The Problem Of Labor
The problem of obtaining labor in a frontier country where agriculture
is the main pursuit was, in colonial days as at the present, a difficult
one, for the employer could not go into a labor market and hire what he
pleased, since a labor market did not exist. For this reason labor was
always scarce in America during this early period, and all sorts of ways
had to be contrived to meet the demand for "help, " particularly in the
Middle and Northern colonies. The farmers, who constituted the bulk of the
population, solved the problem in part by doing their own work with the
assistance of their wives and children and such men as could be hired for
the busy seasons of planting and harvesting. Such hired help was usually
obtained in the neighborhood and was paid in many ways — in money, food,
clothing, return labor, and orders on the country store. It was never very
steady nor very reliable. On special occasions, such as raising the
framework of a barn, house, school, or meetinghouse, all the neighbors
turned out and helped, satisfied with the rum, cider, and eatables
furnished for refreshment. Necessary household service was supplied either
by some woman of the locality who came in as a favor and on terms of
equality with the rest of the family, or by a young girl bound out as a
servant, with the consent of her father or mother, until she was of age.
Skilled labor was not often called for, except in the towns or for
shipbuilding, as the farmers were their own shoemakers, coopers,
carpenters, tanners, and ironworkers, and even at times their own
surveyors, architects, lawyers, doctors, and surgeons. Nearly every one
was a jack at many trades, for just as the minister physicked and bled as
well as preached, so the farmer could on occasion run a store, build a
house, make a boat, and fashion his own farming utensils.' His house¹
Joshua Hempstead of New London, for example, was not only a farmer but at
one time or another, from 1711 to 1758, a house builder, carpenter, and
cabinetmaker, shipwright, cobbler, maker of coffins, and engraver of
tombstones, a town official holding the offices of selectman, treasurer,
assessor, and surveyor of highways; a colony official, serving as deputy
sheriff and coroner, many times deputy to the General Court, justice of
the peace, and so performing frequent marriages, and judge of probate. He
was also clerk of the ecclesiastical society, lieutenant and later captain
of the train band, and surveyor of lands. He did a great deal of legal
business, drawing deeds, leases, wills, and other similar documents, and
was general handy man for his community was a manufactory as well as a residence, and his barn a workshop as well
as a place for hay and livestock. Of course as the eighteenth century wore
on and men of the Huguenot type, with their love for beauty and good
craftsmanship, came into the country, and as social life became more
elaborate and luxurious, industrial activities were organized to meet the
growing demands of a prosperous population. Artisans became more skilled
and individual, and a few of them attained sufficient importance to occupy
places of some dignity in the community and to produce works of such merit
as to win repute in the history of arts and crafts in America. But these
cases are exceptional; labor as a rule was not highly specialized, and the
artisan usually added to his income in other ways. We find among the
trades farriers, blacksmiths, whitesmiths, joiners, cabinetmakers,
tailors, shipwrights, millwrights, gunsmiths, silversmiths, jewelers,
watch and clock makers, and wig and peruke makers. For such highly skilled
industries as snuff making, sugar refining, and glass blowing labor was
imported from England, but not on any large scale until just before the
Revolution, when agreements not to import English merchandise stimulated
domestic manufacture.
Throughout the colonies the people as a whole depended not on hired labor
but on bound labor —the indentured servant, the apprentice, the convict,
and the slave — and everywhere these forms of labor appear in varying
degrees.
The covenanted or indentured servant was one who engaged himself for a
certain number of years in order to work off a debt. In itself such
bond-service involved no special disgrace, any more than did going to
prison for debt seriously discredit many of the fairly distinguished men
who at one time or another were residents of the old Fleet Prison in
London or those men of less repute who for the same reason found
themselves in colonial jails. The reader must dismiss the notion that the
position of an indentured servant necessarily involved degradation or that
the term " sold " used in that connection referred to anything else than
the selling of the time during which the individual was bound.' It was not
uncommon for one
The writer has seen a manuscript diary of a German servant who came to
America by way of Rotterdam, in which the words imprisoned for debt in the
colonies to advertise his services to any one who would buy him out; and
sometimes this form of service was used to pay a gambling debt.
