Table Of ContentAfrican Americans in the Colonial Era
TheAmericanHistorySeries
Abbott,CarlUrbanAmericaintheModernAge:1920tothePresent,2ded.
Aldridge,DanielW.BecomingAmerican:TheAfricanAmericanQuestforCivilRights,1861–1976
Barkan,ElliottRobertAndStillTheyCome:ImmigrantsandAmericanSociety,1920stothe1990s
Bartlett,IrvingH.TheAmericanMindintheMid-NineteenthCentury,2ded.
Beisner,RobertL.FromtheOldDiplomacytotheNew,1865–1900,2ded.
Blaszczyk,ReginaLeeAmericanConsumerSociety,1865–2005:FromHearthtoHDTV
Borden,MortonPartiesandPoliticsintheEarlyRepublic,1789–1815
Carpenter,RogerM.“TimesAreAlteredwithUs”:AmericanIndiansfromFirstContacttotheNew
Republic
Carter,PaulA.TheTwentiesinAmerica,2ded.
Cherny,RobertW.AmericanPoliticsinTheGildedAge,1868–1900
Conkin,PaulK.TheNewDeal,3ded.
Doenecke,JustusD.,andJohnE.WilzFromIsolationtoWar,1931–1941,4thed.
Ferling,JohnStruggleforaContinent:TheWarsofEarlyAmerica
Ginzberg,LoriD.WomeninAntebellumReform
Griffin,C.S.TheFermentofReform,1830–1860
Hess,GaryR.TheUnitedStatesatWar,1941–45,3ded.
Iverson,Peter,andWadeDavies“WeAreStillHere”:AmericanIndianssince1890,2ded.
James,D.Clayton,andAnneSharpWellsAmericaandtheGreatWar,1914–1920
Kraut,AlanM.TheHuddledMasses:TheImmigrantinAmericanSociety,1880–1921,2ded.
Levering,RalphB.TheColdWar:APost–ColdWarHistory,3ded.
Link,ArthurS.andRichardL.McCormickProgressivism
Martin,JamesKirby,andMarkEdwardLender“ARespectableArmy”:TheMilitaryOriginsofthe
Republic,1763–1789,3ded.
McCraw,ThomasK.AmericanBusinesssince1920:HowItWorked,2ded.
McMillen,SallyG.SouthernWomen:BlackandWhiteintheOldSouth,2ded.
Neu,CharlesE.America’sLostWar:Vietnam,1945–1975
Newmyer,R.KentTheSupremeCourtunderMarshallandTaney,2ded.
Niven,JohnTheComingoftheCivilWar,1837–1861
O’Neill,WilliamL.TheNewLeft:AHistory
Pastorello,KarenTheProgressives:ActivismandReforminAmericanSociety,1893–1917
Perman,MichaelEmancipationandReconstruction,2ded.
Porter,GlennTheRiseofBigBusiness,1860–1920,3ded.
Reichard,GaryW.AmericanPoliticssince1968:DeadlockandDisillusionment
Reichard,GaryW.PoliticsasUsual:TheAgeofTrumanandEisenhower,2ded.
Remini,RobertV.TheJacksonianEra,2ded.
Riess,StevenA.SportinIndustrialAmerica,1850–1920,2ded.
Simpson,BrooksD.America’sCivilWar
Southern,DavidW.TheProgressiveEraandRace:ReactionandReform,1900–1917
Storch,RandiWorkingHardfortheAmericanDream:WorkersandTheirUnions,WorldWarItothe
Present
Turner,ElizabethHayesWomenandGenderintheNewSouth,1865–1945
Ubbelohde,CarlTheAmericanColoniesandtheBritishEmpire,1607–1763,2ded.
Weeks,Philip“Farewell,MyNation”:TheAmericanIndianandtheUnitedStatesinTheNineteenth
Century,2ded.
Wellock,ThomasR.PreservingtheNation:TheConservationandEnvironmentalMovements,1870–2000
Winkler,AllanM.HomeFrontU.S.A.:AmericaduringWorldWarII,3ded.
Wright,DonaldR.AfricanAmericansintheColonialEra:FromAfricanOriginsthroughtheAmerican
Revolution,3ded.
