Their servants distinguish them by the names of slaves for life and servants for a while. The slaves are the Negroes, and their posterity, according to the condition of the mother, according to the maxim, partus sequitur ventrem [the status follows the motherb]. They are called slaves, in reference to the time of their slavery, because it is for life. The transition from slavery to slavery as the main source of work for some English colonies first occurred in the West Indies. On the small island of Barbados, colonized in the 1620s, English planters first cultivated tobacco as their main export crop, but in the 1640s they converted to sugar cane and began to rely more and more on African slaves. In 1655, England wrested control of Jamaica from the Spanish and quickly turned it into a lucrative sugar island run by slave labor for its expanding empire. As slavery took hold more slowly in the Chesapeake colonies, by the end of the seventeenth century, Virginia and Maryland had introduced the slavery of movable property – which Africans legally defined as property rather than humans – as the dominant form of labor for tobacco cultivation. Chesapeake settlers also enslaved Native Americans. In the early 1600s, the English began a colony (Jamestown) in the Rapidly Succession of Chesapeake Bay in 1607, the French built Quebec in 1608, and the Dutch began to take an interest in the area, which became present-day New York. In another generation, the Plymouth Company (1620), the Massachusetts Bay Company (1629), the Company of New France (1627), and the Dutch West India Company (1621) began sending thousands of settlers, including families, to North America.
Successful colonization was not inevitable. The interest in North America was rather a faltering but global competition between the European powers for the exploitation of these lands. A much larger group of English Puritans left England in the 1630s and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the New Haven Colony, the Connecticut Colony, and Rhode Island. Unlike the exodus of young men to the Chesapeake settlements, these migrants were families with young children and their university-educated ministers. Their goal, according to John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay, was to create a model of Reformed Protestantism — a „city on a hill,“ a new English Israel. The idea of a „city on a hill“ clearly emphasized the religious orientation of the Colony of New England, and the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony stated as its goal that the people of the colony „may be governed religiously, peacefully, and civilly, for their good life and order incite Conversacon, maie wynn and the indigenous peoples of the country, to the knowledge and obedience of the true God and Saulor of humanity and the Christian Fayth.“ To illustrate this, the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company depicts a half-naked Indian begging more Englishmen to „come and help us.“ To meet these labor needs, early Virginians relied on contract servants. An employment contract is an employment contract signed by poor and often illiterate young Englishmen and sometimes English women in England, committing to work for a number of years (usually between five and seven) to grow tobacco in the Chesapeake colonies. In return, indentured servants received paid passage to America and food, clothing, and shelter. At the end of their contract, the servants received „freedom contributions,“ usually food and other supplies, including, in some cases, land provided by the colony. The promise of a new life in America was a strong attraction for members of the English lower class who had little or no options at home.
In the 1600s, about 100,000 contract employees travelled to the Chesapeake Bay. Most were poor young men in their early twenties. The Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland served an important purpose in the development of the seventeenth-century English Empire by providing tobacco, a cash crop. However, early Jamestown history did not suggest that the English outpost would survive. From the beginning, the settlers fought both among themselves and with the indigenous people, the powerful Powhatan, who controlled the area. Jealousy and power struggles among the English destabilized the colony. One member, John Smith, whose famous map begins this chapter, took control and exercised almost dictatorial powers, further exacerbating the dispute. The inability of settlers to grow their own food exacerbated this unstable situation. They were essentially employees of the Virginia Company of London, an English public company where investors provided the capital and took the risk of making the profit, and they had to make a profit both for their shareholders and for themselves. Most first devoted themselves to the search for gold and silver, rather than finding ways to grow their own food. Meanwhile, the Basque, English and French fishing fleets became regular visitors to the coasts, from Newfoundland to Cape Cod. Some of these fishing fleets even set up semi-permanent camps on the coasts to dry their catch and trade with the local population by exchanging furs for industrial products.
Over the next two decades, the presence of Europeans in North America was limited to these semi-permanent assaults. In the 1580s, the English tried to establish a permanent settlement on Roanoke Island (on the outer shores of present-day North Carolina), but their efforts were short-lived. The conflict generated by Puritanism had divided English society because the Puritans demanded reforms that undermined traditional festive culture. For example, they denounced popular pastimes such as baiting bears – letting dogs attack a chained bear – which were often practiced on Sundays when people had a few hours of free time. In the culture in which William Shakespeare had produced his masterpieces, the Puritans called for the end of the theater and censored theaters as places of decadence. In fact, the Bible itself became part of the struggle between the Puritans and James I, who ruled the Church of England. Shortly after ascending the throne, James commissioned a new version of the Bible to stifle Puritan dependence on the Geneva Bible, which followed the teachings of John Calvin and placed God`s authority above that of the monarch. The King James version, published in 1611, focused instead on the majesty of kings. Different working systems also distinguished the early Puritan settlements of New England from the Chesapeake colonies. The Puritans expected the young people to work diligently at their calling, and all members of their large families, including children, did most of the work necessary to manage homes, farms, and businesses. Very few migrants came to New England as workers; In fact, New England cities protected their disciplined Native labor force by refusing to let foreigners in and providing their sons and daughters with permanent employment.
New England`s working system produced remarkable results, especially a powerful maritime economy with dozens of ocean-going ships and the crews needed to navigate them. New England sailing ships made in New England transported Virginia tobacco and Caribbean sugar throughout the Atlantic world. In the early seventeenth century, thousands of English settlers came to the present-day states of Virginia, Maryland, and New England in search of opportunities and a better life. So where does the law come from? In America, our legal system came from the United Kingdom. The settlers of the original thirteen colonies came from Europe and brought their own rules and principles to apply in their new society. Blackstone`s comments and English common law remain an important part of our current American legal system. The authors of our Constitution created the Supreme Court of the United States by Article III. In the early years of the later United States, Christian religious groups played an influential role in each of the British colonies, and most sought to impose strict religious adherence through colonial governments and local city rules. However, life in the settlements proved difficult. Contract agents could not marry and were subject to the will of tobacco producers who bought their employment contracts.
When they committed a crime or disobeyed their masters, they found that their length of service was extended, often by several years. Female contract workers faced particular dangers in a colony of singles. Many were exploited by unscrupulous tobacco planters who seduced them with promises of marriage. These planters then sold their pregnant maids to other tobacco growers to avoid the cost of raising a child. While colonial laws in tobacco colonies had made slavery a legal institution before bacon`s rebellion, new laws passed in the wake of the rebellion severely restricted black freedom and laid the foundation for racial slavery. Virginia passed a law in 1680 prohibiting blacks and free slaves from carrying arms, prohibiting blacks from gathering in large numbers, and imposing harsh punishments on slaves who attacked Christians or tried to escape. Two years later, another Virginia law stipulated that all Africans brought to the colony must be slaves for life.