STUDENTS JOURNAL ENTRY As I progressed in this class I tried a.docx

STUDENT'S JOURNAL ENTRY
As I progressed in this class I tried applying what I was
learning to the world around me and open my eyes to things I do
not see or take for granted. I never really considered myself part
of the dominant group as I felt separate from it growing up
homeschooled in a Romanian immigrant community. Looking
back in retrospection I now that I have benefited from being
white in ways I never even realized. By learning how others
have struggled to gain access to treatment I never had to think
twice about was eye opening.
I look white and have no accent, therefore there is
nothing to set me apart from the dominant white culture around
me. I never realized I was no different from them in their
perspective but also from the perspective of other immigrants
and minorities. I can relate to the struggle to fit in and find a
place in society because in my childhood we were different. We
had an accent, dressed differently, and were poor. However, I
could not relate to how difficult it is for others to assimilate
because as we lost our accents and entered the middle class the
dominant group practically invited us in with open arms.
I have opened my eyes to things I’ve never seen and
see how much further we have to go to create a truly open and
fair society. There is so much injustice around us that I have
never seen before and I feel ashamed for my lack of empathy for
those around me.
Just to illustrate how blind I was to racism I have a
little story. I have a Hispanic girlfriend, she is a Mexican
immigrant in fact. Before taking this class she would
occasionally express frustration with how she and her family
were treated by hospital and school officials in her
neighborhood. At the time I processed this as just people having
a misunderstanding and that my girlfriend was probably
overreacting. However as I started learning what racism in
America really looks like, and that its not just hillbillies in

pointy hats I began to notice things I never thought about.
I could see how my girlfriend would sometimes get
different service in a negative way that was racially motivated. I
finally understood why she wanted me to go with her to certain
places like the DMV or car dealerships. She has been talked
down to by others because see is a Mexican immigrant. As my
eyes opened to her plight I saw how different her immigration
story was to mine. I asked her about the time she spent in Texas
where she said her family was the most mistreated by whites. I
understood why she had angst towards the idea of visiting my
family in Tennessee because she is somewhat traumatized by
her childhood experience of crossing into a new land and being
mistreated and seen as a second class person because she was
different.
In hindsight I even noticed while taking this class that
my treatment has changed because of her. Looking back at dates
I have had in previous relationships I would occasionally
receive sloppy service but always just assumed it was an
overworked waiter, or just a grumpy one. Looking back at my
current relationship there has definitely been considerable spike
in bad service. I noticed more events where we would receive
less attention that I was normally accustomed too. I do not want
to over exaggerate, this is not a constant occurrence, however
when comparing past relationships to this one there is a real
tangible increase in bad service and in the number of times a
waiter or waitress would pay less attention to my table than I
was use too. The funny thing is that when I brought this up to
my girlfriend she said that unlike me she noticed a considerable
increase in her level of service since we started dating.
I never noticed this because I thought when people
were racist against interracial couples that it would be more
vocal and vulgar. I assumed it would be blatant because that is
what I thought racism looked like. Now I see that the prejudice
that leads to racism is much more intricate and subtle in most
people. I think most people casually discriminate in a passive
way. That is why most people cannot identify it when it happens

all around them. I think in general we need to be more tolerant
and understanding. I think we culturally lack compassion and
blind ourselves to the plight of others because we assume
everyone has the same opportunities we do. I now see that is not
the case, and I am glad to be able to apply what I have learned
to see the things that used to be unseen by my eyes. I hope to
keep these eyes open and hopefully do my part to build the type
of society I’d want to live in. One that is as open and fair as can
be made, where every person has equal opportunities to build
their dreams.
5
,.,~ - - n'---7~ -'<... Y- :Ji~
"NO MORE PECK 0' CORN"
Slavery and Its Discontents
UNLIKE INDIANS, BLACKS were not outside of white soci-
ety's borders; rather they were within what James Madi-son
called the "bosom" of the republic, living in northern
ghettos and on southern plantations. David Walker lived in both
of these worlds. Born in North Carolina in 1785, he was the son
of a slave father and a free mother. Inheriting the status of h is
mother, walker felt rage against the cruelty and injustice of
slav-
ery. Living below the Mason-Dixon Line was a painful contra-
diction for him: he saw people who shared his color defined as
property. Somehow, Walker learned to read and write; he stud-
ied history and pondered why blacks in America were in such a
wretched condition.1
Walker continued to reflect on this question after he moved to

Boston, where he sold old clothes. Freedom in northern society,
he realized, was only a facade for the reality of caste. Blacks
were
allowed only menial jobs. "Here we are - reduced to degradation
,"
Walker observed. "Here we are cleaning the white man's shoes."
Resentful of the stereotypes of blacks as savages, Walker coun-
tered that whites were the true barbarians: the enslavement of
blacks, the selling and whipping of slaves-such practices were
signs of savagery, not civilization.
Slavery, he believed, could only be destroyed through violence.
"Masters want us for their slaves and think nothing of
murdering
" NO MORE PECK O' C ORN" "··" 99
1,s in order to subject us to that wretched condition-therefore, if
I here is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed."2
In 1829, Walker published his revolutionary thoughts in an
lppeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Southern
legislators
dPnounced the pamphlet as "seditious" and restricted its
circula-
tion; even northern white abolitionists like Benjamin Lundy and
Wi lliam Lloyd Garrison criticized it as "inflammatory" and
"inju-
dicious ." A year later, Walker died, mysteriously. What he had
presented was a candid, disturbing assessment of the condition
of
hlacks: they had been reduced to slaves in the South and pariahs
111 the North. 3
"North of Slavery"

I 11 1860, 225,000 African Americans lived in the North. They
were "free," for the northern states had abolished slavery after
I he American Revolution. Their presence was far from
pervasive,
n nd blacks certainly did not threaten the racial homogeneity of
white society. Yet they were the target of virulent racism. "The
s ,t me schools do not receive the children of the black and
Euro-
Pt'an," Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s.
In the theaters gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race
beside their former masters ; in the hospitals they lie apart; and
although they are allowed to invoke the same God as the whites,
it
must be at a different altar and in their own churches, with their
own clergy. The gates of heaven are not closed against them,
but
their inferiority is continued to the confines of the other world.
When the Negro dies, his bones are cast aside, and the
distinction
of condition prevails even in the equality of death. 4
As historian Leon Litwack described their situation, Afri-
ca n Americans were only "north of slavery." Indeed,
everywhere
blacks experienced discrimination and segregation. They were
barred from most hotels and restaurants and were forced to sit
in
HPparate sections in theaters and churches, invariably in the
back.
lllack children usually attended separate and inferior schools.
"The colored people are ... charged with want of desire for
educa-
tion and improvement," a black protested, "yet, if a colored man
rnmes to the door of our institutions oflearning, with desires
ever

