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RELIGIOUS JUSTIFICATION OF PURITAN SLAVERY;
HOW RELIGION SHAPED THE CREATION OF SLAVERY INSTITUTION AND LIVES OF

RELIGIOUS JUSTIFICATION OF PURITAN SLAVERY; HOW RELIGION SHAPED THE CREATION OF SLAVERY AND LIVES OF BLACKS AND NATIVES IN SEVENTEENTH- EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NEW ENGLAND
Graduate School of Economics and Social Sciences

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ABSTRACT
RELIGIOUS JUSTIFICATION OF PURITAN SLAVERY; HOW RELIGION SHAPED THE CREATION OF SLAVERY AND LIVES OF BLACKS AND NATIVES IN SEVENTEENTH- EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NEW ENGLAND


This study examines the role of religion in the participation of Puritan societies in Trans-Atlantic slavery, specifically focusing on the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The study will investigate the theological justifications used by religious leaders like John Winthrop to support slavery, and the role of religion in shaping the treatment of enslaved people in Puritan communities and then the treatment of the freed Natives and Blacks. The research will be based on the examination of colonial archives, court cases, and letters, as well as key historical texts such as John Winthrop's "A Modell of Christian Charity" and recent works on the period’ slavery like Wendy Warren's New England Bound. The study will also explore the relationship between religion, wealth, and slavery in Puritan societies, and how religious beliefs about wealth and
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salvation influenced the participation in the slave trade. Then continue on with how the lucrative business of slavery gave power and a sense of freedom to colonies and lead to a charter where the Crown took the authority back. The research will investigate the role of religion in enabling and shaping the practice of slavery in Puritan societies and provide a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between religion and slavery in colonial America by linking religious history with Trans-Atlantic slavery.
Keywords: Colonial America, New England, Puritans, Religion, Trans- Atlantic Slavery
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ÖZET
PÜRİTEN KÖLECİLİĞİNİN DİN İLE MEŞRULAŞTIRILMASI; ON YEDİNCİ- ERKEN ON SEKİZINCI YÜZYIL NEW ENGLAND`INDA DİNİN KÖLECİLİĞİ, SİYAHİ VE KIZILDERİLİ YAŞAMLARINI NASIL ŞEKİLLENDİRDİĞİ

Ağustos 2023
Bu çalışma Püriten toplulukların, özellikle Massachusetts Bay Kolonisi’nin, Trans-Atlantik Köleciliğine katılımlarında dinin rolünü incelemektedir. Bu tez, John Winthrop gibi dini liderlerin köleciliği desteklemek için kullandığı teolojik gerekçeleri, Püriten topluluklarında köleleştirilmiş insanlara yönelik davranışların din tarafından nasıl şekillendirildiğini ve sonrasında da Özgür Siyahilere ve Kızılderililere nasıl davranıldığını araştırmaktadır. Araştırma, koloni arşivlerinin, dava tutanaklarının ve mektupların incelenmesi ile beraber John Winthrop’un “A Modell Of Christian Charity” gibi önemli tarihi metinler ve Wendy Warren’ın New England Bound’ı gibi dönemin köleciliğine odaklanan daha güncel çalışmalara
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dayanarak yazılmıştır. Bu çalışma aynı zamanda dinin, zenginlik ve Püriten kolonilerindeki kölecilik ile ilişkisini araştırmanın yanı sıra zenginlik ve kurtuluş ile ilgili dini görüşlerin köle ticaretine katılmakta nasıl etkili olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır. Sonrasında tez, kazançlı bir iş yöntemi olan köleciliğin kolonilere nasıl güç ve bir nebze özgürlük hissi verdiğini ve bunun nasıl İngiltere’nin otoriteyi geri almak için Çarter yollamasına neden olduğu ile devam etmektedir. Bu araştırma Püriten toplumlarda köleciliğe din yoluyla nasıl imkan sağlandığı ve köleciliğin nasıl şekillendirildiğini araştırıp, koloni dönemi Amerikasında din ve kölecilik arasındaki bağlantıya, din tarihinin Trans-Atlantik Köleciliğiyle ilişkilendilmesini ekleyerek daha ayrıntılı bir anlatım sağlamaktadır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Din, Koloni Dönemi Amerikası, New England, Püritenler,Trans- Atlantik Kölecilik
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Firstly I would like to start off by saying thank you to my dear advisor, Kenneth Weisbrode, he helped me throughout my MA years and been nothing but a support and inspiring person. He broadened my vision both with his interesting stories and with his advises. I cannot thank him enough for the things he thought me and I will always be lucky to be able to meet with such a Professor.
I also would like to thank, Owen Miller for his support and always happy demeanor that lifts you up. He has been nothing but a lovely teacher that would go beyond to help his students. Then I would like to thank Luca Zavagno for the fact that even though his subject is not even remotely close to mine, he always been a support to me and tried to help me. He is the funniest, most easy going Professor. Moreover, a big thank you should go to Murat Erdem for guiding me to an academic life and to Bilkent.
I would like to thank my family for supporting me in every way throughout my thesis and being my rock in my life without their help or encouragements or the opportunities they provide me, I would not be able to do my MA. Thank you Mom and Dad, for everything.
