From slaves, convicts, and servants to free passengers: The transformation of immigration in the era of the American Revolution

Journal of American History

Volumn 85, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 43-76

  Fogleman, Aaron S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0040973960     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2568431     Document Type: Article

References (128)

1. For summations of recent literature on transatlantic migrations to early America, see P. C. Emmer, ed., Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labor before and after Slavery (Dordrecht, 1986);
2. Susan E. Klepp, ed., The Demographic History of the Philadelphia Region, 1600-1860 (Philadelphia, 1989);
3. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill, 1991);
4. Ida Altman and James Horn, eds., "To Make America": European Emigration in the Early Modern Period (Berkeley, 1991);
5. and Nicholas Canny, ed., Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration, 1500-1800 (Oxford, Eng., 1994).
6. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), 3-8, esp. 6.
7. On the transfer of regional folkways, see David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York, 1989).
8. In 1680 only 7% of the population in the South was black. By 1700 the figure had risen to 21%. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the Unite J States, Colonial Times to 1970, vol. II (Washington, 1975), 1168.
9. David Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607-1785 (Athens, Ga., 1994), 1-80;
10. Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776 (Chapel Hill, 1947), 89-203;
11. David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Eng., 1987), 52-63;
12. James Horn, "To Parts beyond the Seas': Free Emigration to the Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century," in "To Make America," ed. Altman and Horn, 85-103, esp. 91;
13. Virginia DeJohn Anderson, New England's Generation: The Great immigration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Eng., 1991), 24-26, 108-12;
14. Richard S. Dunn, "Servants and Slaves: The Recruitment and Employment of Labor," in Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modem Era, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole (Baltimore, 1984), 157-94, esp. 159;
15. Ernst van den Boogaart, "The Servant Migration to New Netherland, 1624-1664," in Colonialism and Migration, ed. Emmer, 55-82, esp. 59-65.
16. See, for example, Dunn, "Servants and Slaves," 157-94;
17. and Russell R. Menard, "British Migration to the Chesapeake Colonies in the Seventeenth Century," in Colonial Chesapeake Society, ed. Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo (Chapel Hill, 1988), 99-132, esp. 103-17.
18. Horn, "'To Parts beyond the Seas,'" 85-103;
19. Cressy, Coming Over, 37-73;
20. Jon Butler, The Huguenots in America: A Refugee People in New World Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 41-67.
21. Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975);
22. Russell R. Menard, "From Servants to Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System," Southern Studies, 16 (1977), 355-90;
23. Russell R. Menard, "Migration, Ethnicity, and the Rise of an Atlantic Economy: The Re-Peopling of British America, 1600-1790," in A Century of European Migrations, 1830-1930, ed. Rudolph J. Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke (Urbana, 1991), 58-77;
24. David Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge, Eng., 1981), 141-68;
25. David Eltis, "Free and Coerced Transatlantic Migrations: Some Comparisons," American Historical Review, 88 (April 1983), 251-80, esp. 260-61;
26. Henry A. Gemery, "Markets for Migrants: English Indentured Servitude and Emigration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in Colonialism and Migration, ed. Emmer, 33-54;
27. Donald R. Wright, African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins through the American Revolution (Arlington Heights, 1990), 49-61.
28. For a summary of arguments on why the English servant migration declined rapidly in the late seventeenth century, see Dunn, "Servants and Slaves," 159-64.
29. See appendix for estimates of African and European immigration. For percentages of whites and blacks in the colonial populations, see Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, II, 1168.
30. For the argument that the substitution of slaves for servants on the mainland began in the late seventeenth century but was not complete by the Revolution, see David W. Galenson, "The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis," Journal of Economic History, 44 (March 1984), 1-26, esp. 11-13.
31. See also Stanley L. Engerman, "Servants to Slaves to Servants: Contract Labour and European Expansion," in Colonialism and Migration, ed. Emmer, 263-94;
32. and Ida Altman and James Horn, "Introduction," in "To Make America," ed. Altman and Horn, 1-29, esp. 5-6.
33. On the revival of indentured servitude in the Caribbean after the abolition of slavery, see David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834-1922 (Cambridge, Eng., 1995);
34. and Walton Look Lai, Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918 (Baltimore, 1993).
35. Richard S. Dunn argues that a complete shift from servants to slaves occurred only in the Caribbean. See Dunn, "Servants and Slaves," 159-64.
36. On similar developments in the French colonies, see Frédéric Mauro, "French Indentured Servants for America, 1500-1800," in Colonialism and Migration, ed. Emmer, 83-104;
37. Leslie Choquette, "Recruitment of French Emigrants to Canada, 1600-1760," in "To Make America" ed. Altman and Horn, 131-71;