so strong, the lords of these institutions rise up and shut the
door;
11 nd then you say we have not the desire nor the ability to
acquire
11,1
100 "'""' CONTRADICTIONS
education. Thus, while the white youths enjoy all these advan-
tages, we are excluded and shut out, and must remain ignorant."
Transportation facilities were often segregated. In Philadelphia,
blacks were allowed to ride only on the front platforms of
street-
cars, and New York City had separate buses-one exclusively for
blacks. Told their presence in white residential districts would
depreciate property values, blacks found themselves trapped in
squalid slums. 5
Although they were free, African Americans were restricted in
their right to vote. Ironically, the political proscription of
blacks
often accompanied the advance of democacy for whites. In
1821,
for example, the New York constitutional convention expanded
suffrage for free "white" male citizens: to become voters, they
could own property, or they could qualify in other ways such as
paying taxes, serving in the militia, and working on the
highways.
On the other hand, blacks were required to be property owners
in
order to vote. The Pennsylvania constitutional convention of
1838
was more direct: it simply established universal "white"

manhood
suffrage and thus disenfranchised blacks completely.
Blacks also suffered from attacks by white workers. Time
and again in northern cities, white mobs invaded black commu-
nities, killing people and destroying their homes and churches.
Philadelphia, the "city of brotherly love," was the scene of
several
bloody antiblack riots. In 1834, rampaging whites forced blacks
to flee the city. Seven years later in Cincinnati, white workers
used a cannon against blacks, who armed themselves to defend
their families. The mayor then persuaded about three hundred
black men to be jailed for their own security, assuring them that
their wives and children would be protected. But the white riot-
ers attacked again, and order was not restored until the governor
sent troops.
Victims of discrimination, segregation, and violence, northern
African Americans encountered a powerful cluster of negative
racial images. These stereotypes contributed to the conditions
of racial degradation and poverty, which in turn, reinforced
prejudice.
Blacks were denounced as "immature," "indolent," and "good-
for-nothing." As one white Pennsylvanian charged, they were
"simply unfit," "naturally lazy, childlike." Stereotypes of blacks
as
children were linked to notions of black intellectual inferiority.
In
his research on racial differences in intelligence, Dr. Samuel
Mor-
ton of Philadelphia measured the cranial capacities of the skulls
" NO MORE PECK O' CORN " "''" 101
of whites and blacks. Finding that those of whites were larger,

Dr. Morton concluded that whites were more intelligent. But the
skulls of the whites that Morton examined belonged to men who
had been hanged as criminals. Thus, as historian Thomas F.
Gos-
sett has remarked, it "would have been just as logical to
conclude
that a large head indicated criminal tendencies." This presum-
ably "scientific evidence" of black mental inferiority was used
to
support the notion of white supremacy and to justify racial
segre-
gation. An Indiana senator, for example, declared in 1850: "The
same power that has given him a black skin, with less weight or
volume of brain, has given us a white skin, with greater volume
of
brain and intellect; and that we can never live together upon an
equality is as certain as that no two antagonistic principles can
exist together at the same time."6
While northern whites generally viewed blacks as childlike
and mentally deficient, they also feared them as criminals . Dur-
ing the 1820s, Pennsylvania's governor expressed apprehen-
sion about the rising crime rate among blacks, and newspapers
repeatedly reported Negro burglaries, Negro robberies, and
Negro assaults against whites. The image of the black criminal
led whites to restrict their migration into certain states. Ohio
and
Indiana required entering blacks to post a $500 bond as a guar-
antee against becoming a public charge and as a pledge of good
behavior. The editor of an Indiana newspaper demanded that the
law be enforced in order to "drive away a gang ofpilferers ."7
Moreover, blacks were seen as threats to racial purity. Indi-
ana and Illinois prohibited interracial marriages. Everywhere,
white social sentiment abhorred white and black relationships.
"It is true," observed de Tocqueville, "that in the North . . .

mar-
riages may be contracted between Negroes and whites ; but
public
opinion would stigmatize as infamous a man who should
connect
himself with a Negress, and it would be difficult to cite a single
instance of such a union." In a petition to the Indiana
legislature,
whites called for the exclusion of blacks, warning that their
wives
and daughters would be "insulted and abused by those Afri-
cans." At the 1847 Illinois constitutional convention, a delegate
explained that black migration should be restricted or else
blacks
would come into the state and "make proposals to marry our
daughters." Efforts to disenfranchise blacks were often
accompa-
nied by denunciations of interracial sex. A delegate to the 1821
New York constitutional convention advocated the denial of
suf-
frage to blacks in order to avoid the time "when the colors shall
102 C • h CONTRADICTIONS
intermarry." In Wisconsin, opponents of black suffrage warned
that political rights granted to blacks would encourage them to
"marry our sisters and daughters." During an anti-Republican
parade in New York in 1860, floats showed a thick-lipped
Negro
embracing a white woman and a Negro leading a white woman
into the White House. 8
School segregation was also fueled by fears of interracial
unions . Whites petitioned the Indiana senate to establish segre-

gated schools. The committee on education agreed that the
Negro
race was inferior and that the admission of Negro children "into
our public schools would ultimately tend to bring about that
feel-
ing which favour their amalgamation with our own people."
When
Massachusetts prohibited racial discrimination in the public
schools, a northern newspaper cried: "Now the blood of the
Win-
throps, the Otises, the Lymans, the Endicotts, and the Eliots, is
in a fair way to be amalgamated with the Sambas, the Catos, and
the Pompeys. The North is to be Africanized."9
The North for blacks was not the promised land. Although they
were not slaves, they were hardly free . Under slavery, they
were
forced to work; as wage earners, they were excluded from many
jobs. In New York, white dock workers attacked blacks seeking
employment. In Cincinnati, white mechanics opposed the train-
ing of young blacks, and white cabinet shop workers demanded
the dismissal of a recently hired black worker. Unable to find
skilled jobs, many blacks were pushed into menial labor. In the
1850s, 87 percent of New York's gainfully employed blacks
held
menial jobs. Blacks were painfully aware of their grim
prospects.
"Why should I strive hard and acquire all the constituents of a
man," a young man complained bitterly, "if the prevailing
genius
of the land admit me not as such, or but in an inferior degree!
Pardon me if I feel insignificant and weak .. . . What are my
pros-
pects? To what shall I turn my hand? Shall I be a mechanic? No
one will employ me; white boys won't work with me ....
Drudgery