But the most frequent form of indenture was that which bound the emigrant
from England or the Continent to the captain of the ship on which he
sailed. The captain paid the passage of the emigrant, furnished him with
all necessary clothes, meat, drink, and lodging during the voyage, and
then sold his time and labor on the ship's arrival in port. People went to
the colonies in this way by the thousands and were to be found in every
colony including the West Indies, although Georgia seems to have had on
the whole very few. They were of all nationalities, but Germans, Swiss,
English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh predominated, with an occasional
Frenchman. Probably the largest number were Germans, for the majority of
those who came over were extremely poor and had to sell their time and
that of their children to pay for their passage. Such methods continued
for many years even after the Revolution.
"sell " and " sold," though used merely in the sense of binding to
service, have been carefully erased by an outraged and uninformed
descendant and the seemingly less invidious terms " hire " and "hired "
inserted in their place. German servants were shipped from Rotterdam, and
British from Gravesend and other ports. To prevent enticing or kidnapping,
all servants were registered before sailing and sometimes, as at Bristol,
where the mayor and aldermen interfered, the ship was searched before
sailing, the passengers were ordered ashore, and all who wished were
released. When the vessel reached its American destination, word was
spread or an advertisement was inserted in the newspapers saying that the
indentures of a certain number of servants, men, women, and children, were
available, and then the bargaining went on either aboard the ship or on
shore at some convenient point to which the servants were taken. Such
selling of indentures took place at all ports of entry from Boston to
Charleston and gave rise to a brutal class of men popularly known as "soul
drivers," who "made it their business to go on board all ships who have in
either servants or convicts and buy sometimes the whole and sometimes a
parcel of them as they can agree, and then they drive them through the
country like a parcel of sheep, until they can sell them to advantage."
(Harrower's " Diary," American Historical Review, vol. p. 77.)
The men thus disposed of for four to seven years, ranged from sixteen to
forty years of age, and brought from sixteen to twenty-four pounds. Children began the period
of their service sometimes at the early age of ten. The abilities of these
imported servants varied greatly: many were laborers, others were artisans
and tradesmen, and a few were trained workmen possessed of exceptional
skill. Among them were dyers, tailors, upholsterers, weavers, joiners,
carpenters, cabinetmakers, barbers, shoemakers, peruke makers,
whitesmiths, braziers, blacksmiths, coachmen, gentlemen's servants,
gardeners, bakers, house waiters, schoolteachers, and even doctors and
surgeons. Many could fence or could perform on some musical instrument,
and one is described as professing "dancing, fencing, writing, arithmetic,
drawing of pictures, and playing of legerdemain or slight of hand tricks."
Benjamin Harrower, who served in America as clerk, bookkeeper, and
schoolmaster, was an indentured servant, and so was Henry Callister, a
Manxman, who was an assistant to the merchant Robert Morris, of Oxford,
Maryland, and whose account books, preserved in the Maryland Diocesan
Library, are today such a valuable source of information. Many of these
servants were well-born but for offenses or for other reasons had to leave
England: Jean Campbell, for instance, was related "to the very best
families in Ayrshire"; William Gardner was the son of a Shropshire
gentleman; John Keef claimed to have been an officer in the British Army;
William Stevens and Thomas Lloyd of Virginia, who wrote home with regret
of their former "follies," were evidently of good families; while the
"light finger'd damsel" who ransacked the baggage of William Byrd, 2d, was
a baronet's daughter sent to America as an incorrigible. Doubtless there
were many such, though the total number could hardly have been large
enough to affect the general statement that the indentured servant was of
humble origin.
Many of these servants came over with the expectation that relatives or
friends would redeem them, and in cases where these hopes were not
realized the captain would advertise that unless some one appeared to pay
the money the men or women would be sold. The indenture was looked upon as
property which could even be bought by more than one purchaser, each of
whom had a proportionate right to the servant's time, which could be sold,
leased, and bequeathed by will, and which in the case of the sale or lease
of a farm or plantation could be transferred to the buyer or tenant.
Sometimes a colony, through the Governor, would buy the time of white
servants for service in the militia or for work on the defenses of the
province. It not infrequently happened that a master allowed a servant to
exercise his trade at large through the colony, as in the case of Stephen
Tinoe, a servant of one of the Virginia planters, who had dancing schools
at Hampton, Yorktown, and Williamsburg, but who handed over to his master
all the money which he received for his instruction. When the time named
in the indenture expired, the servant became free, and the master was
obliged to furnish him with a suit of clothes and to pay certain "freedom
dues. " There are many instances of servants bringing suit in the courts
and contending that their masters were keeping them beyond their lawful
time or had failed to give them their perquisites.