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My academic friends, Oğuzcan Ünal, Burçin Aras, Eylül Çetinbaş and Kaan Gazne and my lifelong friends, Derin Aydın, Irem Özbek, Batuhan Özen and Ege Erduran, I would like to thank you all for being there for me through my studies and listening me complain while also encouraging me.
Lastly, I am grateful to Saim Anıl Karzek for being there for me throughout all of my thesis and every step of the way, I would not be able to do it without his constant support. He was my biggest supporter and fan during such a stressful time and helped me improve my academic life and my writing.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
ÖZET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
CHAPTER 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Objectives of Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Methodology and Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
CHAPTER 2: Slavery in Puritan World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1 Voyage across the Atlantic, a Small Background. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Slavery Exists in New England. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Religious Justification of Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4 Trans-Atlantic Slavery and the Creation of the Network. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
CHAPTER 3: Lives of Blacks and Natives in New England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.1 Treatment of Other Races. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.2 Converting Other Races . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3 Abolitionism in New England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
CHAPTER 4: Aftermath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1 Profit and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
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4.2 Excess of Anxieties Leads to Harsher Ways and Hysterias. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
CHAPTER 5: Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
APPENDIX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
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LIST OF FIGURES
1. New England and the Atlantic World in Late 17th Century, Wendy Warren “New England Bound”……….. 23
2. “The Holy Bible Containing The Old Testament and The New Translated into the Indian Language,” John Eliot, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1663…….32
3. “A Modell of Christian Charity,” Cover page, New York Historical Society MS. ……..69
4. “Portrait of John Winthrop,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections Online………70
5. “Portrait of Cotton Mather,” Engraved and published Boston by Peter Pelham, 1728, Met Museum……..71
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Chapter I:
Introduction
1.1. Objectives of Thesis
In this thesis, the religious ideas of Puritans, a sect that believed in the purification of the Anglican Church and moved to New England to be able to practice their religion freely and to live their lives according to ecclesiastical laws; were used to justify slavery and shape their treatment of other races, Blacks and Natives both in enslavement and in their freedom. The thesis will specifically focus on the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as it was a prototype for the rest of the New England Colonies with their success. Here it is important to note that, I will be using terms like Blacks and Natives, although these are insensitive terms, when the talk is about early seventeenth and early eighteenth century, it would be anachronism to use terms like African American or Native American as these terms did not exist in the time period, that the thesis dwells on. Also, the African descendant slaves that will be mentioned are either ‘Moors’, North African Muslims, or from Sub-Saharan Africa and when I say, Natives, it will mostly mean Massachusetts, Pequots, Pawtuckets, Wampanoag and Narrangansetts as they were some of the nations who lived in the lands that came to be known as New England. Again here, it is crucial to note although the treatment Blacks and Natives received similar treatment, their social
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standing differed from each other. The slaves’ ethnicities or where they come from did not create a big difference in their status as slaves.
Here, it will be noted that even though there was a population of indentured servants that were from African descendant, they appear more in the late eighteenth century to early nineteenth century and as in Body of Liberties, there is a clear distinction between indentured servants and enslaved people as they are seen as two separate groups,1 in the paper, the focus will be solely on the enslaved ones. Moreover while there are narratives of Natives within the colonies,2 as Puritans are the main subject of the paper, their point of views will be the focus to be able to give a concise telling of the story. Moreover as the Body of Liberties separated the two terms from each other, here it would be beneficial to mention the difference between them in terminology. While both slavery and indentured servitude were two kinds of servitude to whites in the colonies, slave meant a person which was bond to the owner for life, or in the case of Puritan slavery, chattel slavery which meant a person that can be bought, sold or inherited like an object. Indentured servants meant usually white people, who were employed by the settlers for a maximum of seven years and then achieved their freedom and a sort of payment in return for their work.
1 In Body of Liberties, the indentured servants are talked in the “Liberties of Servants” section however slaves are in "Liberties of Forreiners and Stranger” section, which showcases a clear distinction of two. Nathaniel Ward, “Massachusetts Body of Liberties,” Hanover College Department of History 1641), https://history.hanover.edu/texts/masslib.html.
2 Margeret Ellen Newell, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015) doi:10.7591/9780801456480.
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The main goal of this writing will be to examine a slavery history that has usually been overlooked and understudied until recent years, that being the participation of British Colonies. While discussing slavery, the South is usually linked with the institution of Slavery, whereas the North is portrayed as the Abolitionists as the demographic proportion of slaves was never as high as the South, and they did not have agricultural production that would require slave labor in cash crops. However, here it will be shown that even if there were a single slave in every household, it meant that settlers dwelled in slavery in the colonies and partook in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade which brought them wealth and success that they could not have achieved alone from the barren lands of New England.3 Thus they built and secured their settlements with the help of slave labor. My hypothesis will be that while the Puritan colonies used slave labor to prosper in the New World, they utilized their belief and used religious justifications to participate in the creation of a racialized slavery that in order to fit slaves and slavery into their lives, and their religion shaped the slavery that helped them grow. Moreover, as slavery studies are usually focused on Agriculture or Southern colonies, a literature review is needed to have a better grasp of slavery in the New England Colonies. As the British colonies are important in the history of the states, especially Massachusetts as it was the
3Although it is not clear exactly how much slave population was in New England. According to Warren, she claims it was somewhere between 2-10 percent of the population. Wendy Warren, New England bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.2017) 245-246.
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prototype, thus the slavery that helped them grow and survive in the New World is equally important to writing that history.
