Customs and Fashions in Old New England Part 6

Though in the beginning he refused to harbor or tolerate negro-stealers, the Ma.s.sachusetts Puritan of that day, enraged at the cruelty of the savage red men, did not hesitate to sell Indian captives as slaves to the West Indies. King Philip's wife and child were thus sold and there died. Their story was told in scathing language by Edward Everett. In 1703 it was made legal to transport and sell in the Barbadoes all Indian male captives under ten, and Indian women captives. Perhaps these transactions quickly blunted whatever early feeling may have existed against negro slavery, for soon the African slave-trade flourished in New England as in Virginia, Newport being the New England centre of the Guinea Trade. From 1707 to 1732 a tax of three guineas a head was imposed in Rhode Island on each negro imported--on "Guinea blackbirds."

It would be idle to dwell now on the cruelty of that horrid traffic, the sufferings on board the slavers from lack of room, of food, of water, of air. But three feet three, inches was allowed between decks for the poor negro, who, accustomed to a free, out-of-door life, thus crouched and sat through the pa.s.sage. No wonder the loss of life was great. It was chronicled in the newspapers and letters of the day in cold, heartless language that plainly spoke the indifference of the public to the trade and its awful consequences. I have never seen in any Southern newspapers advertis.e.m.e.nts of negro sales that surpa.s.s in heartlessness and viciousness the advertis.e.m.e.nts of our New England newspapers of the eighteenth century. Negro children were advertised to be given away in Boston, and were sold by the pound as was other merchandise. Samuel Pewter advertised in the _Weekly Rehearsal_ in 1737 that he would sell horses for ten s.h.i.+llings pay if the horse sale were accomplished, and five s.h.i.+llings if he endeavored to sell and could not; and for negroes "_sixpence a pound_ on all he sells, and a reasonable price if he does not sell."

Many letters still exist of advices from s.h.i.+p-owners to s.h.i.+p-captains, advice as to the purchase, care, and choice of captives, "to get one old man for a Lingister; to worter ye Rum & sell by short mesuer &c. &c."

Negro-stealing by Americans continued till 1864, when a brig sailing westward from Africa on that iniquitous errand, was lost at sea--a grim ending to three centuries of incredible and unchristian cruelty.

The first anti-slavery tract published in America was written by Judge Sewall in the year 1700--"The Selling of Joseph." His timid protest but little availed, though he persevered in his belief and his opposition to the day of his death. Other colonists who were opposed to the traffic were willing to buy slaves, that the poor heathen might be brought up in a Christian land, be led away from their idols--Abraham and the patriarchs were given as authorities in justification of thus doing. One respectable Newport elder, who sent many a profitable venture to the Gold Coast for "black ivory," always gave pious thanks in meeting on the Sunday after the safe arrival of a slaver, "that a gracious overruling Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his congregation, and himself into believing that there was some truth and decency in the specious words that framed a lie in every clause. Many ministers were slave owners; Daille--the French Huguenot, Dr. Hopkins, Dr. Williams, Ezra Stiles, and Jonathan Edwards being noted examples.

The ministers from Eliot down were kind to the blacks, preaching special sermons to them, and forming religious a.s.sociations for them. A negro school for reading, writing, and catechizing was established in Boston in 1728.

Cotton Mather had a negro worth fifty pounds given him by his congregation, and that "most notorious benefactor," with his never-ceasing "essay to doe good," at once, in grat.i.tude for the gift, devoted the negro to G.o.d's service, and made many a n.o.ble resolve to save, through G.o.d's grace, his bondsman's soul. It is painful to read at a later date that he found his unregenerate slave "horribly arrested by spirits," by which he did not mean captured by the dreaded emissaries of the devil who pervaded the air of Boston and Salem at that time, but simply very drunk.