Inevitably under such a system the lot of the servants became very hard as
the years passed and their status for the period of their service grew to
be little better than that of slaves. While in the North they were usually
treated with kindness and their position was not as irksome as it was in
the South, yet in Maryland, Virginia, and the West Indies they suffered
much abuse and degradation. William Randal of Maryland said in 1755 that
the colony was a hard one for servants to live in, and Elizabeth Sprigs
wrote of "toiling day and night, and then tied up and whipped to that
degree you would not beat an animal, scarce anything but Indian corn and
salt to eat and that even begrudged." Governor Mathew of the Leeward
Islands spoke of them as "poorly cladd, hard fedd, a worse state than a
common soldier." As early as 1716 these indentured servants were called
runaway thieves, disorderly persons, renegadoes, a loose sort of people,
cheap and useless, and were said to grow more and more lazy, indolent, and
impudent. Even in the North the later arrivals were deemed greatly
inferior to those of the earlier years — a falling off which one observer
ascribed to the want of good land wherewith to attract the better sort who
desired to become farmers after serving their time.
There is no doubt that indentured servants in general made very poor
laborers. The Irish Roman Catholics especially were feared and disliked
and were not bought if others could be obtained. It is not to be wondered
at that indentured servants were continually running away. The newspapers,
North and South, were full of advertisements for the fugitives, describing
their features, their clothes, and whatever they carried, for many of them
made off with anything they could lay their hands on — horses, guns,
household goods, clothing, and money. All sorts of laws were made,
particularly in the South, to control these indentured servants. Should
they absent themselves from service without permission, they had to remain
so many days longer in bondage; should they run away, they were liable to
be whipped and to have their time extended; should a female servant have a
child, she was punished and the master of the child's father was required
to pay for the time lost by the mother. In Virginia a freed servant was
obliged to have a ticket or certificate of freedom and if found without
one was liable to arrest and imprisonment.
In addition to indentured servants there were also apprentices, usually
children bound out to a master, until they were of age, by their poor
parents to serve at some lawful employment or to learn a trade. There was
nothing, however, to hinder a servant, or even a negro, from being bound
out as an apprentice. Colonial apprenticeship, except in its educational
features, was simply the system of England transferred to America, and the
early indentures, of which there are copies extant for nearly all the
colonies, were almost word for word the same as those of the mother
country. Such apprenticeship was more than merely a form of labor; it was
also a method of educating the poor and of implanting good morals. The
apprentice on the one hand was bound to serve his master faithfully and to
avoid taverns, alehouses, playhouses, unlawful games, and illicit amours;
and the master on the other hand was obliged to provide his apprentice
with food and lodging and to teach him to read and write and in the case
of a doctor "to dismiss said apprentice with good skill in arithmetic,
Latin and also in the Greek through the Greek Grammer. "¹ A girl
apprentice was to be taught "housewifery, knitting, spinning, sewing, and
such like exercises as may be fitting and becoming her sex." At the end of
the apprenticeship, the master was expected to give his apprentice two
suits of clothes as a perquisite; but in the case of one girl he gave a
cow, and of another "two suits of wearing apparel, one for Sunday and one
for weekly labor, with two pairs of hose and shoes,
Working one's passage to the medical profession was the only way in which
a medical education could be obtained in America at this time. The first
hospital, at Philadelphia, was not founded until 1751, and the first
medical school, also at Philadelphia, not until 1765, and admission to
that required a year's apprenticeship in a doctor's office
two hoods or hats, or such headgear as may be comely and convenient, with
all necessary linen." Sometimes an apprentice was scarcely to be
distinguished from an indentured servant, as for instance when a minor
bound himself to serve until a debt was paid off. Apprenticeship proved a
useful sort of service in the colonies, for, though it was at times much
abused and both masters and apprentices complained that the contracts were
not carried out, it trained good workmen and satisfied a real need.
Though originally in quite a different position, the transported prisoner
was in much the same condition as the servant and apprentice, for he too
was a laborer bound to service without pay for a given number of years.