African Americans
in the Colonial Era:
From African Origins
through the American
Revolution
Fourth Edition
Donald R. Wright
Thisfourtheditionfirstpublished2017
©2017JohnWiley&Sons,Inc.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ForDoris
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments / ix
Introduction / 1
Chapter One: AtlanticOrigins / 7
AtlanticAfrica / 11
TheAtlanticTrade / 23
TheSlavingVoyage / 47
Chapter Two: DevelopmentofSlaveryinMainland
NorthAmerica / 64
TheChesapeake / 68
TheLowCountry / 82
TheLowerMississippi / 96
NewEnglandandtheMiddleColonies / 101
SlaveryandRacialPrejudice / 110
Chapter Three: African-AmericanCulture / 117
AfricansinAmerica / 119
Demography,Community,andCulture / 124
TheDailyToil / 133
Family / 146
Religion / 151
vii
viii Contents
FolkCulture / 157
WhitesandBlacks,MenandWomen,Humanityand
Inhumanity / 169
Resistance,Escape,Rebellion,andSuicide / 174
Chapter Four: TheRevolutionaryEra / 185
SlaveryandIdeology / 187
FreedomforSome / 195
ChangingAfrican-AmericanSociety / 206
TheFoundationsofCaste / 227
SecuringtheBlessingsofLiberty / 232
Epilogue / 236
BibliographicalEssay / 240
Index / 289
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An exceptional group of historiansperformed the careful investi-
gation,livedwiththeprimarysources,andwrotethestudiesover
thelasthalfcenturythatmakethissynthesispossible.Itwouldbe
a mistake for one to read this book without examining its Biblio-
graphical Essay and noticing the wealth of outstanding historical
study upon which it is based. As always, my biggest debt, by far,
istotheauthorsofthesebooksandarticles.
As with each of the previous editions, Andrew J. Davidson
was instrumental in this book’s coming into being. For a quarter
ofacentury,Andrewhasgivenmeconfidence,inspiration,careful
editing,andclosefriendship,andfortheseIamgrateful.Mywife
Doris has given me these, too, and some other stuff. This book is
forher.
ix
INTRODUCTION
When I began writing the first edition of this book in the late
1980s,studyofthelivesofAfricanAmericansinslaverywasout
of temporal and geographical balance. Chattel slavery existed as
a legal institution in this country for about two hundred years,
roughlyfromthemiddleoftheseventeenthcenturytothemiddle
of the nineteenth century. Most of that time—about two-thirds
of it—was the colonial period of American history. From before
1650toafter1790,slaverywasaviableinstitutiononplantations
and smaller farms around the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and
Maryland;throughoutthecoastalLowCountryofSouthCarolina
and Georgia; along the lower Mississippi River; and in cities
and some rural areas of New England, New York, New Jersey,
Delaware,andPennsylvania.Inonlythelastfiftyyearsofitsexis-
tence in this country did slavery move into the lands of the Deep
South and undergo a switch from use predominately in tobacco
andriceproductiontothatofcotton,astheinstitutiondisappeared
north of the Pennsylvania–Maryland border and the Ohio River.
YetthefocusofthestudyofAmericanslavery—andindeedofthe
historyofallAfricanAmericansbeforetheCivilWar—backtothe
AfricanAmericansintheColonialEra:FromAfricanOriginsthroughthe
AmericanRevolution,FourthEdition.DonaldR.Wright.
©2017JohnWiley&Sons,Inc.Published2017byJohnWiley&Sons,Inc.
1
2 Introduction
time of Ulrich B. Phillips’s American Negro Slavery (1918) had
beenontheinstitutionasitoperatedintheCottonSouthbetween
1830 and 1860. As late as the 1980s, the best-known books on
slavery or slave society in America were Kenneth Stampp’s The
Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (1956),
JohnBlassingame’sTheSlaveCommunity:PlantationLifeinthe
Antebellum South (1972), and Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan,
Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1972), each an examination of
antebellumslaverywithitscenterintheDeepSouth.
Naturally, this skewed the nation’s image of slavery. When
considering the subject, most Americans thought of enormous
plantationsinAlabamaorMississippi;ofblackmen,women,and
children living in quarters resembling small villages; of slaves
working in gangs picking cotton; and of their efforts to escape
towardthefreestatesintheNorth.Allofthesewereconceptsper-
tinent to the situation in the middle of the nineteenth century, but
theydidnotreflectthelivesofAfricanAmericansduringthetwo
hundredyears before the Cotton Kingdom. Thus, the first edition
of this book was an effort to right this imbalance by examining
the experience of African Americans throughout the colonial era
inallofEngland’smainlandNorthAmericancolonies.
Tenyearslater,whenthebook’ssecondeditionappeared,the
imbalance was no longer so great. Not only in textbooks, which
hadcomealongway,butalsoinsuchelaboratetelevisionproduc-
tions as the six-hour Africans in America, which aired on PBS in
1998, the experience of persons of African descent in America’s
earliest centuries began to get its due. This allowed the second
edition of this book to have less of a corrective tone and, follow-
ingnewscholarship,toemphasizehowslaverydifferedregionally
andtemporallyoverthecolonialperiodandtooffergreaterdetail
onthelivesoftheAfricansandAfricanAmericans,inandoutof
slavery,wholivedthroughtheperiod.
The second edition also appeared at a time when historians
were beginning to view the past through a wider lens. For early