Slaves were more plentiful in Connecticut and Rhode Island than in Ma.s.sachusetts. Madam Knight gives a glimpse of Connecticut slave life in 1704, and of awkward table traits in both master and slave as well, when she says that the negroes were too familiar, were permitted to sit at the table with the master, and "into the Dish goes the black Hoof as freely as the white Hand." Hawthorne says of New England slaves:

"They were not excluded from the domestic affections; in families of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the circle closed around the evening hearth its blaze glowed on their dark s.h.i.+ning faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's children. It must have contributed to reconcile them to their lot, that they saw white men and women imported from Europe as they had been from Africa, and sold, though only for a term of years, yet as actual slaves to the highest bidder."

In the main, New England slaves were not unhappy, for they were well treated; and the race has the gift to be merry in the worst of circ.u.mstances. Occasionally one would be brought to the northern land, one of higher sensibilities, more sensitive affections, greater pride; one who could not live a slave. Such a one was the haughty Congo Pomp, who escaped to a swamp near Truro on Cape Cod--a swamp now called by his name--and placing at the foot of a tree a jug of water and loaf of bread to sustain him on his last long journey, hanged himself from the low-hanging limbs, and thus obtained freedom. Such also was Parson Williams's slave Cato in Longmeadow, Ma.s.s. He bore repeated whippings for his high-spirited disobedience, "for speaking out loud in meeting, drinking too much cider, going on a rampage," and finally drowned himself in a well.

Waitstill Winthrop wrote thus of one suicidal Moor to Fitz John Winthrop in 1682.

"I fear Black Tom will do but little seruis. He usued to make a show of hangeing himselfe before folkes, but I believe he is not very nimble about it when he is alone. Tis good to have an eye to him & you think it not worth while to keep him eyether sell him or send him to Virginia or the Barbadoes."

William Pyncheon had also a slave who was "a.s.siduous in hangeing." To be sold to Virginia was a standard threat to New England slaves, as work in Southern tobacco-fields was thought much more severe than in northern cornfields.

Slavery lingered in New England until after Revolutionary days. It is said that its death blow was dealt in Worcester, Ma.s.s., in 1783, when a citizen was tried for a.s.saulting and beating his negro servant. The defence was that the black man was a slave, and the beating was but necessary restraint and correction. The master was found guilty in the Worcester County Court and fined forty s.h.i.+llings.

Though there were few slaves who were willing to leave life in order to be free, many were willing to try to leave their masters. The early New England newspapers abound in advertis.e.m.e.nts of runaway blacks--in gay attire, with fiddles and guns, bewigged and silk-stockinged, well dressed if not well treated.

I know no records that show more fully, though wholly unconsciously, the vast simplicity of our ancestors than these advertis.e.m.e.nts of runaway servants. Fancy giving as a possible means of identification of any human being such an item of descriptions as this: "When he gets drunk or drinks much he is red in the face"--as if that were an extraordinary or peculiar trait in any drunken man! Another runaway is said to have had "sometimes a sly look in his eye and wears the b.u.t.ton of his hat in front;" another to have been a liar; another to have been "somewhat impudent if crossed, and has a leering look under his eyes." Others were "awkward in manners," "somewhat morose in countenance," "had long finger-nails," "had one or two pimples on the face," "is too fond of talking." It seems almost incredible that intelligent persons should have given such childish and easily obliterated or varied particulars of description.

Diverse names were applied to these runaways: "Sirrinam Indianman Slave," "Mustee-fellow," "Molatto," "Moor," "Maddagerscar-boy,"

"Guinyman," "Congoman," "Coast-fellow," "Tawny," "Black-a-moor"--all apparently conveying some distinction of description universally comprehended at the time.