Persons transported for religious or political reasons were few in number
as compared with the convicts sent from Newgate and other British prisons
and known as " transports, " "seven year passengers, " and "King's
prisoners." Not less than forty thousand of these convicts were sent
between the years 1717 and 1775 to the colonies, chiefly to Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Virginia, and the West Indies. Some were transported for seven
years, some for fourteen, and some for life, and though the colonies
protested and those most nearly concerned passed laws against the
practice, the need of labor was so great that convicts continued to be
received and were sometimes even smuggled across the borders of the
colony. Determined to get rid of an undesirable social element, England
hoped in this way to lessen the number of executions at home and to turn
to good account the skill and physical strength of able-bodied men and
women. When a certain Englishman argued in favor of transporting felons
for the purpose of reforming them, Franklin is said to have retaliated by
suggesting the reformation of American rattlesnakes by sending them to
England.
As convicts were often transported for very slight offenses, it is stated
that, at times when conditions were very bad in the mother country, the
starving poor, rather than continue to suffer, would commit trifling
thefts for which transportation was the penalty. Thus though there were
many who were confirmed criminals, those who had been merely petty
offenders were distinctly advantageous to the colonies as artisans and
laborers. Men and women alike were transported either in regular merchant
ships or in vessels specially provided by contractors, who were paid by
the Government from three to five pounds a head. Besides the ordinary
passengers, indentured servants and convicts were frequently on the same
ship and would be advertised for sale at the same time. Before the voyage
was over, however, exciting things sometimes happened: one case is on
record where the convicts mutinied, killed captain and ship's company, and
sailed away on a piratical cruise; and another mutiny was foiled by
shooting the ringleaders. On arrival at port the convict's time was sold
exactly as was that of the indentured servant, and on the plantations both
worked side by side with the negro. At the expiration of his term of
service the convict was free to acquire land or to work as a hired
laborer. As a rule, however, he preferred to return to England, where he
frequently fell again into evil ways and was transported a second time to
America.
The story is told of a barrister who had been caught stealing books from
college libraries in Cambridge and had been sentenced to transportation
without the privilege of returning to England. Though it was customary for
the commoner sort of prisoners to be conducted on foot, with a sufficient
guard, from Newgate to Blackfriars Stairs, whence they were carried in a
closed lighter to the ship at Blackwall, this barrister and four other
prisoners, including an attorney, a butcher, and a member of a noble
family, were allowed to ride in hackney coaches with their keepers.
Because the five were able to pay for their passage, they were treated on
board ship with marks of respect and distinction. While the felons of
inferior note were immediately put under hatches and confined in the hold
of the ship, the five privileged malefactors were conveyed to the cabin
which they were to have for the duration of the voyage. "It is supposed,"
says the narrator, "that as soon as they land they will be set at liberty,
instead of being sold as felons usually are, and that thus a criminal who
has money may blunt the edge of justice and make that his happiness which
the law designs as his punishment."
Though many convicts became useful laborers and farmers, others were a
continual nuisance and even danger to the colonists. They ran away,
committed robberies, — "poor unhappy wretches who cannot leave off their
old trade, " they are called —turned highwaymen, set houses on fire,
engaged in counterfeiting, and were guilty even of murder. In the West
Indies they corrupted the negroes and lured them off on piratical
expeditions. Governor Hunter wrote from Jamaica in 1731 that people who
had been accustomed to sleep with their doors open were obliged, since the
arrival of the convicts, "to keep watches on their counting and store
houses, " since several robberies had recently been committed. Many were
caught and imprisoned; others, when convicted a second time, were hanged.
The convicts were an ill-featured crew, often pockmarked, sly and cunning,
and garbed in all sorts of nondescript clothing, and whether at home or at
large their evil propensities and uncleanly habits, together with their
proneness to contagious diseases and jail fever, made them a menace to
masters and communities alike.
Negroes, the mainstay of labor on the plantations of the South and the
West Indies, differed from indentured servants in that their bodies as
well as their time and labor were bartered and sold. Though the servant's
loss of liberty was temporary, that of the negro was perpetual. Yet in the
seventeenth century negroes were viewed in the light of servants rather
than of slaves, and it is noteworthy how rarely the word "slave" was used
in common parlance at that early period. But by the eighteenth century
perpetual servitude had become the rule. Indeed, so essential did it
become that before long few indentured servants were to be found on the
tobacco plantations and rice fields of the South, for their places had
been everywhere taken by the negroes. Though in Maryland, Virginia, and
North Carolina the whites outnumbered the blacks two or three times to
one, in South Carolina and the West Indies the reverse was the case, for
there the blacks outnumbered the whites ten and twenty fold.