38. Christian Heutz de Lemps, "Indentured Servants Bound for the French Antilles in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," "To Make America" ibid., 172-203;
39. Peter Moogk, "Manon's Fellow Exiles: Emigration from France to North America before 1763," in Europeans on the Move, ed. Canny, 236-60.
40. On the number of foreign-born in the population, sec Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (Philadelphia, 1996), 1-4, 155-62, esp. tables A.1, A.2, and A.3. A. Roger Ekirch argues that Americans in general did not want convicts and often protested to the British authorities for sending so many, yet planters in the Chesapeake found them desirable because they were much cheaper than slaves, served longer terms than indentured servants, and received no freedom dues.
41. See A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775 (Oxford, Eng., 1987), 124-25.
42. See Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974), 167-68;
43. and C. Vann Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston, 1964), 5. A highly influential work from the 1940s does not consider Africans in its chapter on the colonial period.
44. See Marcus L. Hansen, The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860: A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), 25-52.
45. See, for example, Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 293-387;
46. Wood, Black Majority;
47. Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Culture in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800 (Chapel Hill, 1986);
48. and Wright, African Americans in the Colonial Era, 56-69.
49. See table 1 for estimated numbers of servants atriving in the eighteenth century.
50. For a comparison of the "redemptioner" system with traditional "indentured servitude," see Marianne Wokeck, "Harnessing the Lure of the 'Best Poor Man's Country': The Dynamics of German-Speaking Immigration to British North America, 1683-1783," in "To Make America," ed. Altman and Horn, 204-43, esp. 217-18.
51. See also Günther Moltmann, "The Migration of German Redemptioners to North America, 1720-1820," in Colonialism and Migration, ed. Emmer, 105-22;
52. and Farley Grubb, "German Immigration to Pennsylvania, 1709 to 1820," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 20 (Winter 1990), 417-36.
53. Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, 51-64; Galenson,
54. "Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas," 1-26;
55. Nicholas Canny, "English Migration into and across the Atlantic during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in Europeans on the Move, ed. Canny, 39-75, esp. 63;
56. Bernard Bailyn with Barbara DeWolfe, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1986), 172-73;
57. Wokeck, "Harnessing the Lure," 217-18;
58. Sharon V. Salinger, "To Serve Well and Faithfully": Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, 1682-1800 (Cambridge, Eng., 1987).
59. For a comparison of servant labor in England and its North American colonies, see Robert J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American law and Culture, 1330-1870 (Chapel Hill, 1991), esp. 15-54;
60. and Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, 7-8, 102-13.
61. For a comparison between indentured servitude and apprenticeship in the colonies, see Bailyn with DeWolfe, Voyagers to the West, 167n17.
62. For conditions of indentured servitude in the French colonies, see Moogk, "Manon's Fellow Exiles," 236-60;
63. Choquette, "Recruitment of French Immigrants to Canada," 131-71;
64. Heutz de Lemps, "Indentured Servants Bound for the French Antilles," 172-203;
65. and Mauro, "French Indentured Servants for America," 83-104.
66. On the dates of the worst conditions for Germans arriving in Philadelphia, see Marianne S. Wokeck, "A Tide of Alien Tongues: The Flow and Ebb of German Immigration to Pennsylvania, 1683-1776" (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1983), 176.
67. Salinger, "To Serve Well and Faithfully," 1-4;
68. Dunn, "Servants and Slaves," 181;
69. Wokeck, "Tide of Alien Tongues," 137-201, esp. 176, 202-43;
70. Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys, 69-99;
71. Hans-Jürgen Grabbe, "Das Ende des Redemptioner-Systems in den Vereinigten Staaten" (The end of the redemptioner system in the United States), Amerikastudien / American Studies (Munich), 29 (1984), 277-96, esp. 282.
72. Bailyn with DeWolfe, Voyagers to the West, 173-74.
73. Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys, 73.
74. For Maria Barbara Kober's story, see Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys, ibid., 77-79.
75. On the difficulties facing newly arrived German immigrants (including servants) in colonial America, see Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys, ibid., 69-99.
76. On convict transportations, see Ekirch, Bound for America;
77. Peter W. Coldham, Emigrants in Chains: A Social History of Forced Emigration to the Americas of Felons, Destitute Children, Political and Religious Non-Conformists, Vagabonds, Beggars, and Other Undesirables, 1607-1776 (Baltimore, 1992);
78. Smith, Colonists in Bondage;
79. Patrick Fitzgerald, "A Sentence to Sail: The Transportation of Irish Convicts to Colonial America in the Eighteenth Century," Working Paper 96-22, 1996 (International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1800, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.);
80. and Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 92, 125.
81. On kidnapping, see Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, ibid., 93;
82. and Bailyn with DeWolfe, Voyagers to the West, 307-12. See appendix, table A.3, for total immigration by ethnic group during this period.
