Paul et al.:

How do you (or we) *know* these first Africans in Virginia were indentured
servants, not slaves? It does seem clear that some became free after a
period of years, but none of these cases is well documented for those
first years in the colony. Did any ship leave the African coast between
1500 and 1800 with a cargo of free, voluntary African migrants who had
signed contracts to be servants in some American colony? The Africans
taken by the "Treasurer" and "White Lion" off the slaver "San Juan
Bautista" in 1619 had been enslaved in Angola to be delivered in Vera
Cruz. Are we to imagine that the Dutch and English ships that captured
these Africans before they reached Vera Cruz were in fact engaged in
liberating them from slavery by unloading them in Virginia? The absence of
a slave code early in the history of the colony does not mean a slave-like
status could not have existed for Africans (e.g., servitude for terms of
indeterminate length). My sense, after working through thousands of pages
of Virginia county court records from the 1630s to 1700 and beyond is that
much happened de facto that was not authorized de jure. The biggest
problem about the early years from 1619 to, say, the 1650s is the paucity
of conclusive evidence. Neither you nor I, nor Morgan, nor Breen and Innes
have found enough evidence to state with certainty that the first "20 and
odd" Africans to arrive were all "indentured servants" or "slaves" or
something else. I would speculate the "default" status to have been
slavery but can offer only a mass of circumstantial evidence to support
that speculation.

The Post story is correct in emphasizing the relative newness of a) the
connection with the "San Juan Bautista", and b) the details on the Angolan
background of these first "slaves" in Virginia. The books by Morgan and
Breen and Innes had neither of these.

Douglas Deal
Professor of History
State University of New York at Oswego
Oswego, NY 13126
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(315)-312-3441

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