<shudders>  It's amazing what horrible things you can find in a past that many (including myself) would like to idealize.  I myself was researching Cicley Reynolds (her first name is spelled several different ways on verious documents), an ancestress and early settler int he Jamestown area, and aside from learning about her four husbands and the first breach of promise suit in America, I discovered that she killed a family slave girl for poisoning and killing the last of her husbands.  Whether or not the accusation was true will never be known, because as a slave, the girl never got a trial.  Nor will it be know what desperation, madness, or hatred could have motivated such an act.
The more I read about the social history of slavery, indentured servitude, and/or serfdom in any culture--be it Roman, American, Australian, or Russian--the more convinced I am that bound servitude is an instution that fosters the very worst and most brutal in men, the served and serving both.



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