We begin our look at the cultivation of tobacco with slaves in Late Colonial Virginia by focusing on the transition from the white indentured cash crop labor force to the hereditary African-descent cultivation of tobacco. “Tobacco and Slaves” studies the formation of the slave-plantation society in the Chesapeake, “Motives of Honor, Pleasure & Profit” explains the evolution of tobacco plantation management, and “Foul Means” describes the steps a small group of gentry used to alter the land use policies and labor statutes of Virginia to establish the race-based slave labor system to benefit themselves.
The “Baptism of Virginia” explains how, despite resistance, large slave-holders separated baptism from the legal grounds for manumission. “Slave Counterpoint” contrasts the slave cultures found in the Chesapeake and in the Low Country. “From Calabar to Carter’s Grove” studies slave culture in a case study of 90 Africans and their descendants over 150 years, as well as the acculturation of three language groups of imported African slaves at Carter’s Grove.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Early and Late Colonial Era (1600-1763). General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Tobacco and Slaves
Allan Kulikoff wrote Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 in 1986. It is now available on Kindle and online new in paperback. Kulikoff explores the formation of the slave-plantation society in the Colonial Chesapeake from settlement through the presidential election of Thomas Jefferson. There is a three pronged genesis of an emerging nineteenth century South where a planter dominated social structure regenerates itself at each stage of frontier expansion.
While kinship ties with yeomanry mitigated extreme class divisions, the gentry dominated, whether spendthrift tidewater barons on exhausted lands, or new land investors in the Piedmont. At the same time, with increased longevity and fewer imported Africans, African Americans developed their own domestic culture, especially on larger and mid-sized plantations accounting for perhaps 70% of the enslaved population.
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Motives of Honor, Pleasure and Profit
Walsh, Lorena S. Motives of Honor, Pleasure, & Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607–1763 in 2010. It is now available from the University of North Carolina Press and online new and used. Walsh details the early 1600s cultivation of tobacco by small and mid-sized farmers with indentured servants through the 1670s transition to hereditary African slavery to the large plantation consolidations of land grabbing and political power that reached a culmination in the “golden age” of Virginia tobacco gentry that lasted from 1730 into the 1760s.
The largest business expenditure for planters was labor supervision and management by overseers. They learned to improve profits by penning tobacco fields for livestock fertilization and diversifying both crops and markets. The workday for slaves in growing seasons was extended from ten hours a day to fifteen hours a day.
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Foul Means
Anthony S. Parent, Jr. wrote Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660–1740 in 2003. It is available on Kindle and online new in paperback. Parent argues that racial slavery came as an innovation in the royal colony of Virginia by “deliberate, odious and foul” means authored by a small, closely held planter class. They grabbed Indian and their farmer debtor lands, substituted black slaves for white indentured laborers, thwarted attempts at land reform and perpetuated their gains by entailed estates.
Slaves resisted most dramatically in the Chesapeake rebellion of 1730, whites in the bi-racial Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. The institution of slavery exacerbated class and racial conflict, it did not end social strife. Slave unrest and violence became endemic in Virginia, perpetuating endless planter fears of slave flight, insurrection and domestic violence.
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The Baptism of Virginia
Rebecca Goetz wrote The Baptism of Virginia: How Christianity Created Race in 2012. It is now available from the John Hopkins Press in paperback, on Kindle and online new and used. Ango-Virginians began the 1600s practicing policies founded on the belief in the universality of the Christian religion and the superiority of their Protestant practice of it. The English themselves had once been heathen who then became converts and practitioners of its civilization. Many clergy such as Morgan Godwyn continued to advocate for education and baptism for both Native and African Americans.
But by 1700 a vast majority of Anglo-Virginians saw both as “hereditary heathens” who were incompetent to receive baptism. Especially Catholic slaves from the Congo successfully sued for their freedom from 1640 into the 1660s. The Virginia planters successfully enacted a statute in 1667 that specified that baptism did not alter the condition of hereditary enslavement. Other Anglo-Atlantic colonies such as Barbados and Bermuda enacted similar statutes. As a part of the exclusion of people of color, other Protestants such as the Presbyterians came to be legally tolerated.
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Slave Counterpoint
Philip Morgan wrote Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry in 1998. It is now available as an eTextbook and online new in paperback. Morgan studies two centers of black life in North America from 1670 to 1800 containing nearly three-quarters of the black population in 1776. The Chesapeake and Lowcountry cultivated different staple crops, tobacco leading to more material prosperity among slaves, rice leading to a more definitive culture. Both places were influenced by complex interactions among masters and blacks, blacks and “plain” whites, both socially and economically.
The interior lives of slaves developed a vibrant culture distinct from both European and African cultures. While circumscribed by slavery, whether patriarchal or paternal, Morgan sees the creation of a coherent culture the most significant achievement in resisting slavery due to its breadth, depth and persistence.
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From Calabar to Carter’s Grove
Lorena S. Walsh wrote From Calabar to Carter’s Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community in 1997. It is now available online new and used. This is a multigenerational study of African American community building under the restrictions of slavery for over 150 years. It illuminates the intersection of African, English, and Creole society from the 1660s to 1830 when the families being traced are dispersed. The Burwell family was heirs to Nathaniel Bacon’s estate of ninety slaves. They kept slave families in tact by entailing slaves to the land they worked, so as estate was passed from son to son, the community remained intact.
By the mid-1700s, the slaves had been removed to Carter’s Grove of King Carter fame, and their number was increased by 1720 purchases of African slaves out of the Nigerian port of Calabar. These newcomers were embraced by the African American creole plantation society. They included members from at least three language groups of the Niger River delta, the Bight of Biafra and Angola. Walsh analyzes the transformations of their migration, plantation integration and conversion to Christianity.
Learn more to buy “From Calabar to Carter’s Grove” from Amazon.com.
Note: Insights for these reviews are include those taken from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.