We have a few records of worthy black servants who remind us of the faithful, loving house-servants of old Southern families. Such a one was Judge Sewall's man, Boston--a freeman--to a master who deserved faithful service, if ever master did. The entries in the Judge's diary, meagre as they are, somehow show fully to us that faithful life of service. We see Boston taking the Sewall children out sledding; we see him carrying one of the little daughters out of town in his arms when the neighbors were suddenly smitten with that colonial plague, the small-pox. We find him, in later years, a tender nurse, sleeping by the fire in languis.h.i.+ng Hannah Sewall's sick-chamber; and, after her death, we hear him protesting against the removal of her dead form from her chamber; and we can see him weeping as he sat through the lonely nights with his dead and dearly loved mistress, till she was hidden from his view. It is pleasing to know that though he lived a servant, he was buried like a gentleman; he received that token of final respect so highly prized in Boston--a ceremonious funeral, with a good fire, and chairs set in rows, and plenty of wine and cake, and a notice in the _News Letter_, and doubtless gloves in decent numbers.

Other black men led n.o.ble lives in service, if we can trust the records on their tombstones.

This elegant epitaph is upon a gravestone in Concord, Ma.s.s.:

"G.o.d WILLS US FREE; MAN WILLS US SLAVES I WILL AS G.o.d WILLS, G.o.dS WILL BE DONE.

HERE LIES THE BODY OF

JOHN JACK

A NATIVE OF AFRICA, WHO DIED MARCH 1773 AGED ABOUT SIXTY YEARS.

THOUGH BORN IN A LAND OF SLAVERY HE WAS BORN FREE THOUGH HE LIVED IN A LAND OF LIBERTY HE LIVED A SLAVE.

TILL BY HIS HONEST (THOUGH STOLEN) LABORS HE ACQUIRED THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY WHICH GAVE HIM FREEDOM THOUGH NOT LONG BEFORE DEATH, THE GRAND TYRANT GAVE HIM HIS FINAL EMANc.i.p.aTION AND PUT HIM ON A FOOTING WITH KINGS.

THOUGH A SLAVE TO VICE HE PRACTISED THOSE VIRTUES WITHOUT WHICH KINGS ARE BUT SLAVES."

At Attleborough, Ma.s.s., near the old Hatch Tavern, may be seen this epitaph:

"HERE LIES THE BEST OF SLAVES NOW TURNING INTO DUST, CaeSAR THE AETHIOPIAN CLAIMS A PLACE AMONG THE JUST.

HIS FAITHFUL SOUL HAS FLED TO REALMS OF HEAVENLY LIGHT, AND BY THE BLOOD THAT JESUS SHED IS CHANGED FROM BLACK TO WHITE.

JAN. 15TH HE QUITTED THE STAGE IN THE 77TH YEAR OF HIS AGE.

1781."

Besides slaves, Indians, and help, a species of nexal servitude also existed in all the colonies. At the beginning of colonization bound or indentured white servants were sent in large numbers to the new land.

Thirty came to the Bay Colony as early as 1625. Some of the terms of service were very long, even for ten years. These indentured servants were in three cla.s.ses: "free-willers," or "redemptioners," or voluntary emigrants; "kids," who had been seduced through ignorance or duplicity on board s.h.i.+ps that carried them off to America; and convicts transported for crime. The latter expatriated vagabonds were sent chiefly to Virginia. The "kids" were trapanned, by the fair promises of crimps or "spirits," in Scotland, Ireland, and England, where kidnapping formed an extensive and incredibly bold business. The Scots were brought over and sold at the time of English wars. At one time "Scots, Indians, and Negars" were not allowed to train in the militia in Ma.s.sachusetts.

Many curious and romantic stories are told of these kidnapped servants.

One day, in 1730, a number of Boston gentlemen went to the Long Wharf to examine a cargo of Irish transports then offered for sale. Among the lads who ran up and down the wharf to show his strength and condition was one who had gone to sea on another s.h.i.+p. The captain, his uncle, died at sea, and the crew sold the boy to this transport-s.h.i.+p, which chanced to pa.s.s them. The boy faithfully served out his time to his purchaser, and became a gallant officer in the wars with the Indians.