Using a biblical narrative or religious justification for slavery or seeing it as a benevolent act that helped slaves to meet with the Gospel, was not special to Puritans. What made Puritans unique was the fact that they only used a biblical justification or more correctly an Old Testament one and did not use language like “Romans had slaves, Greeks had slaves, every big society had slaves”4 which was popular in Southern Pro-Slavery Arguments. Furthermore, something which was different from the other slaveries that even though all slavery had a sense of hierarchy and seeing the enslaved lower than themselves, in the case of Puritans as they believe they were the chosen ones by God, and the rest being bound to serve them was portrayed as a given privilege to them by God, created another religiously based narrative which was unique to “people upon a hill”. However while they had their unique ways, Puritans were ultimately not different than any other slave owners. So it can be argued that their difference was the fact that this is an understudied subject and their participation in such institution is usually overlooked by the ‘Abolitionist North’ idea, which is a hypocrisy thinking that they are the one who are writing the history. Hence, why the thesis is focused on uncovering this story.
4 William Harper et al., The Pro-Slavery Argument: As Maintained by the Most Distinguished Writers of the Southern States: Containing the Several Essays on the Subject, of Chancellor Harper, Governor Hammond, Dr. Simms, and Professor Dew (Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1853) 295.
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1.2. Literature Review
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, voices against the Anglican Church`s reformation, which had made it closer to the Catholic Church in the eyes of the dissenters, started to rise, and as they were going against the mainstream beliefs, they struggled with practicing their religion freely or safely. Thus, they started to seek new places to practice their religion, or some were banished. The main protagonists of this paper, the Puritans, were a part of those opposing ones and traveled to New World, more especially to New England for their religion with the mission, covenant with God, to build a city upon a hill. However, to literally build such a city that can be successful enough to be a model, they needed labor and wealth, and this need was satisfied by slaves, Natives, and Blacks, both by using their labor force and by using them as sold commodities.
While there are documents5 from the seventeenth century on the numbers of slaves, how they were used within the community and how they were sold to the Triangular Trade, slavery in the North is an understudied object that does not get the attention that the Southern Colonies` slavery receives as most of the slavery narrative is linked with there. One of the most used works in this paper is by Wendy Warren, a
5 To learn more about the slaves in New England. See, John Winthrop, John Winthrop's Journal History of New England, 1630-1649, Ed. James Kendall Hosmer, Vol. 1- Vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908) and “Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Series 3-7.
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historian of colonial North America in 2017,6 who wrote a book to examine the untold story of New England slavery. Warren’s work is important because of her usage of archival records and documented cases to explore the economic ties of colonies with the slave trade and the existence of slavery in the settlements. Her work also showcases how the removal of Natives was crucial to the planting of the Puritan settlements and how this removal resulted in an exchange between Native slaves and Black slaves. It helps with placing the slave narrative in the North as it shows that even while slavery`s main stage is portrayed as Southern colonies in history, the roots of it actually go back to British America and Puritans. As even though the numbers of slaves were not many, almost every household owned one. Another contemporary work, Richard A. Bailey,7 a professor who works on religious convictions and racial constructions in early America, demonstrates how race was constructed within the Puritan settlements as he claims it was created when converting Natives and Blacks. This work showcased how Puritans received the enslaved races working for them, how they treated them, and how they treated the ideas of bringing them salvation while also touching on the distaste and more ‘abolitionist’ approaches to slavery, which plays a significant role in helping to map out the lives of slaves in the settlements.
While talking about the works which were written on Puritans and slavery, it would be wrong to assume it was an unknown subject prior to more recent and in-
6 Warren, New England bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America.
7 Richard A. Bailey, Race and Redemption in Puritan New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
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depth works. As in twentieth century like historians like Lorenzo J. Greene8 who wrote about the lives and situation of Blacks in New England, on which works they did, how they were treated and the slave trade while also stating how slavery as an institution played a role in the lives of Puritans, their monetary gains, and the rising numbers of ‘others’. Another expert worked on the slavery concept from the late twentieth century, Albert J. von Frank,9 who was an American Studies Professor that worked on slavery, mentioned in his work how the Puritans received the anti-slavery ideas by showing a primary source, John Saffin`s “A Brief and Candid Answer” and how they had no problems with slavery contrary to how it is usually portrayed based on the covenant of work and puritan work ethic. Furthermore, again in the same half of the century, historian Winthrop D. Jordan,10 talks about why slavery was needed in New England with evidence and how Blacks were treated from their arrival to the New World to their free days. He also discusses the slavery concept and how it came to be in New England and how it fit into the slavery or servitude ideals of England, which helps to examine the reasoning of existence in settlements while also showing how poorly they were treated even when they were needed. Lastly, to learn more about slavery in Massachusetts and learn more about Native slavery, the work of
8Lorenzo J. Greene, “Slave-Holding New England and Its Awakening,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 13, Number 4 (1928), 492-533. And Lorenzo Johnston Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England 1620-1776 (Kennikat Press, January 1,1996).
9 Albert J. Von Frank, “John Saffin: Slavery and Racism in Colonial Massachusetts,” Early American Literature 29, no. 3 (1994), 254–72, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25056983.
10 Winthrop Donaldson Jordan, White over Black. American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (reprinted), (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971).