and servitude, then, are my prospective portion."10
Was "Samba" Real?
Meanwhile, in the South, four million African Americans were
slaves, representing 35 percent of the total population in 1860.
Like Caliban, they served the Prosperos of the master class.
They
constituted the essential labor force in southern agriculture for
tobacco, hemp, rice , sugar, and especially cotton cultivation.
The
" NO MORE PECK O' CORN" .,._..,,, 103
majority of the slaves worked on plantations, agricultural
produc-
tion units with more than twenty slaves .
Work on the plantations, according to historian Kenneth
Stampp, began early in the morning when a horn awakened
the slaves an hour before daylight . ''All work-hands are [then]
required to rise and prepare their cooking, etc. for the day," a
plantation manual stated. "The second horn is blown just at
good
day-light, when it is the duty of the driver to visit every house
and
see that all have left for the field ." Work was highly
regimented.
A glimpse of plantation labor was captured by a traveler in Mis-
sissippi: "First came, led by an old driver carrying a whip, forty
of the largest and strongest women I ever saw together; they
were
a ll in a simple uniform dress of a bluish check stuff, the skirts
reaching little below the knee; their legs and feet were bare;
they
carried themselves loftily, each having a hoe over the shoulder,

and walking with a free, powerful swing, like chasseurs on the
march. Behind came the cavalry, thirty strong, mostly men, but
a
few of them women, two of whom rode astride on the plow
mules.
A lean and vigilant white overseer, on a brisk pony, brought up
the rear."11
A slave described the routine of a workday: "The hands are
required to be in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the
morn-
ing, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is
given to them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon,
they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark to
see, and when the moon is full, they often times labor till the
mid-
dle of the night." After they left the fields, they had more work
to
do. "Each one must attend to his respective chores. One feeds
the
mules, another the swine-another cuts the wood, and so forth;
besides the packing [of cotton] is all done by candle light.
Finally,
at a late hour, they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with
the long day's toil."12
To manage this enslaved labor force, masters used various
methods of discipline and control. They sometimes used kind-
ness. "Now I contend that the surest and best method of manag-
ing negroes, is to love them," a Georgia planter explained. "We
know ... that ifwe love our horse, we will treat him well , and
ifwe
treat him well, he will become gentle, docile and obedient . ..
and if
this treatment has this effect upon all the animal creation .. .
why

will it not have the same effect upon slaves?" But masters also
believed that strict discipline was essential and that power had
to be based on fear. South Carolina's senator James Hammond,
104 ,v, CONTRADICTIONS
owner of more than three hundred slaves, fully understood the
need for the absolute submission of a slave to his master: "We
have to rely more and more on the power of fear. We are deter-
mined to continue masters, and to do so we have to draw the
rein
tighter and tighter day by day to be assured that we hold them
in complete check." Completeness included psychological
control:
masters tried to brainwash their slaves into believing they were
racially inferior and racially suited for bondage. Kept illiterate
and ignorant, they were told they were incapable of caring for
themselves.13
To many white southerners, slaves were childlike, irresponsi-
ble, lazy, affectionate, and happy. Altogether these alleged
quali-
ties represented a type of personality-the "Sambo."
"Slaves never become men or women," a traveler in the South
commented. Slavemasters frequently referred to adult blacks as
"grown-up children," or "boys" and "girls." Regarding
themselves
as guardians, they claimed their slaves had to be "governed as
children."14 Slavemasters repeatedly complained about the
prob-
lem oflaziness, saying their black laborers had to be supervised
or
they would not work. If slaves were freed, they would become

"an
insufferable burden to society." William Gilmore Simms gave
this
view literary expression; in his novel The Yemassee, Simms had
the slave Hector respond to a proposal for his freedom. "I d--n
to h--ll, massa, if I gwine to be free!" Hector protested. "De
ting aint right; and enty I know wha' kind of ting freedom is wid
black man? Ha! You make Hector free, he turn wuss more nor
poor buckra - he tief out of de shop-he git drunk and lie in de
ditch . . .. " Obviously, slavemasters insisted, blacks had to be
kept
in slavery; otherwise they would surely become "indolent lazy
thievish drunken," working only when they could not steal.15
But slavemasters also cherished the bonds of affection they
claimed existed between themselves and their childlike slaves.
In
his Black Diamonds Gathered in the Darkey Homes of the
South,
Edward Pollard exclaimed: "I love to study his affectionate
heart;
I love to mark that peculiarity in him, which beneath all his
buffoonery exhibits him as a creature of the tenderest sensibili-
ties, mingling his joys and his sorrows with those of his
master's
home." Slaveholders described their slaves as the happiest
people
in the world, working little and spending the rest of their time
"singing, dancing, laughing, chattering, and bringing up pigs
and
chickens." "At present we have in South Carolina," one
slaveholder
boasted, "two hundred and fifty thousand civilized and
peaceable
"NO MORE PECK O ' CORN" "''-"" 105

slaves, happy and contented .. .. " In their private journals, mas-
( ors recorded moments of closeness with their slaves. One of
them
scribbled into his diary on January 1, 1859: "The hands as usual
rame in to greet the New Year with their good wishes-the scene
is well calculated to excite sympathies; notwithstanding
bondage,
, t ffections find roots in the heart of the slave for the
master."16
But the boast betrayed nervousness. The image of the slave
as Sambo had special significance: the whole western world was
ideologically opposed to American slavery, and therefore
masters
felt compelled to justify their peculiar institution as a "positive
good." If they could show that their slaves were happy and
satis-
fied with their condition, then perhaps they could defend them-
selves against their moral critics. They declared that "ours is a
patriarchal institution now, founded in pity and protection on
the
one side, and dependence and gratitude on the other." There
were
moral misgivings among white southerners themselves. "We
must satisfy them that slavery is of itself right," the defenders
of
Lhe institution declared, "that it is not a sin against God." Time
and again they insisted that the slavemaster was "enlightened,"
"humane," and "Christian," and that the slave was "submissive,"
"docile," "happy," "conscious of his own inferiority and proud
of
being owned & governed by a superior."17
Many masters had doubts about the morality of slavery. "Slav-
ery," admitted the governor of Mississippi, "is an evil at best."

