize any such personal status as
"slave." As a result, the first Africans to reach the English colonies were sold as servants for a
set term of years rather than as slaves
2
.
The transition from indentured servitude to slavery happened in the late 1600s in Virginia
and Maryland, and in the early 1700s for north and South Carolina. When the English entered
into the African slave trade, it provided an opportunity for the southern planters to purchase
slaves more readily and cheaply than before. Cheap labor is what the planters sought, and when
the price for slave labor went below that of indentured labor, the demand for black slaves
increased. Another reason for this transition is that white servants were not as readily available
as before since less was coming. The servants that did cross the Atlantic were spread out among
all the colonies so by the late 1600 the indentured servants available were diminishing. In the
late 1700 slaves only represented about 5 percent of the population. Within a few decades, they
represented 1/5 of the population.
The House of Burgess elected in 1661 began to strip the rights from freemen causing
dissatisfaction and strife to grow. This assembly passed many laws favoring the large
landowners in general and the supporters of Berkeley in particular. In 1670 the right to vote was
taken away from freemen and restricted only to freeholders, those men who owned landed
property. Taxes were increased, and Berkeley's assembly made poll, or head, tax the basic tax of
the colony
3
.
2 Jerome R. Reich, Colonial America: Fourth Edition. Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1998, pg 66.
3 IBID.

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Rocio Hinojosa Historical Problems Paper #2 Brad Duren 4/25/2009 After tobacco proved profitable in Virginia, plantations grew. The landowners needed laborers to work the fields; they called for indentured servants. These servants were brought over by the shipload and auctioned off at the dock upon their arrival. The more of these servants a plantation owner had the more he could produce. The more a landowner could produce the more capital with which to purchase more land and more servants. Virginia differed from later American boom areas in that success depended not on acquiring the right piece of land but on acquiring men. Land that would grow tobacco was everywhere, so abundant that people frequently did not bother at first to secure patents for the amounts they were entitled to. Instead men rushed to stake out claims to men, stole them, lured them, fought over them, and bought and sold them, bidding up the prices to four, five, and six times the initial cost1. Life for these servants was horrible. If the malaria outbreaks didn't kill them within a few years, then the work routine imposed by their masters did. These indentured servants were the property of a small group of tough, ambitious planters in whom political and social power was so concentrated that they did not contain their behavior. If a freeman were to speak against those in power the punishment would be very sever. They would have their limbs broken and their tongues mutilated; they would be be ...
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