47 pages • 1 hour read
Edmund S. MorganAmerican Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1975A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Problem of Unwilling Labor
One of Morgan’s most important claims is that the colony was driven toward slavery because of the problem of unwilling labor. Morgan shows how this problem was obvious even before the Virginia Company set sail with its first settlers. The boats were disproportionately filled with noblemen and their servants, along with the company’s servants, all of whom refused to do manual labor. The situation worsened when the English arrived in Virginia and quickly learned that the Indians, even the good Indians, were unwilling to work for the colonists’ wealth and would never be a reliable source of labor.
Once the colony established its first export crop, tobacco, big farmers required a cheap, secure labor force. The choice was to bring in labor tied to the farmer, not to the company; indentured servants, with a term of seven years, arrived by the thousands. The plan was to meet the colony’s labor needs and to help England solve its unemployment problem caused by a growing population and an economy that could not keep pace with job creation.
However, within a few short years, the big farmers characterized their servants with disdain, calling them lazy, irresponsible, and drunkards—descriptions that the English had reserved for the poor. The farmers’ servants were also unwilling to work. Since they could not be compelled to work, big farmers compelled them to work longer by prolonging the length of servitude and preventing the servants from gaining their freedom. They were, in Morgan’s terms, treated like things. And with no wives, no families, no land, they had little incentive to work, let alone work hard. After Bacon’s Rebellion, which saw servants and freedmen join Nathaniel Bacon in killing Indians (since many freedmen in their search for land had ended up next to Indian territory) and plundering big farmers’ property, the colony’s leaders were faced with a choice: continue to oppress servants in their attempts to work every last penny of profit out of them, or find another labor source.
As Morgan shows, the answer to the labor problem was to buy slaves rather than to enslave the colony’s servants. Since the number of immigrants had slowed after England’s economy recovered and the formation of African Charter Company to trade in slaves, the time was right. New planters arrived who came expressly to make their fortunes in tobacco, and they had no issue with an enslaved labor force. And unlike white labor, the enslaved Africans and Indians could be compelled to work through physical cruelty.
Differences and Similarities Between the English in England and the English in Virginia
In American Slavery, American Freedom, Morgan compares the English in England and the English in Virginia across economic, political, and social spheres to highlight how the Virginians charted a path that built upon and differed from English society.
One example of the differences in the English and Virginian economic systems was their different ideas about labor and how labor could be treated. Morgan argues that England needed need labor to fill jobs to meet an unemployment problem; Virginia needed labor to make profits. That need for profit led Virginians to treat their servants far, far worse than they were treated in England. The Virginians degraded their indentured servants, for example, by removing their rights to make decisions about who they wanted to work for, physically abusing them, and unfairly extending the terms of their contracts. Further, the Virginians, unlike the English, never did diversify their economy in this time frame because tobacco was too lucrative. When the time was ripe to institute a plan, an economic downturn prevented the Virginians from following in England’s path.
Morgan also shows how the Virginians developed a different political outlook by altering their political institutions. Unlike the House of Commons, which was seated by the nobility, every Virginian had the hope, if not the ability, to become a burgess. In England the lower classes, especially servants, had no right to vote. Thus, unlike the House of Commons, the assembly was a truly popular institution. Until 1670, there were no restrictions on voting. Although Virginians would take that right away, or put conditions on it later, they showed a deep commitment to liberalism not seen in England at the time.
Socially, the Virginians and the English did agree on the futility of the poor. Both maintained their dislike for and fear of the poor. They described the poor using the same terms, which the Virginians then used to describe indentured servants, freedmen, Indians, and Africans. They also agreed that education would be wasted on the poor. However, despite their agreement that the poor required rehabilitation, including workhouses, both stopped short of making an argument, or putting together a plan, for their enslavement. Although Virginians did treat the poor like a foreign element that could be walled off from society, enslavement required debasing the enslaved because of their race.
Racism and Slavery Were Not Inevitable
Morgan describes the changes in colonial Virginia by tracking the changing attitudes of the governing elite, including the big farmers, toward non-whites and lower-class whites. Even though he argues that racism and slavery were not inevitable, he does not deny that racism was present from the colony’s very beginnings.
Racism and slavery were not inevitable because even though planters had every opportunity to enslave indentured servants, they never did. They certainly had developed the ideology necessary to allow them to be dehumanized—to be bought and sold. They used the same language to describe them as they later did to describe Africans when justifying slavery and the physical abuse used to force slaves to work, namely that white servants did not want to work, that they were drunk all the time, and that they were dishonest. Even though such rhetoric reduced white servants to things, and even though the colony enacted laws that allowed planters to buy and sell the servants’ contracts without their consent, the choice was never made to enslave them.
This situation prevailed for several decades with the Indians. Even though white elites discussed enslaving Indians, and used that language directly, there was no attempt to enslave them wholesale. Perhaps, Morgan argues, it was because Indians were more adept at hiding in the woods and evading capture; perhaps their numbers never sufficiently threatened the colony because they did not have the technology to do real harm; or perhaps the colonists were able to isolate and separate them well enough to forget about the idea. Or perhaps the arrival of bought human beings was sufficient. Morgan is clear that linking Indians to slavery, and the ideas and derogatory characterizations that went with it, did not happen until planters sought to use racism to show white freedmen and servants that their interests were aligned with those of big farmers.
Finally, Morgan shows that racism and slavery were not inevitable because the plantation system developed without legislation. The planters were able to construct the system, fill it with labor, and buy slaves all without ramping up racism as a reason for African enslavement. Morgan shows that white servants initially saw enslaved Africans toiling on the plantations as workers in the same boat as they were. Racism does not appear to have been a natural response. Like with so many other parts of colonial development, it had to be constructed by the planters in service of their interest to keep making profit, and so racism became a necessary part of the slavery system.
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By Edmund S. Morgan