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George H. Moore,11 a historian from the nineteenth century, will be used as his research starts with the Puritan theory and slavery concept until the Abolition and covers a great period of time and examples. As the paper will be focusing more on the Massachusetts Bay colony, to be able to understand more how it was structured and governed, the examination of John Winthrop`s doings and works, along with the primary sources, will be scrutinized through works of historians like Richard S. Dunn where he examines John Winthrop`s Journals,12 Francis J. Bremer who is also the editor of John Winthrop`s Papers, where he talks about how Winthrop shaped the structure of the society13 and Edmund S. Morgan14 who was an eminent authority in early American history, where he dives deeper into “A Modell of Christian Charitee” and explains how and why it was written, how it was made to create a bond, a sense of community between the travelers on board in Arabella. The works that are aforementioned cover the things that are similar to the subject of this paper but, most of them are focused on a singular topic as while talking about slavery, they ignore Natives and talk about Blacks only, or while they refer to the treatment of slaves, they exclude the freeing or treatment of free Blacks and Natives or when talking about the distaste on slavery, they do not include the
11 George Henry Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York , 1866), https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/notesonhistoryof00mo.
12 Richard S. Dunn, “John Winthrop Writes His Journal,” The William and Mary Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1984), 186–212, https://doi.org/10.2307/1919049 .
13 Francis J. Bremer, “John Winthrop and the Shaping of New England History” Massachusetts Historical Review (MHR) 18 (2016): 1–17, 8, https://doi.org/10.5224/masshistrevi.18.1.0001.
14 Edmund S. Morgan, “John Winthrop’s ‘Modell of Christian Charity’ in a Wider Context,” Huntington Library Quarterly 50, no. 2 (1987): 145–51, 149, https://doi.org/10.2307/3817255.
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justification of it. Thus with these works in mind, this paper aims to fill the gap in the literature and show that Puritans were slave owners and traders and used religion to justify both the enslavement of other races and the racism they had towards them.
1.3. Methodology And Sources
The main method used in this paper is a close reading of primary sources to build the historical narrative of the seventeenth century and examine and adjust the data into a historical one through inductive reasoning. As primary sources, this work predominantly uses archival information from the Massachusetts Historical Society. The private diary entries, personal letters, and published works of colonial individuals like John Winthrop, Samuel Sewall, Cotton Mather who were in higher positions and educated as regular person did not tend to keep journals and chronicles, examines the era and subject that this paper examines, were used as they talk about the ruling of the New England Colonies, the colonial lives and conditions of it and slavery or the treatment of slaves. In this study, the works of Winthrop, along with his personal letters to important figures like William Bradford and Emmanuel Downing, or Cotton Mather, John Saffin, and Samuel Sewall were used for this reason. While extracting the data to create a new approach and a historical narrative, secondary sources will be used (contemporary works examining North American slavery like Wendy Warren and Richard A. Bailey older ones from the twentieth century like Lorenzo Greene or Winthrop D. Jordan) to both examine the approaches
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that were already made and to have a better grasp of the picture, that were found from the internet or Bilkent Library`s Repository.
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Chapter II
Slavery in Puritan World
2.1. Voyage across the Atlantic, a Small Background
In the “Charter of Massachusetts Bay Colony”, it says:
And our Will and Pleasure is, and Wee doe hereby for Us, our Heires and Successors, ordeyne and graunte, That from henceforth for ever, there shalbe one Governor, one Deputy Governor, and eighteene Assistants of the same Company, to be from tyme to tyme constituted, elected and chosen out of the Freemen of the saide Company, for the twyme being, in such Manner and Forme as hereafter in theis Presents is expressed, which said Officers shall applie themselves to take Care for the best disposeing and ordering of the generall busines and Affaires of, for, and concerning the said Landes and Premisses hereby mentioned, to be graunted, and the Plantation thereof. and the Government of the People there.15
In 1625, when Charles I of England was crowned, the Puritans, which were a Calvinist group of believers, who did not support the reformation of the Anglican Church as they believed it was starting to resemble the Church of Rome and believed in the purification of the church and worship with simplicity and followed the sayings of the Old Testament. They were a significant holder of seats in the Parliament as they were educated and rich, thus holding places both in the House of Commons and Lords.16 However, while the Puritans had a sense of political power,
15 Barbara A. Moe, The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: A Primary Source Investigation into the 1629 Charter (The Rosen Pub. Group: New York, 2002), 7.
16 To see the participation of Puritans in the Parliament. See, Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, eds. “History of Parliament Online” V. The Composition of the House of Commons | History of
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with the marriage of Charles with the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France and the rising ideas of Laudianism,17 which was similar to Catholicism in the eyes of the Puritans as they both carried out ornate ceremonies and holidays, and Arminianism, which was a conflicting Protestant theological position that went against the Puritan ideas of predestination and unconditional election,18 the power they needed to achieve to be able to sustain their practice, the power over the Church or the ecclesiastical power was something they lacked. Some historians, like the professor of Early Modern History that works on the political history of England, Richard Cust, argue that Charles I was an anti-puritan which can be observed through his attitude towards them in many instances19 and with his eventual ban of Calvinism on a national basis in 1626.20 For these reasons, the Puritans wanted to move to another place where they could practice their religion freely and with a good example of Separatists, which were a Protestant sect that believed in the separation from the
Parliament Online, 2010, http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1604-1629/survey/v-composition-house-commons. 17 Laudianism was a reform in Church of England which was spread by Archbishop William Laud and rejected predestination and carried out Catholic and Lutheran influences.