Similarly, a white Virginian anxiously confessed: "This, sir, is a
Christian community. Southerners read in their Bibles, 'Do unto
all men as you would have them do unto you'; and this golden
rule and slavery are hard to reconcile." One slaveholder jotted
in his diary: "Oh what trouble,-running sore, constant press-
ing weight, perpetual wearing, dripping, is this patriarchal insti-
tution! What miserable folly for men to cling to it as something
heaven-descended. And here we and our children after us must
groan under the burden-our hands tied from freeing ourselves."
Few slaveholders could "openly and honestly look the thing
[slav-
ery] in the face," a European traveler in the South observed.
"They wind and turn about in all sorts of ways, and make use of
every argument ... to convince me that the slaves are the
happiest
people in the world."18
While claims that slaves were "Sambos" helped to comfort
anguished consciences, they also offered the masters psycho-
logical assurances that their slaves were under control. Surely
happy slaves would not come at night and slit the throats of
their
106 ""''"' CONTRADICTIONS
masters. In reality, slaveholders were terrified by the specter of
slave rebellion. Aware of the bloody slave revolts in St.
Domingo
in the 1790s, they were warned by an American official in
Haiti:
"Negroes only cease to be children when they degenerate into
sav-
ages." After the brutal suppression of the 1822 Denmark Vesey
slave conspiracy in Charleston, a worried South Carolina slave-

holder warned: our blacks were "barbarians who would, IF
THEY
COULD, become the DESTROYERS of our race."
19
Holding what Thomas Jefferson had called the "wolf by the
ears," masters lived in constant dread of slave insurrection.
Southern newspapers frequently reported news of slave unrest
and "evidences of a very unsettled state of mind among the
servile
population." The wife of a Georgia planter complained that
slaves
were "a threatening source of constant insecurity" and that
"every
southern woman" lived in terror of her slaves. A Louisiana
slave-
h older recalled tense times "when there was not a single planter
who had a calm night's rest," and when every master went to
bed
with a gun at his side. 20
Here was a society hysterically afraid of a black "giddy
multitude."
The master-slave relationship was dynamic, contradictory, and
above all uncertain. "Sambo" existed and did not exist. What
was
the reality? How did the slaves themselves view their own
behavior?
There were slaves who appeared to be "Sambos." Asked about
whether he desired freedom, a slave replied to a curious visitor:
"No, massa, me no want to be free, have good massa, take care
of
me when I sick, never 'buse nigger; no, me no want to be free."

In
a letter to his master who was away on a trip, a slave ended his
report on plant ation operations: "The respects of your affec.
Svt.
unto D [eath] in hopes ever to merit your esteem. Your most
duti-
ful servant. Harford."21
But slaves who behaved like "Sambos" might not have actu-
ally been "Sambos": they might have been playing the role
ofloyal
and congenial slaves in order to get favors or to survive, while
keeping their inner selves hidden. Masters themselves
sometimes
had difficulty determining a slave's true personality. "So deceit
-
ful is the Negro," a master explained, "that as far as my own
experience extends I could never in a single instance decipher
his character .... We planters could never get at the truth." For
many slaves, illusion protected them from their masters. "The
only weapon of self defence that I could use successfuly, was
that
of deception," explained fugitive slave Henry Bibb. Another
for-
mer slave explained that one had to "know the heart of the poor
"NO MORE PECK O' CORN" e.--c.-, 107
slave-learn his secret thoughts-thoughts he dare not utter in
the hearing of the white man."22
Indeed, many slaves wore masks of docility and deference in
order to shroud subversive plans. Every year thousands of
slaves
became fugitives, making their way north to freedom, and many

of these runaways had seemed passive and cheerful before they
escaped.
No more peck o' corn for me,
No more, no more;
No more peck o' corn for me,
Many tousand go.
No more driver's lash for me.
No more pint o' salt for me.
No more hundred lash for me.
No more mistress call for me. 23
After his flight north, fugitive J. W. Loguen received a letter
from his former slave mistress. "You know that we reared you
as we
reared our own children," wrote Mrs. Sarah Logue, "that you
was
never abused, and that shortly before you ran away, when your
mas-
ter asked you if you would like to be sold, you said you would
not leave
him to go with any body." In his reply, Loguen caustically
remarked:
"Woman, did you raise your own children for the market? Did
you
raise them for the whipping-post?" The ex-slave boldly
proclaimed
his love for liberty: "Wretched woman! Be it known to you that
I
value my freedom ... more, indeed, than my own life; more than
all
the lives of all the slaveholders and tyrants under heaven."24
Sometimes a slave would play the role of "Sambo" and then
strike directly at his tyrant. Slavemaster William Pearce told

one
of his erring slaves that he would be whipped after supper.
When
the slave was called out, he approached Pearce submissively. As
soon as he was within striking distance, the slave pulled out a
concealed ax and split his master's head. Nat Turner, according
to historian Stampp, was "apparently as humble and docile as a
slave was expected to be." In Virginia on August 22, 1831, he
led
seventy fellow slaves in a violent insurrection that lasted two
days
and left nearly sixty whites dead. After his arrest, Turner made
a statement to the authorities. His master, he acknowledged,
was
"kind": "in fact, I had no cause to complain of his treatment to
me."
But Turner had had a religious experience: "I had a vision - and
108 ,,,_.,,, CONTRADICTIONS
I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle .. . and
blood flowed in streams .... " A voice told him to wait for a sign
from heaven: "And on the appearance of the sign (the eclipse of
the sun last February), I should arise and prepare myself, and
slay my enemies with their own weapons." Turner carried out
his
mission, and a white Virginian nervously observed: "It will long
be remembered in the annals of our country, and many a mother
as she presses her infant darling to her bosom, will shudder at
the
recollection of Nat Turner." The slave rebel's action was a
fright-
ening revelation to white southerners: smiling and holding his
hat in his hand, "Sambo" could be planning their destruction. 25

The reality for many slaves may have been even more complex
and subtle than a duality of roles. Some "Sambo"-like behavior
may have been, not so much a veil to hide inner emotions of
rage
and discontent, as a means of expressing them. Lying, stealing,
laziness, immaturity, and ignorance all contained within them
an aggressive quality: they constituted, in effect, resistance to
efficiency, discipline, work, and productivity.
"Hands won't work unless I am in sight," a Virginia planter
scribbled angrily in his diary. "I left the Field at 12 [with] all
going on well, but very little done after [that] ." Slaves
occasion-
ally destroyed tools and machinery and treated farm animals so
brutally that they frequently crippled them. "They can neither
hoe, nor ditch, chop wood, nor perform any kind of labor with a
white man's skill," complained a master. "They break and
destroy
more farming utensils, ruin more carts, break more gates, spoil
more cattle and horses, and commit more waste than five times
the number of white laborers do." A continual problem for
masters
was the stealing of chickens and pigs. But slaves often viewed
the
matter differently: they were simply "taking" property (pigs) for
use by other property (themselves). In other words, the master's
"meat" was taken out of "one tub" and put in "another." "When I
tuk the turkey and eat it," a slave said, "it got to be a part of
me."
This appropriation seemed justified because their weekly food
allowance was so meager, and their masters were profiting from
their labor. Even as they shucked corn, they sang:
Massa in the great house, counting out his
money,

