In 1607 the British established their first successful colony at Chesapeake Bay, named Jamestown out of respect for the new king, James I. In the first ten years the death rate in the colony rose to a number between 70 and 80 percent due to Indian attacks and water borne diseases. In 1616 John Rolfe led the movement to make tobacco the cash crop of Virginia, and this addictive commodity sold at an incredible markup. Planters that migrated to the Americas needed laborers to harvest their crops, and, starting in 1619, they frequently used the sturdy beggars of London and Bristol. These able bodied workers, could not afford the transatlantic voyage, and therefore gave up five years of their lives to work as indentured servants on plantations. …show more content…
Bacon considered the governor of Virginia, William Berkeley, to be corrupt, and he sought to change the colonial political system, primarily by ending Berkeley’s quasi-aristocratic reign. Berkeley granted his rich supporters massive amounts of fertile land, leaving very little for the indentured servants, contractually obliged to receive fifty acres. As the tobacco industry began to suffer in the 1670’s, common planters could not pay off the governor’s high taxes. Bacon acquired followers by challenging these principals, and he led attacks on the neighboring Algonquians to grant the laborers their land. Bacon even promised freedom to any servant that abandoned Berkeley and his associates. Eventually Bacon led an attack on Jamestown and drove out the aristocrats, burning the city to the ground. From 1677 onward, after Bacon’s sudden death, relations between great and common planters improved, and they agreed upon a common enemy: the Indians. British emigration to Virginia declined, and planters bought African slaves as white servants became scarce. Planters, brought together by their hatred for the natives, transferred this animosity toward the black slaves. The crown encouraged the degradation of slaves because it calmed tensions amongst the armed whites, quelling the royal government’s fear of rioting. Eventually colonists …show more content…
In 1650 slaves made up only two percent of the population, so laws did not exist to govern the slave population of 300 people. Planters treated early Chesapeake slaves just as they did with British servants, freeing them after a set number of years. Some freed blacks even ran successful plantations such as Anthony Johnson, who owned 250-acres of land and many servants. Johnson even won a lawsuit in the 1650’s when a white planter tried to take his servant, proving the courts had not yet developed a racial bias. At the start of the eighteenth century, planters began to buy slaves, and the black population ascended to 40 percent by 1750. The divide between races furthered as whites began to assert their dominance over the slaves to discourage them from running away or rebelling. Killing a runaway slave became legal, and the public paid back the owner for his loss. Baptism saved neither a black child nor adult from bondage, and owners could no longer free their slaves unless releasing them into the frontier. The colonist’s laws made it nearly impossible for a black bloodline to ever escape