83. Coldham, Emigrants in Chains, 79, 99-133;
84. Ekirch, Bound for America, 99, 123, 140-56.
85. Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 11-92;
86. Steinfeld, Invention of Free Labor, 3-121.
87. Pehr Kalm, Peter Kalm's Travels in North America: The English Version of 1770, ed. Adolph B. Benson (New York, 1987), 204-11.
88. On ethnic group settlement in southeastern Pennsylvania, see James T. Lemon, "The Best Poor Man's Country": A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore, 1972).
89. Wood, Black Majority.
90. For European immigration into South Carolina after 1763, see Jane Reveill, ed., A Compilation of the Original Lists of Protestant Immigrants to South Carolina, 1763-1773 (Columbia, S.C., 1939).
91. Populations and percentages that were black in 1760 were calculated from Bureau of Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, II, 1168. The Maryland census of 1755 enumerates 98,357 free whites, 6,871 servants, 1,981 convicts, 3,592 mulattoes, and 42,764 blacks.
92. See Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 324.
93. On transportations of convicts to the Chesapeake, see Ekirch, Bound for America, 116, 140-43.
94. "Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, I," American Historical Review, 26 (July 1921), 726-47, esp. 744-45;
95. "Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765, II," American Historical Review, ibid., 27 (Oct. 1921), 70-89.
96. The travel journal was written in English by Jasper Payne. See Jasper Payne and Christian Fröhlich, Description of Their Journey to Maryland, Oct. 26 to Nov. 27, 1747, Journals Box JD III 1 (Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pa.).
97. For the quote from Richard Dunn, see "Servants and Slaves," 176.
98. On the importance of servitude in the Chesapeake and its meaning for American history, see Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hilli 1988).
99. On the relationship between trade and immigration in the colonial period, see Horn, "'To Parts beyond the Seas,'" 85-103;
100. and Wokeck, "Harnessing the Lure," 204-43.
101. On Scottish immigration to the Caribbean, see Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 7-8.
102. On disruptions in the French slave trade, see Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969), 177-78.
103. I am indebted to Richard S. Dunn for many of the ideas presented here. On freed slaves becoming indentured servants in Pennsylvania, see Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath (New York, 1991), 167-93.
104. On the second forced migration of slaves to the Old Southwest from 1790 to 1860, see Allan Kulikoff, "Uprooted Peoples: Black Migrants in the Age of the American Revolution, 1790-1820," in Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, ed. Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman (Charlottesville, 1983), 143-71.
105. Patrick Fitzgerald, "Sentence to Sail," 3;
106. Coldham, Emigrants in Chains, 151-57;
107. Ekirch, Bound for America, 227-38.
108. Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 145, 184;
109. Steinfeld, Invention of Free Labor.
110. See W. J. Rorabaugh, The Craft Apprentice: From Franklin to the Machine Age in America (New York, 1986), 3-56, esp. 32.
111. Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (27 vols., Princeton, 1950-), I, 353;
112. New York Independent Gazette, Jan. 24, 1784,
113. quoted in Samuel McKee Jr., Labor in Colonial New York, 1664-1776 (Port Washington, 1935), 175-76;
114. W. W. Abbot, ed., The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series (6 vols., Charlottesville, 1983-), I, 473, 529.
115. On high levels of servitude among British and German immigrants in the early 1770s, see Bailyn with DeWolfe, Voyagers to the West, 166-69;
116. and Farley W. Grubb, "The End of European Immigrant Servitude in the United States: An Economic Analysis of Market Collapse, 1772-1835," Journal of Economic History, 54 (Dec. 1994), 794-824, esp. 818-19.
117. On the decline of servitude among Germans, see Grabbe, "Ende des Redemptioner-Systems";
118. Grubb, "End of European Immigrant Servitude";
119. and Farley W. Grubb, "The Disappearance of Organized Markets for European Immigrant Servants in the United States: Five Popular Explanations Reexamined," Social Science History, 18 (Spring 1994), 1-30.
120. Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (Oxford, Eng., 1985), 169;
121. Maurice Bric, "Irish Emigration to America, 1783-1800," Working Paper 96-21, 1996 (International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1800, Harvard University), esp. 1.
122. For French immigration during this period, see Hans-Jürgen Grabbe, "European Immigration to the United States in the Early National Period, 1783-1820," in Demographic History of the Philadelphia Region, ed. Klepp, 194.
123. Denmark abolished the slave trade to its West Indian colonies in 1803, followed by Britain in 1808, the Netherlands in 1814, and France in 1815. On the abolition of the trade, see David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987);
124. and David Eltis and James Walvin, eds., The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the Americas (Madison, 1981).
125. On indentured servitude in the Caribbean, see Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism;
126. and Look Lai, Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar.
127. On Chinese immigrants in the United States, see Ronald T. Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston, 1993), 192-94.
128. For a good overview, see Engerman, "From Servants to Slaves to Servants," 263-94.