Oh, shuck that corn and throw it in the barn.
Missis in the parlor, eating bread and honey,
Oh, shuck that corn and throw it in the barn.
" NO MORE PECK O' CORN " ""-"" 109
Resenting the unfair appropriation of their labor, many slaves
feigned illness and lied in order to avoid work. One planter
com-
plained that slaves were sick on workdays but not on Sundays.
One slave managed to avoid work for many years by claiming
he
was nearly blind; after the Civil War, he was suddenly able to
see
again and became a successful farmer. Where masters perceived
the destructiveness, lying, and laziness of their slaves as mis-
chievous, childish, and irresponsible behavior, many slaves saw
refusal to be exploited. Thus, the same action held different
mean-
ings, depending on whether one was the master or the slave.26
Unlike slaves on the plantation, slaves in the southern cities
did not have to engage in such ambiguity. In 1860, there were
seventy thousand urban slaves. They labored in textile mills,
iron
furnaces, and tobacco factories. Many of them had been "hired
out" and were working as wage earners. The hiring-out system
generally involved a contract …
48 .,.._.,,,, FOUNDATIONS
Let a philosophic observer commence a journey from the
savages

of the Rocky Mountains, eastwardly towards our sea-coast.
There
he would observe in the earliest stage of association living
under
no law but that of nature, subsisting and covering themselves
with
flesh and skins of wild beasts. He would next find those on our
frontiers in the pastoral state, raising domestic animals to sup-
ply the defects of hunting. Then succeed our own semi-
barbarous
citizens, the pioneers of the advance of civilization, and so in
prog-
ress he would meet the gradual shades of improving man until
he
would reach his, as yet, most improved state in our seaport
towns.
This, in fact, is equivalent to a survey, in time, of the progress
of
man from infancy to the present day. 52
Here was a Jeffersonian version of John Winthrop's "city upon
a hill." The land was not to be allowed to "lie waste without any
improvement," the early_ forefather_s had co;,11manded,
_a1:1d now
the republican "errand mto the wilderness was reqmrmg t~e
citizens of the new nation to subdue the land and advance their
frontier westward. Such a view carried dire consequences for
the
Calibans of America called Indians. Like Prospero before him,
Jefferson saw the westward advance of the frontier as the move-
ment from "savagery" to "civilization."
-3
THE HIDDEN ORIGINS

OF SLAVERY
BUT CALIBAN COULD have been African. As they watched
The Tempest in London in 1611, theatergoers were told that
Caliban was "freckled," dark in complexion. His father was
a demon and his mother was Sycorax, a witch who had lived in
Africa.1
Some people in the audience might have seen Africans in En-
gland. In 1554, according to trader William Towrson, five
"Negroes"
were transported to England where they were "kept till they
could
speak the language," and then they were taken back to Africa
as translators for English traders. Two decades later, in 1578,
voyager George Best stated: "I myself have seen an Ethiopian as
black as coal brought into England, who taking a faire English
woman to wife, begat a son in all respects as black as the father
was .... " Best speculated about the cause of the African's skin
color: "It seemeth this blackness proceedeth rather of some
natu-
ral infection of that man, which was so strong that neither the
nature of the Clime, neither the good complexion of the mother
concurring, could anything alter."2
What struck the English most about Africans was their color.
"These people are all blacke, and are called Negros, without any
50 .,,._.,,,, FOUNDATIONS
apparell, saving before their privities," wrote an English
traveler
during his visit to Cape Verde in the 1560s. Similarly, Robert
Baker described the Africans :

And entering in [ a river], we see
a number of blacke soules,
Whose likelinesse seem'd men to be,
but all as blacke as coles.
In the English mind, the color black was freighted with an array
of
negative images: "deeply stained with dirt," "foul," "dark or
deadly"
in purpose, "malignant," "sinister," "wicked." The color white,
on
the other hand, signified purity, innocence, and goodness.3
"Brutish," Caliban seemed to personify what the English con-
sidered African traits. Travel reports described Africans as "a
people of beastly living, without a God, law, religion." Their
color
allegedly made them "Devils incarnate." The Devil had "infused
prodigious Idolatry into their hearts, enough to rellish his pallat
and aggrandize their tortures," and to "fry their souls, as the
rag-
ing Sun had already scorched their coal-black carcasses." Afri-
cans were also said to be cannibals: they allegedly ate human
beings as the English would eat "befe or mutton."4
Belonging to a libidinous race, in Shakespeare's portrayal,
Caliban was driven by the passions of his body. Prospero saw
him
as a sexual threat to the nubile Miranda, her "virgin-knot" yet
unbroken. "I have used thee (filth as thou art) with humane
care,"
Prospero scolded Caliban, "and lodged thee in mine own cell till
thou didst seek to violate the honor of my child." And the surly
native snapped: "Oho, 0 ho! Would't had been done! Thou didst
prevent me; I had peopled else this isle with Calibans." In con-

trast, belonging to a civilized race, Prospero raised his mind or
rationality to authority over his instinctual life. 5
Like Prospero, the English colonists in the Virginia wilder-
ness felt a great urgency to destroy, as historian Winthrop
Jordan
wrote so brilliantly and poetically, "the living image of
primitive
aggressions which they said was the Negro but was really their
own." Far away from the security and surveillance of society in
England, the colonists feared the possibility of losing self-
control
over their passions. "lntermixture and insurrection, violent sex
and sexual violence, creation and destruction, life and death-the
stuff of animal existence was rumbling at the gates of rational
and moral judgment." If the gates fell, the colonists feared, so
THE HIDDEN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY .,,._,,. 51
would civilization. Thus they projected onto blacks their hidden
and rejected instinctual parts of human nature. Jordan imagined
the English colonizers insisting: "We, therefore, we do not lust
and destroy; it is someone else. We are not great black bucks of
the fields. But a buck is loose, his great horns menacing to gore
into us with life and destruction. Chain him, either chain him or
expel his black shape from our midst, before we realize that he
is
ourselves."6
How did this English fear of sensuality play out in the history
of Virginia? And how did it intersect with "the hidden origins
of
Hlavery" ?
A View from the Cabins: Black and White Together