The negroes came from the western coast of Africa, north as far as
Senegambia and south as far as Angola, where lay the factories and "
castles " of those engaged in the trade. For Great Britain the business of
buying negroes was in the hands of the Royal African Company until 1698,
when the monopoly was broken and the trade was thrown open to private
firms and individual dealers who controlled the bulk of the business in
the eighteenth century. The independent traders were both British and
colonial — the former from London, Bristol, and Liverpool, the latter from
Boston, Newport, New York, Charleston, and other seaports — who brought
their negroes direct from Africa or bought them in the West Indies for
sale in the colonies. The voyage of a slaver was a dangerous and gruesome
experience, and the "Guinea captains," as they were called, were often
truculent, inhuman characters.
The negroes were obtained either at the African Company's factories or
from the native chiefs and African slave drivers in exchange for all sorts
of cloths, stuffs, hardware, ammunition, and for rum of inferior quality
made especially for this trade. The slaves were taken to America chained
between decks during the passage, a treatment so brutal that many died or
committed suicide on the voyage. In such close and unhealthy confinement
epidemics were frequent, and diseases were so often communicated to the
white sailors that the mortality on board was usually high — ordinarily
from five to ten per cent and sometimes running to more than thirty under
particularly unfavorable circumstances. Many cases are recorded of
uprisings in which whole crews were murdered and captains and mates
tortured and mutilated in revenge for their cruelty.
Male negroes from fifteen to twenty years of age were most in demand,
because women were physically less capable and the older negroes were more
inclined to moroseness and suicide. Those from the Gold Coast, Windward
Coast, and Angola were as a rule preferred, because they were healthier,
bigger, and more tractable; those from Gambia were generally rated
inferior, though opinions differed on this point; and those from Calabar,
if over seventeen, were not desired because they were given to melancholy
and self-destruction. All were brought over naked, but they often received
clothing before their arrival, partly for decency's sake and partly for
protection against the cold and the water coming through the decks. Some
prejudice existed against negroes from the West Indies who spoke English,
because they were believed to be great rogues and less amenable to
discipline than were the American-born, who always brought higher prices
because they could stand the climate and were used to plantation work.
In the North, at Boston and Newport, the negroes were sold directly to the
purchaser by the captain or owner, or else were disposed of through the
medium of advertisements and intelligence offices. But in Virginia and
South Carolina they were more frequently sold in batches to the local
merchants, by whom they were bartered singly or in groups of two or three,
to the planters for tobacco, rice, indigo, or cash. They were frequently
taken to fairs, which were a favorite place for selling slaves. Probably
the most active market in the colonies, however, was at Charleston, where
many firms were engaged in the Guinea business, either on their own
account or as agents for British houses. Henry Laurens, a "negro merchant"
from 1748 to 1762, has given in his letters an admirable account of the
way in which negroes were handled in that city. Planters sometimes came
seventy miles to purchase slaves and "were so mad after them that some of
them went to loggerheads and bid so upon each other that some very fine
men sold for £300" in colonial currency, or £40 sterling. "Some of the
buyers went to collaring each other and would have come to blows," and,
adds Laurens, by the number of purchasers he saw in town he judged that a
thousand slaves would not have supplied their wants. Every effort was made
to prevent the spread of disease, and vessels with plagues on board were
often quarantined or the negroes removed to pens to guard against
contagion. In spite of this, however, many negroes arrived " disordered "
or " meager, " with sore eyes and other ailments. Those that were healthy
and not too small were kept in pens or yards until brought to the auction
block. The amount for which they were sold depended on the state of the
crops and the price of rice and indigo.
As soon as the negroes were purchased, they were taken to the plantation
and put to work in the tobacco, rice, and indigo fields or were employed
about the house at tasks of a more domestic character. In the North they
served as household servants or on the farm, clearing the woods and
cultivating lands. Some were coachmen, boatmen, sailors, and porters in
shops and warehouses. As many of them became in time skillful shoemakers,
coopers, masons, and blacksmiths, they not only did the heavier work
incident to these crafts but at the same time became something of a
financial asset to their owners, who hired them out to other planters,
contractors, and even the Government, and then pocketed the wages
themselves. In Newport hired slaves aided in building the Jewish
synagogue; in Williamsburg the slaves of Thomas Jones made shoes for
people of the town; and in Charleston large numbers of slaves were
employed to work on the fortifications. They had their own quarters to
live in, both on the plantations and in certain sections of the towns, and
even the domestic servants, commonly in the South and occasionally in the
North, had shanties of their own. The clothing which the slaves wore was
always coarse in texture; their bedding was scanty, merely coarse covers
or cheap blankets bought specially for the purpose; and their food
consisted of corn bread, ash cake, rice, beans, bacon, beef on rare
occasions, butter, and milk.