18 Unconditional election or unconditional grace is a Calvinistic doctrine related to predestination where it is believed that God choose, predestined some people to achieve salvation and whatever they do, even if they sin, they will still be saved and the rest who are not chosen should and will be working to receive his grace.
19 To see his attitude towards Puritanism.See, Richard Curd, “Anti-Puritanism and Urban Politics: Charles I and Great Yarmouth,” The Historical Journal 35 (1), (Cambridge University Press, 1992): 1–26, doi:10.1017/S0018246X00025589.
20 To see more about the Puritans` practicing conditions under Charles` rule and the rise of Arminianism. See, Nicholas Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” (1973).
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English Church as they saw it corrupted just as the Puritans did,21 moving to the New World and creating Plymouth Colony, the Puritans thought the New World might be a place for them too.
One can argue that this idea took shape with John Winthrop, 22 a lawyer from a wealthy land-owning merchant family, who became interested in Puritanism in his early years. In the 1620s, when he was unhappy with the conditions of England, the corruption in the Church, and the treatment of his fellow religious brethren, he became a part of the Massachusetts Bay Company for the possibility of a new place to practice. He was aware of the colonization of the New World as his son Henry was among the few that tried to settle in Barbados in 1626. It is also important to note that in those years, he was struggling financially and trying to provide for a wife and eight kids.23 Therefore, one could argue that the wish for creating a settlement was monetary as well. After King Charles I dissolved the Parliament in 1629, the concerns of the Puritans heightened, and the Company decided to set sail for the New World and picked John Winthrop as the governor, as he was the biggest shareholder of the company. In 1629-1630, he planned a migration of about a thousand persons who would sail after him,24 and in March 1630, he sailed to Massachusetts on
21 It is important to note here that although they both had the idea that the Church of England was corrupted, they were different from each other with the most important difference being; while one, Separatists wanted to separate from it, the Puritans wanted to purify it.
22 Edward Channing, A History of the United States: The Planting of a Nation in the New World 1000-1660, Vol. 1 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962), 326-329.
23 Richard S. Dunn, “John Winthrop Writes His Journal,” 188.
24Dunn, 189.
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Arabella, also known as Arbella, along with over seven hundred Puritans with a royal charter that gave them both legitimacy and a bound ship to England.
In his sermon, John Winthrop when talking about hiararchy says:
GOD ALMIGHTY in his most holy and wise providence, hath soe disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poore, some high and eminent in power and dignitie; others mean and in submission.
The Reason hereof.
1 Reas. First to hold conformity with the rest of his world, being delighted to show forth the glory of his wisdom in the variety and difference of the creatures, and the glory of his power in ordering all these differences for the preservation and good of the whole; and the glory of his greatness, that as it is the glory of princes to have many officers, soe this great king will haue many stewards, Counting himself more honoured in dispensing his gifts to man by man, than if he did it by his owne immediate hands…25
On the ship, Winthrop gave a sermon to his audience about the life and structure that would be waiting for them in the New World, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” he talked about how every creature was created in a hierarchy, therefore in their own society they would have a hierarchy as well. It can be argued that the reason for this was that he was aware that without laying a sort of structure in the New World, it would have been impossible to contain or govern these people. Although Virginia colony was the first successful colony in the New World, as most of the settlers were young men who went there for wealth, they struggled to be a community as many arguments between the government, which was appointed by
25 Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity” (March 21,1630).
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the crown, and the settlers.26 Thus he knew that, especially with the freedom that came with the charter, he needed to create a sense of bond between his settlers. This bond was especially important, as they were the city upon a hill with the mission that was given by God to be an archetype society for the rest. They believed that they had a covenant with God in this mission and needed to be successful as the opposite would have led to the wrath of God, “Wee are entered into Covenant with Him for this worke... the Lord will surely breake out in wrathe against us; be revenged of such a [sinful] people and make us knowe the price of the breache of such a covenant.”27 Therefore to be able to be an ideal society, they had to create a brotherly affection with each other which was the main point of the sermon. Thus John Winthrop drew out a political map. They would be ruled by turning the covenant with God into a covenant between the settlers to fulfill their mission.28
Winthrop was also aware that the indentured servants that were sent to Massachusetts by the company did not gather or create sufficient living stock to feed the new arrivals, thus with a scarcity of food and with the work of building a plantation, he needed a workforce, a lower class he can order.29 Nevertheless, when the reality of the barrenness of New England dawned on the Puritans, Winthrop was forced to send away the indentured servants back to feed themselves.30 Moreover, a need for a labor force was created as the Puritans came up with the idea of building a
26 Morgan, “John Winthrop’s ‘Modell of Christian Charity’ in a Wider Context,” 149.
27 Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” 46-47.
28 Bremer, “John Winthrop and the Shaping of New England History,” 8.
29 Channing, A History of the United States: The Planting of a Nation in the New World 1000-1660, 331.
30 Dunn, 194.
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new life where they could practice their religion safely and freely on the unknown land as families, not as workers who came to build a plantation. Moreover, such a need was gratified by slaves that would help building the colonies both with labor as they did the same works as settlers which will be explained later on and with the money that was achieved through them in Puritan New England.