Again, The Tempest offers clues. In the theater, the audience
heard
Prospero refer to the African as "Caliban, my slave." "We
cannot
111 iss him. He does make our fire, fetch our wood, and serves
in
offices that profits us." When Shakespeare's play was first per-
formed in London, there were no Africans in Virginia. Indeed,
the
111troduction of Africans was something that had not even been
ronsidered at the time.7
In 1613, two years after the play was first performed in London,
I he colony sent its first shipment of tobacco to London, a small
hut significant four barrels. The exports grew dramatically from
1 ,:100 pounds in 1616 to 19,000 the following year, and to
60,000
hy 1620. Virginia's rapidly rising tobacco economy generated an
1nHatiable demand for labor.
In 1619, a Virginia colonizer recorded a momentous event in
I Ii<' history of the English New World. "About the last of
August,"
wrote John Rolfe in his diary, "came in a dutch man ofwarre
that
111ld us twenty Negars."8
The first Africans to be landed in Virginia had probably been
1 1ptured in wars or raids by enemy tribes before they were sold
1 i, Javes. Their ordeal must have been similar to the experience
ol Olaudah Equiano. After serving as a slave, he purchased his
I I PPdom and wrote an account of his captivity:
The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the
coast

wnA the sea, and a slaveship, which was then riding at anchor,
11 nd waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment,
which
Wnl:i soon converted into terror .... When I was carried on
board
I was immediately h andled, and tossed up, to see if I were
sound,
52 "'--"" FOUNDATIONS
by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had got
into a
world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their
com-
plexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and
the
language they spoke, which was very different from any I had
ever
heard, united to confirm me in this belief .... When I looked
round
the ship too, and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a
mul-
titude of black people of every description chained together,
every
one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no
longer doubted ofmy fate; and, quite overpowered with horror
and
anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted .... I was soon
put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation
in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that,
with
the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became
so
sick and low that I was not able to eat .... [After a long voyage,

the slaves finally sighted land.] We thought . .. we should be
eaten
by these ugly men . .. and ... there was much dread and
trembling
among us, and nothing but bitter cries to be heard all the night
from these apprehensions, insomuch that at last the white
people
got some old slaves from the land to pacify us. They told us we
were
not to be eaten, but to work. 9
Though they had been "sold," the first Africans in Virginia
prob-
ably were not slaves, persons reduced to property and required
to
work without wages for life. In 1619, Virginia had no law legal-
izing slavery. Like many English colonists, the Africans were
sold
as indentured servants, bound by contract to serve a master for
four to seven years in order to repay the expense of their
passage.
Curiously, for a long time, Africans remained a very small per-
centage of the work force. 10 The African population in
Virginia
increased very slowly-a contrast to the English colony in the
Barbados of the West Indies, where there were 20,000 Africans
by 1660, constituting a majority of the total population. In
1650,
Africans constituted only 300 of Virginia's 15,000 inhabitants,
or
2 percent. In 1675, of the colony's approximately 32,000
inhabit-
ants, blacks totaled only 1,600, or 5 percent.11
Why were so few Africans being imported into Virginia when

the demand for labor was so great and constantly inclining?
Carrying to Virginia negative images of Africans, English
planters undoubtedly felt hesitant about peopling their colony
with Calibans. Unlike their counterparts in the Barbados, they
were not primarily businessmen seeking to make money and
return to England. Rather, they had brought their families with
THE HIDDEN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY "'-"" 53
~hem ~nd were planning to stay. They had come to the colony
mtendm~ to create a reproduction of English society in
Virginia.
Thus, m the early decades of the Virginia colony, planters chose
to rely on white indentured servants. In the seventeenth century
75 percent of the colonists came as servants. In 1664, the
Council of
~'oreign Plantations reported that the colony's population had
been
"i ncreased principally by sending of Servants." Tobacco
agricul-
ture and the generation of profits depended on these white
workers.
I )escribing how one planter with six indentured servants had
made
11 thousand pounds with one crop of tobacco, John Pory of
Virginia
observed: "Our principal wealth ... consisteth in servants."12
Recruited in England but also Germany and Ireland, these men
11 nd women were the outcasts of society. They included
convicts
"rogues, vagabonds, whores, cheats, and rabble of all descrip~
I ions, raked from the gutter," as well as individuals who had
been

dec~yed, deceived, seduced, inveigled, or forcibly kidnapped
and
<"1'. rned as_ser_vants to the plantations."13 Like the Africans,
many
of the white mdentured servants came involuntarily, "spirited"
lwre by unscrupulous recruiters. The "spirits," an Englishman
r l'ported, "take up all th~ idle, lazie, simple people they can
entice,
111ch as have professed idleness, and will rather beg than
work."
I ,11 _a? English court, Christian Chacrett was accused of being
"a
',pmt, one that [took] up men and women and children and
[sold]
1 hl'm on a ship to be conveyed beyond the sea" to Virginia.
Some
of the servants were victims of the Irish "slave trade." In
Ireland
l•:ngl!sh poor laws for the correction and punishment of rogue~
1 nd idle people led to the wholesale kidnapping of young
women
1 nd me~ to supply the labor needs of the colonies. One of
them,
John Kmg, recalled how he and others were "stolen in Ireland"
h_y l~nglish soldiers. Taken from their beds at night "against
their
I •1~nsents,''. they were put on a ship. "Weeping and Crying,"
the
Ir IHh captiv~s were kept on board until "a Lord's day morning"
hen the ship set sail for Virginia.14
Coming from different shores, white and black laborers had
11ry lim~t~d understanding of each other. Mutual feelings of

fear
1 nd hostility undoubtedly existed. Still, they shared a condition
of
1 ploitation and abuse. The workers were sometimes forced to
wear
1 r on collars around their necks, often beaten and even tortured
for
rc•rnlcit_rance, an_d always required to have passes whenever
they
li•ft their plantations. Together, these exploited men and women
of
two races experienced the day-to-day exhaustion and harshness
11 plantation labor. They had to cut trees and clear brush, plow
54 "'"' FOUNDATIONS
the soil and prepare it for planting. In the hot and humid
tobacco
fields , they worked side by side - their backs bent over row
after
row of tobacco, their arms sore from topping young plants, their
legs cramped from carrying heavy loads of tobacco leaves to the
wagons, their nostrils filled with dust , and their ears stinging
from
the barking commands of their masters. Weary from a day of
toil,
they returned to their roughly built cabins and huts, where they
were fed a dreary mess made from ground Indian corn called
"lob-
lolly." A white servant in Virginia was undoubtedly expressing
the
anguish of many laborers, whether from England or Africa,
when

