I have seen much that confirms Henry Wiencek's observations about
colonial and postbellum indentures and apprenticeships. The colonial
pattern emerged late in the 17th and early in the 18th century: it
amounted to long-term service by and, in some cases, quasi-enslavement of
nominally free individuals of African or mixed ancestry. The postbellum
use of apprenticeship statutes was transparently a strategy for regaining
access to the labor of at least a portion of the newly emancipated slave
population (and for regaining some measure of control over those young
laborers). Blacks' struggles against the new apprenticeship arrangements
(which resembled those used with the free colored population in earlier
decades) are described in some detail in the documents included in the
multi-volume Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, edited by Ira
Berlin and others.

Exceptions can be found to every generalization, but there is little doubt
that the above mentioned arrangements were ways of extracting labor, not
ways of providing foster care or family-like support to children in need.

Douglas Deal
Professor of History and Director of General Education
State University of New York at Oswego
Oswego, NY 13126
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(315)-341-5631 (voice mail)
(315)-341-3577 (FAX)

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