These indentured servants were just as trying as the Indians and the negroes, and in particular showed a lawless disregard for their masters'

property, an indifference to the authority of the weal-public, and a lazy disinclination to work; one writer describes them as "tender fingered in cold weather." The Mt. Wollaston lot that followed Morton to Merry Mount were but the forerunners of hundreds of others. The Bradstreets' servant, John, may be taken as a type of many refractory bound servants. He was brought to trial in 1661, for "stealing several things as pigges, capons, mault, bacon, b.u.t.ter, eggs, etc., and breaking open a seller door several times." John, when pulled up for trial, affirmed that he had really a very small appet.i.te, but the food furnished by that colonial blue-stocking, Anne Bradstreet, was not fit to eat, the bread being black and heavy and sour, and he only took an occasional surrept.i.tious bite to keep himself from starvation. But it was proved that he had feasted not only himself, but comrades, and that a neighbor, who had a "great fat Turkey against his daughter's marriage"

hung up in a locked room, was relieved of it by the hungry and agile John, who got some of his fellows to let him down the chimney to steal the turkey and good store of beer, with which they all caroused; and he was fitly punished.

The laws were strict enough at first as to the behavior of servants, and occasionally a topping young maid felt their force. In Hartford, "Susan Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publicquely corrected and so to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary."

In York, Me., in 1645, "Alexander Maxwell for his grosse offence in his exorbitant and abusive carriages towards his master Mr. George Leader shall be publicly brought forth to the Whipping Post, where he shall be fastened till 30 lashes be given him upon his bare skin." Maxwell was ordered to satisfy his master for the money paid for his board in prison, and, if he further misbehaved, Mr. Leader could sell him to Virginia.

In later days New England housewives must have longed for the good old times of the whipping-post and coa.r.s.e diet and hard work for disorderly and insubordinate redemptioners. Hear what gentle Mary Dudley endured with one of her maids. She had written many pathetic entreaties to her mother, Madam Winthrop, to send her a "good girle, a strong l.u.s.ty servant," one "vsed to all kind of work who would refuse none," and we learn what she got, from a letter written a few months later, with a new-born babe by her side:

"A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now I am like through G.o.d his mercie to be freed from it; at her first coming me she carried her selfe dutifully as became a servant; but since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen so insolent that her carriage towards vs especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If I bid her doe a thinge she will bid me to doe it myselfe, and she sayes how she can give content as wel as any servant but shee will not, and sayes if I love not quietnes I was never so fitted in my life for she would make mee have enough of it. If I should write to you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language she hath vsed towards me I should but grieve you. My husband hath vsed all meanes for to reforme her, reasons and perswasions, but shee doth profess that her heart and her nature will not suffer her to confesse her faults. If I tell my husband of her behavior towards me, vpon examination she will denie all she hath done or spoken, so that we know not how to proceed against her."

We must not forget that the Winthrops had the best opportunity of any in the land to have good servants; for not only were help placed in their families, but the best of English servants were consigned to them; yet neither the Governor's sister, Madam Downing, nor his daughter, Madam Dudley, could be "suited." And hear the plaint of John Winthrop to his father in 1717:

"It is not convenient now to write the trouble and plague we have had with this Irish creature the year past. Lying and unfaithfull; w'd doe things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her mistress; lye out of the house anights and have contrivances w'th fellows that have been stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out of ye cellar for them; saucy and impudent, as when we have taken her to task for her wickedness she has gone away to complain of cruell usage. I can truly say we have used this base creature w'th a great deal of kindness and lenity. She w'd frequently take her mistresses capps and stockins, hankerchers etc., to dresse herselfe and away without leave among her companions. I may have said some time or other when she has been in fault that she was fitt to live nowhere but in Virginia, and if she w'd not mend her ways I should send her thither tho I am sure n.o.body w'd give her pa.s.sage thither to have her service for twenty yeares she is such a high-spirited pirnicious jade. Robin has been run away neare ten dayes as you will see by the inclosed and this creature know of his going and of his carrying out 4 dozen bottles of cyder, metheglin and palme wine out of the cellar among the servants of the town and meat and I know not w't. The bottles they broke and threw away after they had drunk up the liquor, and they got up o'r sheep anight, killed a fatt one, roasted and made merry w'th it before morning."

