(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.

Struggle for Freedom : "Run-away from his Master"

European and American society in the early eighteenth century was essentially hierarchical. The amount of freedom people had depended upon the status they possessed. That status in turn depended upon the degree of economic and political authority they or their families wielded. Slaves were the least free members in a world of unequal and coercive relationships. The landless laborer, even the lowest ranking servant, possessed a degree of personal freedom denied to slaves.

The first African immigrants to England's North American colonies arrived in Virginia in the 1600s. The status of these newcomers at first differed little from the white indentured servants who far outnumbered them. By the end of the century, however, the black population had grown and colonial laws recognized a new sort of bondage: chattel slavery. Legal documents began using the phrase "servants for life," to distinguish slaves from indentured servants. Laws defined slaves as a kind of property. And, most importantly, slavery as it developed in America was confined to people of color and their offspring.

Tens of thousands of newly enslaved Africans poured into England's American and West Indies colonies in the eighteenth century. Only constant imports of still more thousands could increase the black population in the Carolinas and Georgia. Most of these newcomers lived and labored under the most wretched conditions imaginable, especially those condemned to labor on the sugar plantations of the West Indies or in the rice and indigo plantations of South Carolina.

Meanwhile, slaves made up only about four percent of the total population of New England. Most northern masters owned no more than one or two slaves. Their relatively few numbers and geographic dispersion through the region made group insurgency against slavery difficult for northern blacks. There exists evidence, however, that many slaves resisted white masters and the slave system in general. The runaway slave announcements in this Massachusetts newspaper from 1749, highlight the presence of African Americans in rural New England communities. Such notices also provide proof of the most obvious form of individual resistance to slavery: running away.

top of page

Advertisement in "The Boston Weekly Post-Boy" newspaper