2.2. Slavery Exists in New England
It was and still is a popular argument that the Northern Colonies did not dwell in slavery like Southern ones did, as they never had as large plantations as the South nor the suitable soil for agriculture. This argument was also backed by some scholars who looked into Puritan abolishment ideas, like Albert J. von Frank, with the ‘Puritan disgust at slavery,’31 which meant that because Puritans were a quite bigoted and closed-off group, they carried out xenophobic tendencies, which meant that they would not want a stranger among them. Von Frank supported his claim with Sewall`s work, “The Selling of Joseph” as when he was supporting the freeing of slaves, his reasoning for it was that slaves were and always will be strangers. 32 It also meant that because they believed in the covenant of work, where the ones who were not picked out with Unconditional Election would need to work to achieve God`s grace; thus, owning somebody to do their work for them threatened their piety. In addition, Bailey claimed this contradicted with their covenant ideology as it made
31 Von Frank, “John Saffin: Slavery and Racism in Colonial Massachusetts.”
32 Samuel Sewall, “Selling of Joseph: A Memorial” (1700), 2.
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them lazy,33 therefore, unfit to reach salvation. While these were facts about Puritans, the covenant of work had two sides of the coin as it started to equal wealth with grace as in the most simple equation, the more one worked, the more one earned, but in this case, the more they worked slaves, the more they indulged in slave trade meant the more they earned money. However, this was also a trouble to some, as in the example of the Reverend John Higginson of Salem as he says, “New-England is originally a plantation of Religion, not a plantation of Trade”34 where his concern was that the commercial spirit was contradicting with their Holy Spirit and threatening their piety.35 This does not only show us that slavery existed in New England but also shows us that even when the ideas of freeing slaves were present, it was not out of benevolence but for the protection of their own piety and society, which will be examined more later in the paper.
Since there were arguments on or against slavery, it can be said that Slavery did exist in the Puritan societies, which does not come as a surprise as slavery already existed in England, where Puritans came from. After saying this, it is essential to acknowledge that around the period Puritans arrived in New England, slavery was not too popular in England as they were starting to believe in the liberty of the men; however, when they were free, they were still bond to the authorities, dukes, lords, kings.36 Furthermore, they were differentiating between slavery and
33 Bailey, Race and Redemption in Puritan New England.
34 John Higginson, The Cause of God and His People in New England Cambridge, Mass.: Samuel Green, (1663).
35 Von Frank, 265-266.
36 Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black. American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812, 49.
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bond ship where slavery meant an absolute deprivation of liberties, while bond ship meant a service that was timed and had certain rights and liberties. However even when they were against slavery and condemning it, as Turks or ‘Moors’ were enslaving Europeans, they still dwelled in the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in their colonies.37 Also, a big part of New England`s economy was tied to the West Isles and Barbados and sugar plantations as the barren lands of the area forced them to look elsewhere for commodities to consume and sell, thus they, especially the merchant families were familiar with the slavery and slave labor.38 From this, it can be deduced that in a society where hierarchy was a norm, and slavery institution was known, the usage of slaves was expected and bound to happen.
The land the Puritans settled on was not a land that was inhabited by the Europeans as the Dutch settled in the New World, slightly south of New England to New Netherlands,39 they had beaver trades with different nations like Mohawks and Susquehannocks.40 Through that trade network, the usage of natives as a labor force occurred, and the Native Americans started to be seen as a race to be enslaved in the Northern New World.41 While the enslavement of natives existed, the first arrival of African descent slaves or the first documented ones seen in New England, not much
37 Jordan, 50-55.
38 See Warren, New England bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, 21-22
39 New Netherlands was established on today`s New York, Connecticut, Delaware and New Jersey.
40 Isaack de Rasiere, Letter to the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company, (September 23, 1626).
41 Here it is important to add that, the Latin America was enslaving and using Indigenous power already, hence the emphasis on Northern. To learn more about the Indigenous slavery in Latin America. See, Neil L. Whitehead, “Indigenous Slavery in South America, 1492–1820,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery , ed. Neil L. David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2011), Chapter 10, doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521840682.012.
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later than the establishment of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. As in 1638 John Winthrop briefly mentions the ship Desiree, where they took captive Natives to West Indies and brought back “some cotton and tobacco, and negroes, etc., from thence, and salt from Tertugos,” in his journal.42
While talking about the usage of slaves, it should be disclosed why there was such a need for them as there was an already serving class existing within the colony, indentured servants, even though stated before, some were sent back home to Massachusetts. In the case of Puritans, while the main goal of immigrating was based on religious purposes, it was not the only reason people wanted to come to the New World. The monetary gain was important to people as life in England did not offer a good life or the opportunities to fix the already bad living conditions for the poorer classes. People who wanted to come to the New World that were not a part of the sect that was taking a voyage or did not have the money to finance themselves to do such travel, found the solution in indentured servitude where they arrived in the New World to work as a servant of a family up to seven years in return of money, land and a new life. Although this was a lucrative business for both sides, because not many wanted to work for many years,43 and it was expensive to give out land and work them as the masters needed to take care of them compared to slaves, as it can be seen in Emmanuel Downing’s letter to John Winthrop where he talks about the lucrative business of slavery, he says “I suppose you know verie well how we shall maynteyne
42 Winthrop, John Winthrop's Journal History of New England, 1630-1649, 246.
43 Warren, 35.
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20 Moores cheaper then [sic] one Englishe servant,”44 people favored slaves. Another reason for the preference was based on the theological ideas, like believing that African Americans were descendants of Ham, and Ham was cursed to be a slave or that the New World was their New Canaan and the people of Canaan were cursed to be slaves, where they saw other races fit to serve under them, therefore white indentured servants were less demanded than other races that were ‘bound to serve.’