This wild Irish girl was indentured to the unfortunate Winthrop and his more unfortunate wife for four years, and was to have fifty s.h.i.+llings and some other start in the world when her time was up.

Out-of-the-way plantations fared no better in the question of service.

John Wynter, the head agent of the settlement at Richmonds Island in Maine, wrote thus resentfully in 1639, to Mr. Trelawny, of the London company, of his maid, one Priscilla Beckford:

"You write of some yll reports is given of my Wyfe for beatinge the maide: yf a faire waye will not doe yt, beatinge must sometimes vppon such Idlle girrels as she is. Yf you think yt fitte for my Wyfe to do all the work, and the maide sitt still, and she must forbear her hands to strike, then the work will ly vndonn. She hath bin now 2-1/2 yeares in the house & I do not thinke she hath risen 20 tymes before my Wyfe hath bin vp to Call her, and many tymes light the fire before she comes out of her bed. She hath twice gone a mechinge in the woodes which we have bin fain to send all our Company to seek her. We can hardly keep her within doors after we are gonn to bed except we carry the kay of the door to bed with vs.

She coulde never milke Cow nor Goate since she came hither. Our men do not desire to have her boyl the kittle for them she is so s.l.u.ttish. She cannot be trusted to serve a few piggs but my Wyfe must commonly be with her. She hath written home I heare that she was fain to ly vppon goates skinns. She might take some goates skinns to ly in her bedd but not given to her for her lodginge. For a yeare & quarter or more she lay with my daughter vppon a good feather bed; before my daughter being lacke 3 or 4 days to Sacco the maid goes into bed with her cloths & stockins & would not take the paines to pluck off her Cloths; her bed after was a doust bedd & shee had 2 Coverletts to ly on her, but Sheets she had none, after that tyme she was found to be so s.l.u.ttish. Her beatinge that she hath had hath never hurt her body nor limes. She is so fatt & soggy she can hardly do any worke. Yf this maide at her lazy tymes when she hath bin found in her yll accyons do not deserve 2 or 3 blowes I pray you who hath the most reason to complain my Wyfe or maide. My Wyfe hath an Vnthankefull office. Yt does not please me well, being she hath taken so much paines and care to order things as well as she could, and ryse in the morning rath & go to bed soe latte, and have hard speeches for yt."

We can well imagine his exhausted patience, and that of poor overworked Mistress Wynter, at that fat soggy thing, that lag-last, so s.h.i.+ftless and useless about the house, lazing from rath to latte, and then to complete their exasperation, miching off into the woods to s.h.i.+rk her work so that the whole company had to turn out with a mort of trouble to hunt for the leg-trape. We cannot marvel at the beating, but simply wonder at its being remarked in those days of many and hard beatings, when scholars, servants, soldiers, and college students were well whipped, and, in Old England, wives also.

Wynter had no better fortune without doors with his men-servants and workmen; they proved kittle cattle. He found them not "plyable" or "condis.h.i.+onabell," that they "spoke Fair to the Face and Colloged behind the back." Of one malcontent he wrote,

"He is verry vnwilling to do vs servize, he is alwaies too hard labored, he cares not what Spoyle he makes, and will not be commanded but when he list. He is such a talkinge Fellow as makes our company worse than would be."

He says his bound servants ran away at their pleasure, worked when they pleased, and led others off to their lure, and should be punished if they had returned to England. One only was "frace" of his ways and promised to do better. Not only do we gain from Wynter's letters a knowledge of the pains of colonial domestic service, but I know among New England historical collections no other such well of good old English words and phrases.

The Declaration of Independence did not better the aspect of the servant question. The _Providence Gazette_ advertised in 1796 that a reward of five hundred dollars and the "warmest blessings of abused householders"

would be given to any restoring the conditions of the good old times, or rather what they fancied was

"The constant service of the antique world When service sweat for duty not for meed."