he wrote: "I thought no head had been able to hold so much
water
as hath and doth daily flow from mine eyes."15
Occasionally, perhaps often, whites and blacks ran away
together. In one case, the Virginia court declared: "Whereas [six
English] Servants and Jno. a negro Servant hath Run away and
Absented themselves from their masters Two months . It is
ordered
that the Sherriffe take Care that all of them be whipped . .. and
Each of them have thirty nine lashes well layed on." The
problem
of absconding workers became so serious that the Virginia leg-
islature complained about "English servants running away with
Negroes."16
Some blacks and whites formed another kind of partnership.
In 1630, the Virginia court decided that Hugh Davis was "to be
soundly whipped before an assembly of negroes and others for
abusing himself to the dishonor of God and the shame of
Christi-
anity by defiling his body in lying with a negro." Ten years
later,
the Virginia court punished a white man and a black woman:
"Whereas Robert Sweat hath begotten with child a negro woman
servant belonging unto Lieutenant Sheppard, the court hath
therefore ordered that the said negro woman shall be whipped
at the whipping post and the said Sweat shall tomorrow in the
forenoon do public pennance for his offence at James city
church
in the time of divine service." Similarly, William Watts, a white
man, and Mary, a black servant, were punished for fornication
in
1649. A year later, a white man and black woman, found guilty
of having sexual relations, were required to stand clad in white
sheets before a congregation. In 1667, the court convicted Irish

servant John Dorman of getting a "Negro woman" with child.
Between 1690 and 1698 in Westmoreland County, fourteen
white
women were punished for having illegitimate children; at least
four of the nineteen children were mulatto.17
Increasingly, black servants were singled out for special treat-
THE HIDDEN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY '"•-"" 55
ment. In 1640, for example, the Virginia legislature passed a
law
stating that masters should furnish arms to all men, "excepting
negros." Blacks were also serving longer time periods for inden-
ture as punishment for running away. In 1640, for example,
three
runaway servants-two white men and a black man-were cap-
tured and returned. They were each given thirty lashes. In addi-
tion, both white men were required to work for their masters for
an additional year and for the colony for three more years. But
the third runaway received the most severe punishment: "Being
a Negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his
assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere." Dur-
ing the same year, six white men and a black man were arrested
for running away. Communicating between two plantations,
they
had carefully planned their escape and gathered "corn powder
and shot and guns"; after stealing a skiff and sailing down the
l~lizabeth River, they were apprehended. One of the white men,
Christian Miller, received an especially harsh penalty-thirty
lashes, an "R" (for Rogue) to be burned into his cheek, a
shackle
on his leg for at least a year, and seven years of service to the
colony after he had completed his obligation to his master. The
Negro Emanuel was given a similar punishment, except he was
not ordered to serve additional time, implying he was required

to
labor for life.18
Some estate inventories showed that African laborers were
more highly valued than English indentured servants, indicating
that the former had a longer period of bound service. For
example,
the inventory of the estate of William Burdett, dated November
13, 1643, included this list:
Sarah Hickman to serve one year at
John Gibbs to serve one year at
Nehemia Coventon Aged 12 years to
serve 8 years at
Symon Caldron a boy very Lame and 14
years old to serve 7
William Young another boy full of the
scurvey to serve six years at
Edward Southerne a little Boy very
sick having seven years to serve at
Michael Pacey a boy to serve six years at
Caine the negro, very ancient at
lb tobacco
0700
0650
1000
0500
0600

0700
1100
3000
56 ""--"' FOUNDATIONS
One negro girl about 8 years old at
32 goats young and old at
A parcel of hogs at
2000
2500
1800
What was happening was evident: Africans were being degraded
into a condition of servitude for life.19
Other documents reveal they had also become property. Accord-
ing to the Virginia court records of 1642, Thomas Jacob trans-
ferred a "negro Woman Susan" to Bridgett Seaverne and her
son:
"I do hereby declare that I have given the negro unto them and
their heirs and Assigns Freely forever." Two years later,
William
Hawley borrowed money from William Stone and provided as
collateral "my Negro Mingo." In 1646, Francis Pott sold a
Negro
woman and boy to Stephen Charlton "to the use of him ...
forever."
Wills provided that white servants were to serve their "full term
of time" and Negroes "forever." A 1648 deed included a
provision
for a "Negro woman and all her increase (which for future time

shall be born of her body)." In 1652, a Negro girl was sold to H.
Armsteadinger "and his heirs ... forever with all her increase
both
male and female." A year later, William Whittington sold John
Pott "one Negro girl named Jowan; aged about Ten years and
with her Issue and produce during her (or either of them) for
their
Life time. And their Successors forever." In 1645, Ralph
Worme-
ley presented in court a certificate of a gift to Agatha Stubbings
in "Consideration of Matrimony" - "Four Negro men and Two
women ... Ten Cows, six Draft Oxen." Africans had become
clas-
sified as property: slaves as well as their future children could
be
inherited and also presented as gifts. By the 1650s, 70 percent
of
the blacks in Virginia were serving as de facto slaves. 20
In 1661, the Virginia Assembly began to institutionalize slav-
ery, to make it de jure. A law regarding the punishment of
servants
referred to "those Negroes who are incapable of making
satisfac-
tion by addition of time." In other words, they were required to
serve for life. Eight years later, the Virginia legislature defined
a
slave as property, a part of the owner's "estate."21
Despite the fact that Africans had been reduced to slaves and
that a system of upaid labor was more profitable than paid
labor,
planters still preferred to depend on white indentured servants.
After 1670, there was a decrease in the number of indentured
ser-
vants migrating to Virginia. The labor shortage, however, did

not
turn planters to Africa as a more reliable source of labor. "It
was
not until at least a decade after the decline in the supply of
[white
THE HIDDEN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY ,,._.,,. 57
indentured] servants," historian Russell Menard observed, "that
the number of blacks imported each year rose above a trickle."
Why did the importation of Africans suddenly rise above "a
trickle" in the late seventeenth century?22
"English and Negroes in Armes": Bacon's Rebellion
Here ~gain, The Te~pest can be illuminating. The theatergoers
were given a scenario that was uncanny in its anticipation of
what
wo~ld happen in Virginia. What they saw on stage was an inter-
racial class revolt to overthrow Prospero. When the jester, Trin-
culo, an_d the but_ler, Stephano, first encountered Caliban,
they
f~und ~1m repulsive-a fishlike monster and a devil. They gave
him wme, and the inebriated islander offered to show Trinculo
every "fertile inch o' the island." To his fellow servants Caliban
declared his desire to be free from Prospero's tyranny: '
No dams I'll make for fish,
Nor fetch in firing
At requiring,
Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish.
'Ban, 'Ban, Ca-Caliban
Has a new master. Get a new man.
Freedom, highday ! highday, freedom!
freedom, highday, freedom!