2.3. Religious Justification of Slavery
Puritans believed in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, even though they did believe in the New Testament too. They followed the Hebrew one, believing they were purifying the religion and creating a new pure Christendom like ancient Israelites. As the Old Testament was more important in their belief, the idea of being, which was existent and came from Judaism and its teachings about the followers of the faith, was carried onto them. As the Israelites were chosen by God and were sent to the Promised Land (Canaan), Puritans, especially John Winthrop, following the steps of the story of Israelites, saw themselves as the chosen people. They believed the New World was their New Canaan45 to build their own religious kingdom and create a city upon a hill.
44Emmanuel Downing. Emmanuel Downing to John Winthrop, The Winthrop Papers, Series 4,Vol 6, Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society, Massachusetts Historical Society (1645), 65, https://archive.org/details/collectionsmass18socigoog.
45 To look further into the idea of New England being the New Canaan. See Warren and G. B. Gunn, “John Winthrop,” in Early American writing (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1994)
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“Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when hee shall make us a prayse and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "the Lord make it likely that of New England." For wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill.”46
A city upon a hill is a phrase that the Puritans were going to be a model of Christianity to the rest of the world, where they were going to watch and follow them. While this idea gave Puritans both a mission and a sense of superiority as they believed God favored them, it also created a tension where their mistakes and wrongdoings would be known by the rest as they watched them. This idea of chosenness came with a sense of superiority as they saw others as lesser people to them, as beasts who worshipped the Devil himself, distant from civilization, and as people, they could save by being a model.
“The Old Testament was often mined by pro-slavery polemicists for examples proving that slavery was common among the Israelites,”47 with examples from Genesis48 and Leviticus49 that were talking about slavery. While both were used to justify slavery, Genesis 9:25, “curse be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren, and he said Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.” was the perfect tool to justify the enslavement of indigenous people as to where the colonies were built, the New Canaan, and the people of Canaan were
46 Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charitie.”
47 Noel Rae, “How Christian Slaveholders Used the Bible to Justify Slavery.”
48 Genesis 9:18-27.
49 Leviticus 25: 44-46.
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cursed to be slaves; thus the indigenous people, people of New Canaan were bound to be enslaved. This justification aligned well with the need for labor as they also had the Lord's words on their side. While this justified the capturing of Natives, making African descendants work, Puritans took another biblical story, The Curse of Ham. In the book of Genesis, when Ham and his linage, Canaan get cursed because he sees his father, Noah, naked, and although it is not stated if the Ham or Cham was black or darker skinned because of some interpretations of the Torah, it was assumed that he was cursed with a darker skin for a sexual, darker sin.50 Another example of him having a darker skin comes from a Babylonian Talmud “Our Rabbis taught: three copulated on the ark, and they were all punished - the dog, the raven and Ham… Ham was smitten in his skin.”51 Although it is not known how Puritans had such knowledge on these interpretations, it is known that they were aware as Samuel Sewall uses this story in his objection to slavery where he claims the Blacks were not descendants of Canaan, which was cursed through Cham but of Cush which was another son of Ham whose descendants believed to be living around today`s Ethiopia. Thus claimed Blacks were not subjected to the Curse of Ham or eternal enslavement from the Curse of Canaan.52
50 David M. Goldenberg, "The Curse of Ham: A Case of Rabbinic Racism?," in Struggles in the Promised Land, ed. Jack Salzman , Cornel West (Oxford University Press. 1997), 25-27, ISBN 9780198024927. To learn more about the interpretation of Ham`s skin as black. See, Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 2010), 65-68.
51 Rabbi Dr I. Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud, Seder Nezikin, vol II, Sanhedrin 108b, chapters VIII-XI, trans. H. Freedman ( London 1935), 745.
52 Sewall, “Selling of Joseph: A Memorial.”
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When they used the slavery concept of the Israelites, the Mosaic Laws, a set of laws given to Moses by God were used in the legal regulations of slavery. For example in Leviticus 25:44, “Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids,” showed them as long as they were heathens it was possible to enslave them. However, this contradicted with the conversion of slaves, which was not a rare occurrence, as the paper will be diving into it more later on, as the conversion to Christianity did not mean freedom from shackles. This was covered with the very ecclesiastical legal system, the Body of Liberties of Massachusetts, the first set of codes established in New England, with the 91st liberty that introduced lawful captivity. “There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or Captivitie amongst us unles it be lawful Captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us. Moreover, these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of god established in Israell concerning such persons doeth morally require...”53 This meant that it was allowed for them to enslave war captives, which was a lucrative way of achieving them as not only did Indian tribes fought with each other in wars like the Pequot War where Pequot Natives were taken as captives or King Philip`s War where many different tribes like Nipmucks Natives or Narragansetts Natives were captured and were “lawfully enslaved.” It also meant that it was permissible to buy African slaves from the slave ships that were owned by privateers, slave markets in West Isles or Barbados, so it
