The Peculiar Institution, pt. 11

Hi guys. Sorry the pace has slowed a bit over the past couple weeks. I’ve had a lot going on and I’ve had to travel more than usual, but it’s almost over. Jocko and I are recording a new Unraveling this week, so look forward to that. Also, I’m going to start releasing some more off-the-cuff videos on more current topics. I’ve already got a few recorded, and I’ll be taking suggestions for future topics.

Anyway, here is the next installment of The Peculiar Institution, our ongoing deep dive into the history of slavery and the leadup to the US Civil War. I hope those of you who’ve followed along from the beginning feel like you’ve got a better base of knowledge about the long history of the institution, and the state of southern British America when it began its transition to become a slave society. We’re about to get to the part of the story where the stars will be all the people they told you about in elementary school history.

We can call this chapter three of our ongoing series on the history of slavery and the leadup to the US Civil War. Chapter one (installments 1-5) explored the deep history of slavery, and the development of an ideology of enslavement that was ready to be picked up and put to use by Christians in the New World. Chapter two (installments 6-10) opened with the introduction of slavery to the New World and English America, English ideas about the lower classes, and the treatment of white servants and poor people in Virginia before slavery was introduced as a ubiquitous practice. Now we are going to talk about how slavery developed in the United States, how ideas about it changed over time, and how it became the battleground upon which the rivalry between New England and the South would come to a reckoning.

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The previous few essays described the circumstances in Virginia that led to Nathaniel Bacon’s underclass rebellion against the colony’s planter elite, and, since it’s been a while since that installment, I thought we’d start with a quick recap.

The early English promoters of New World colonization sold the venture as an opportunity to drain England of its unstable population of vagrants, squatters, beggars, orphans, and criminals, or “a sinke… to drayne away the filth,” as one of the promoters said. Others described the New World as an opportunity to build a giant workhouse, of the kind England’s poor were pressed into when they were swept from the streets of London. Accordingly, for the first few decades of colonization - started at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 - the population consisted primarily of indentured servants, many of them children, and few of whom lived long enough to ever become free men in America. The success of Virginia tobacco ended any hope of the colony becoming a diversified English town, as a cash crop monoculture pushed aside all other endeavors. When, in the 1620s, the appalling mortality rate became a public scandal, the Crown was obliged to take control of the colony from the proprietors who, twenty years into the project, had failed to generate any profit whatsoever.

Beginning in the 1640s, life expectancy in Virginia began to rise, and soon reached the point where the average indentured servants could expect to survive to taste at least a few years of freedom. Although this made it somewhat easier to recruit servants from England, it created a new irritation for the colony’s aristocracy - namely, a new class of free Englishmen, many of whom had experienced ill-treatment during their time as servants, who expected a piece of the pie for themselves. Tensions rose to a breaking point, and in the 1670s, after the colonial government failed to respond adequately to a series of Indian attacks, some settlers decided to take matters into their own hands. For that, they were denounced and declared to be traitors, a capital crime that placed the men under a death sentence. Under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon, the band of men grew into a small army, overran the colony, and chased out the royal governor and his dwindling number of supporters. Class war ensued. Servants and slaves were freed, and the poor plundered the houses of the rich. As fate would have it, Bacon soon fell ill and died, and his army dissolved just as suddenly, allowing the deposed governor to return to power and exact an ugly vengeance of those who’d humiliated him.

Bacon’s rebellion was not unforeseeable and, indeed, many Virginian elites were well-aware that they were sitting on the rim of a volcano. By the mid-17th century, Virginia was swarming with rebellious rogues, including a healthy contingent of criminals sent to the colony in lieu of hanging. Needless to say, these men were well-practiced in the art and science of defying authority. They were an unstable, shifting population of squatters, bushwhackers, day laborers, and itinerant thieves. The poor treatment of Virginia servants created a community of interest among rogues, servants, and slaves, who often banded together to steal a hog and throw a drunken feast in the woods. Worse, the rogues’ dismissive, even hostile, attitude toward authority was rubbing off on the servants and those who had been recently freed but were finding it difficult to get a start on their own. When discontent turned to rebellion, the army that flocked to Nathaniel Bacon was a diverse group, which, in addition to many of the rogues, included men from every class except the most elite - slaves, servants, tenants, poor and middling landowners, even prosperous farmers from the outlying counties, who felt that the Tidewater elites were insensitive to their needs and concerns. By the time the tension between Bacon and Berkeley escalated to open conflict, the governor was almost totally isolated and Bacon’s army seized the colony without resistance.

The king sent a commission to investigate what had happened. The English Crown is not known for lending a sympathetic ear to those who rebel against the king’s appointed officials, and yet the investigators were so appalled by the abuses they found in Virginia, that they had Bacon’s nemesis, royal governor Berkeley, relieved of his position, and pardoned all of Bacon’s men.

It was 1677, and a new day was dawning in Virginia.

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Well, sort of. Despite incurring the Crown’s displeasure, the Virginia elites were not about to cooperate with any scheme that reduced their own status. Pardoning the rebels restored peace, but there was no turnover of elites and the colony soon reverted to the status quo. The big planters were not prepared to significantly alter their domineering relationship to their labor force, and so they did what American business has done to the present day: when the native workers get too uppity, or start to demand a bigger piece of the pie, just import new ones who are more compliant.