Agriculture was the bulwark of life for the Chesapeake settlers and the rest of the colonial South; the tragic experiences of the Jamestown settlement revealed this quickly enough. Jamestown also suggested that a colony could not succeed unless its inhabitants were allowed to own their own land. The first colonists had agreed to work for seven years in return for a share of the profits. When their contracts expired there were few profits. To satisfy these settlers and to attract new capital, the London Company declared a “dividend” of land, its only asset. The surviving colonists each received 100 acres. Thereafter, as prospects continued to be poor, the company relied more and more on grants of land to attract both capital and labor. A number of wealthy Englishmen were given immense tracts, some running to several hundred thousand acres. Lesser persons willing to settle in Virginia received more modest grants. Whether dangled before a great tycoon, a country squire, or a poor farmer, the offer of land had the effect of encouraging immigration to the colony. This was a much-desired end, for without the labor to develop it the land was worthless.
Soon what was known as the headright system became entrenched in both Virginia and Maryland. Behind the system lay the eminently sound principle that land should be parceled out according to the availability of labor to cultivate it. For each “head” entering the colony authorities issued a “right” to take any fifty acres of unoccupied land. To “seat” a claim and receive title to the property, the holder of the headright had to mark out its boundaries, plant a crop, and construct some sort of habitation. This system was adopted in all the southern colonies and in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The first headrights were issued with no strings attached, but generally the original owner of the land demanded a small annual payment called a quitrent. A quitrent was actually a tax that provided a way for the proprietors to derive income from their colonies. Quitrents were usually resented and difficult to collect.
The headright system encouraged landless Europeans to migrate to English America. More often than not, however, those most eager to come could not afford passage across the Atlantic. To bring such people to America, the indentured servant system was developed. Indenture resembled apprenticeship. In return for transportation indentured servants agreed to work for a stated period, usually about five years. During that time they were subject to strict control by the master and received no compensation beyond their keep. Indentured women were forbidden to marry and if they became pregnant (as many did in a land where men outnumbered women by seven to one) the time lost from work that resulted was added to their terms of service.
Servants lacked any incentive to work hard, whereas masters tended to “abuse their servantes. . . with intollerable oppression.” In this clash of wills the advantage lay with the master; servants lacked full political and civil rights, and masters could administer physical punishment and otherwise abuse them. An indenture, however, was a contract; servants could and did sue when planters failed to fulfill their parts of the bargain, and surviving court records suggest that they fared reasonably well when they did so.
Servants who completed their years of labor became free. Usually the former servant was entitled to an “outfit” (a suit of clothes, some farm tools, seed, and perhaps a gun), and occasionally to a small grant of land.
The headrights issued when indentured servants entered the colonies went to whoever paid their passage, not to the servants. Thus the system gave a double reward to capital—land and labor for the price of the labor alone. Since well over half of the white settlers of the southern colonies came as indentured servants, the effect on the structure of southern society was enormous.
Most servants eventually became landowners, but with the passage of time their lot became harder. The best land belonged to the large planters, and as more land went into cultivation, crop prices fell. Many owners of small farms, former servants especially, slipped into dire poverty. Some were forced to become “squatters” on land along the fringes of settlement that no one had yet claimed. Squatting often led to trouble; eventually, when someone turned up with a legal title to the land, the squatters demanded “squatters’ rights,” the privilege of buying the land from the legal owner without paying for the improvements the squatters had made upon it. This led to lawsuits and sometimes to violence.
In the 1670s conflicts between Virginians who owned choice land and former servants on the outer edge of settlement brought the colony to the brink of class warfare. The costs of meeting the region’s evergrowing need for labor with indentured servants were becoming prohibitive. Some other solution was needed.
•••-[Read the Document Wessell Webling, His Indenture, 1622 at Www. myhistorylab. com
World History