Seeking freedom, Caliban concocted a plot for rebellion. If
Stephano
would kill Prospero ("knock a nail into his head"), the butler
would
become the lord of the island and husband of Miranda. Caliban
promised: "She will become thy bed." Stirred, the butler
exclaimed:
"Lead, monster; we'll follow." Warned in advance about the
"foul
conspiracy of the beast Caliban and his confederates," Prospero
unleashed his hunting dogs against the rebels: "Fury, Fury!
There,
Tyrant, there! Go, charge my goblins that they grind their
joints."
Thus Prospero suppressed an interracial insurrection rooted in
class, a condition shared by Caliban and Stephano as workers.23
Like Prospero, the English elite in Virginia erected a hierarchi-
cal racial and class structure. Most English colonists had
migrated
to -Yirgin_ia as ~ndentured servants. They planned to complete
t?e1r period_ o~ mdenture and become landowners. According
to
Crovernor Wilham Berkeley, white servants came with a "hope
of
bettering their condition in a Growing Country." The American
58 "'_.,, FOUNDATIONS
expanse seemed to offer them the possibility of starting over,
cre-
ating new selves and new lives. Land in Virginia, taken from
the

Indians, was available and cheap. After completing the time and
terms of their servitude, indentured servants became freemen; as
such, they could claim title to fifty acres of land. As
landholders,
they could nurture the hope of becoming wealthy through
tobacco
agriculture. 24
The profitability of tobacco production, however, unleashed a
land boom. Colonists with financial advantage scrambled to
pos-
sess the best lands along the navigable rivers. Representing a
landed elite, they dominated the Virginia assembly and began
to enact legislation to advance and protect their class interests.
They passed laws that extended the time of indentured servitude
for whites and increased the length of service for white
runaways.
In this way, they minimized competition for lands and at the
same
time maximized the supply of white laborers by keeping them in
servitude for as long as possible. 25
Finding it increasingly difficult to become landowners, many
white freemen and indentured servants were becoming angry
and frustrated: they felt they had been duped into coming to
America. In 1649, pamphleteer William Bullock warned planters
about the men and women who, "not finding what was
promised,"
had become "dejected." In England, they had been viewed as the
"Surcharge of necessitous people, the matter or fuel of
dangerous
insurrections." In Virginia, they became an even greater threat
to
social order, joining what the planter elite fearfully called a
"giddy
multitude" -a discontented class of indentured servants, slaves,

and landless freemen, both white and black, the Stephanos as
well
as the Cali bans of Virginia. This unruly underclass constituted
a
volatile element. In the early 1660s, for example, indentured
ser-
vant Isaac Friend led a conspiracy to band together forty
servants
and "get Arms." He issued the rebellious cry: "Who would be
for
Liberty, and free from bondage" join the revolt. Many others
would
flock to their armed campaign. Together they would "go through
the Country and kill those that made any opposition," and would
"either be free or die for it." The authorities were informed
about
Friend's plan and quickly suppressed the plot. Again, in 1663, a
Gloucester court accused nine "Laborers" of conspiring to over-
throw the Virginia government and sentenced several of them to
be
executed. This incident gave planters a frightening example
of"the
horror" in Virginia-the presence of "villains" engaged in a "bar-
barous design" to subvert "rights and privileges" in the colony.
26
THE HIDDEN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY "'""' 59
Unruliness and discontent, however, continued to grow. Fear-
ing this landless class, the Virginia legislature restricted
suffrage
to landowners in 1670. Governor William Berkeley reported the
explosive class conditions in his colony, where "six parts of
seven"
of the people were "Poor Indebted Discontented and Armed."
The

ownership of guns was widespread among whites, for every
white
man had a right to bear arms and was required by law to have a
gun in order to help defend the colony. The landed elite
distrusted
this class of armed poor whites so much that they were even
afraid to organize them for military service. On one occasion, in
1673, Governor Berkeley raised troops to defend Virginia
against
Dutch warships, but he did so very reluctantly. Of the men he
enlisted in his army, Berkeley apprehensively noted, at least
one-third were freemen or debtors. They could not be trusted,
he
cautioned, for in battle, they might revolt and join the enemy
"in
hopes of bettering their Condition by Sharing the Plunder of the
Country with them."27
Three years later, the revolt Berkeley feared took place, led
by Nathaniel Bacon, a planter in upcountry Virginia. To address
the Indian threat in the back region of the colony, Bacon raised
a
militia from the ranks of the "giddy multitude." Bacon's actions
shocked Berkeley and his council, who were more worried about
armed white freemen than hostile Indians. In their view, Bacon's
followers were a "Rabble Crew, only the Rascallity and mean-
est of the people ... there being hardly two amongst them that
we have heard of who have Estates or are persons of Reputation
and indeed very few who can either write or read." Ignoring
their
concerns, Bacon led a march against the Indians, killing hostile
Susquehannahs as well as friendly Occaneechees. He justified
his
expedition as a "Glorious" defense of the country. But Governor
Berkeley angrily declared Bacon a rebel and charged him with
treason, an act punishable by death. Bacon retaliated by march-

ing five hundred armed men to Jamestown, the seat of govern-
ment in Virginia. 28
Furnished arms by the white rebels, black men joined Bacon's
army. They realized that they had a greater stake in the rebel-
lion than their fellow white rebels, for many of them were ser-
vants bound for life. Black and white together, Bacon's soldiers
formed what contemporaries described as "an incredible
Number
of the meanest People," "every where Armed." They were the
"tag,
rag, and bobtayle," the "Rabble" against "the better sort of peo-
ple." A colonial official reported that Bacon had raised an army
of
60 ""'" FOUNDATIO N S
soldiers "whose fortunes & Inclinations" were "desperate."
Bacon
had unleashed an armed interracial "giddy multitude" that
threatened the very foundations of social order in Virginia. 29
The rebels forced Berkeley to escape by ship and burned
Jamestown to the ground. Returning with armed reinforcements,
the governor quickly and violently suppressed the biracial
insur-
rection. At a rebel fortification on an island in the York River,
…
Instruction:
1. Please read the five articles. (Takaki Chapter
3&5&13&7&12)
2. Please choose some of the topics covered in each chapter,
provide a brief summary (2-3 sentences) of those topics.

3. Then add your reflections, insights, or relevant experiences,
etc. to help illustrate or expand upon the course.
4. This journal should be at least 400 words.

STUDENTS JOURNAL ENTRY As I progressed in this class I tried a.docx

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