The slaves in domestic service were well cared for, and Laurens once said
that his negroes were "as happy as slavery will admit of; none run away
and the greatest punishment to a defaulter is to sell him. " Van Cortlandt
of New York offered for sale a valuable negro woman who had been in his
family a number of years and could do all kinds of work. "I would not take
two hundred pounds for her," he wrote, "if it were not for her impudence;
but she is so intorabel saucy to her mistress. " Thomas Jones once wrote
to his wife: "Our family is in as much disorder with our servants as when
you left it and worse, Venus being so incorigable in her bad habits and
her natural ill disposition that there will be no keeping her " ; and
later he added: "There is no dependence on negroes without somebody
continually to follow them. " Dr. McSparran records in his diary how he
was obliged to whip his negroes and how even his wife, "my poor passionate
dear, " gave them a lash or two. On the other hand in many instances the
devotion of negro servants to their masters, mistresses, and the children
of the family is well attested, and many were freed for their continued
good service and faithful loyalty.
They had their pleasures, were fond of dancing and music, attained
considerable skill as dancing masters and players on the fiddle and French
horn, and in South Carolina were even allowed to carry guns and hunt
provided their masters obtained tickets or licenses for them.
The field hands suffered from their condition more than did those who
served on the place or in the house. The work which they had to do was
heavier and more exhausting, and the treatment which they received was far
less kindly and considerate. For the cruelty to negroes the overseers were
largely responsible, though the planters themselves were not exempt from
blame. In the case of a master murdered by his slaves, the opinion was
widely expressed that, as he had shown no mercy to them, he could expect
none himself. Whipping to death was a not uncommon punishment, and in one
case an overseer and his assistant in Virginia were hanged for this
offense as murder. A South Carolinian who killed a negro "in a sudden heat
of passion" was fined fifty pounds, and Quincy reports that in the same
colony, though to steal a negro was punishable by death, to kill him was
only finable, no matter how wanton the act might be. Many illustrations
could be given of cruel treatment — such as suspension over a sharpened
peg in the floor as a means of extracting a secret, or scraping the back
with a currycomb and rubbing salt into the wounds, a procedure known as
"pickling" — but the list is too long and harrowing. It is recorded that a
negro who took part in the New York uprising of 1712 was hanged alive in
chains. A negro who committed arson or who killed another negro was
ordinarily hanged and quartered. One who murdered his master or mistress
was burned at the stake, for such murder was construed as petty treason.
In Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North and South
Carolina, and the West Indies negroes were burned alive for various
crimes. In one South Carolina case, the negro who was burned had set fire
to the town on a windy night. Negroes were castrated for rape; one for
attempted assault on a white child was whipped around the town at a cart's
tail; and another for a lesser crime was sentenced to be "whipped and
pickled around Charles Town square. "
Negroes were almost as frequent runaways as were the convicts and
indentured servants. If they resisted when caught, they (in South Carolina
at least) might be shot about the breech with small or swan shot. They
were put in jail with felons and debtors or in the workhouse, where they
were " corrected " at fifteen shillings a week and returned to their
masters. They frequently fled to the back country or attempted to escape
to sea by passing themselves off to the captains of ships as free negroes.
Miscegenation was probably very common. Instances of white women giving
birth to black children, and of white men living with colored women are
rare but nevertheless are occasionally met with. Joseph Pendarvis of
Charleston left his property to his children by a negro woman, Parthenia,
"who had lived with him for many years," and the will may be seen today
among the records of the probate court of Charleston. Indeed so scandalous
did such illicit intercourse become in South Carolina, that the grand jury
of 1743 presented the "too common practice of criminal conversation with
negro and other slave wenches as an enormity and evil of general
ill-consequence," and Quincy bears witness to the prevalence of this
practice when he says that it was "far from uncommon to see a gentleman at
dinner and his reputed offspring a slave to the master of the table."
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