53 Ward, “Massachusetts Body of Liberties”.
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was sold to them rather than capturing someone or even if they were actively buying slaves from West Coasts of Africa, the existing slave market in Africa was justifying the buying as in the eyes of the Puritans, they were selling themselves as owning slaves were acceptable but making slaves were unlawful.54
2.4 Trans-Atlantic Slavery and the Creation of the Network
Figure 1: New England and the Atlantic World in Late 17th Century, Wendy Warren “New England Bound”
As mentioned before, slavery was an already known and existing institution /practice in England, even if it was more on colonized lands and not in the mainland; therefore, New Englanders following the steps of their mainland was no surprise. However, it cannot be said that the only reason the Puritans started to use slave labor
54 Michael Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 206.
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was based on their old learned traditions. Puritans, different from the Spaniard colonies, came up with settler colonialism to implement in the New World instead of extractive colonialism. When their main point was to settle, the land was more important than labor and what was coming out of those lands through labor. While extractive colonialism was based on primarily male colonizers going to the New World and “working”(enslaved) locals to do their work,55 Puritans saw the natives of the lands as an obstacle on the way to achieving the land they needed to build their city upon a hill. But again, considering that they came to settle, it is important to note that not every arriving Puritan was suitable to work on the lands as they came as families, as a religious community, or even as higher ranks, so a demand for labor was apparent within the colony. And when the natives were an obstacle, the eyes gazed on Africa or West Indies and Barbados for African descendant slaves from the city upon a hill.56 Thus, an exchange of slaves was created where many natives were captured in wars, sold outside of New England to England or Islands, and replaced with bodies that would work, Blacks who were bought from Islands or Africa.57 Another reason for such an exchange, which will be examined in detail later in the paper, was based on the “ill-suitability” of Natives to slavery. Even though they were the first slaves of the land, they were found unsuitable to do labor because of their
55 Warren, 93.
56 Warren, 94.
57 Warren, 44.
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laziness or their proneness to run away,58 while Blacks were foreigners of the land who worked hard. Thus, an exchange of the two was seen as beneficial. Downing said in his letter: If upon a Just warre the lord should deliver [the Indians] into our hands, wee might easily have men woemen and Children enough to exchange for Moores, which wilbe more gaynefull pilladge for us then wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive until wee gett into a stock of slaves suffitient to doe all our buisiness, for our Childrens. Children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people.59
It can be said that the popularization of Black slavery would not have happened if the need to eradicate Natives was not prominent.60 The colonizers knew that to produce anything, they were dependent on African labor on Native lands which was the case of the slavery on islands. It is important to add that the New England lands were not suitable for a cash crop, so different from the islands which used the slaves in agriculture, in New England, they were used for household chores or for clearing the land and building for the settlers as will be explained later on. However, even though there were some differences between the usage, the Merchant families who had ties to those islands, which was the majority were the ones who introduced this system of slavery to New England.61
While mentioning the exchange of slaves and the need for labor, it is important to take into consideration the monetary gain of the slave trade and slave work as another reason for New England`s becoming a port for Trans-Atlantic Slave
58 Greene, “Slave-Holding New England and Its Awakening,” 494.
59 Downing, Emmanuel Downing to John Winthrop.
60 Warren, 94.
61 Warren, 72-94.
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Trade. When the Great Emigration, in this paper`s context, the one which refers migration of Puritans to the New England colonies, ended by the beginning of 1650s and when the Fur trade between the New Englanders and Natives started to decline because of wars and the request of gun by Indians which was refused by the colonies,62 the hardly established economies of new colonies were shaken. Furthermore, to achieve and keep the King`s grant for building these colonies, the colonies had some economic responsibilities to the Old World as they were supposed to colonize the land in the name of England. Thus, when Puritans started to have monetary problems, they focused on the lucrative business of slavery, where they could profit both from the body and the work of slaves.63
62 To learn more about Fur Trade and Native- Colony relations. See Ruth A. Mcintyre, “John Pynchon and the New England Fur Trade, 1652–1676 ,” in Selections from the Account Books of John Pynchon, https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/814.
63 Warren, 56-57.
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Chapter III
Lives of Blacks and Natives in New England
3.1. Treatment of Other Races
While it can be argued that both Black and Native slaves were the same in the eyes of the colonies, as they both fell under the same category; slaves, as different from the modern connotation of the word, the slave did not mean a Black person but meant a person who is forced to serve, or even in the early colonial days in South America as Natives. However the change in the numbers of Blacks and Natives differed as Natives were getting exported or getting murdered in the same wars they were getting captured for slavery, the Blacks were getting imported from the African Coasts in wars created so they can be captured.64 Moreover, the New Englanders did not see both races as the same. As mentioned before, Natives were seen as an obstacle to obtaining their land, thus they were usually captured in wars both as a parcel of the land and a source of profit65 and sold away to West Isles, Barbados or Old World slave markets, and Black slaves were brought to close the shortage in labor. While it would be an overstatement that the only reason for waging war on
64 Warren, 95. Also here it is important to note that the exact numbers of slaves in the early days are not well known as what is noted is how many slaves a significant figure had in their household. For example John Winthrop had 3 Pequots as slaves. However to learn more about the numbers and how those numbers changed. See Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998, 47-63 and 369.
65 Warren, 100.
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Native tribes was to be able to enslave them lawfully, it did help with speeding up the process of enslaving them, which presented war as a beneficial factor for business. As seen in Downing’s letter66 to Winthrop, where he says that they should wage war with the Narragansett Indians even if they were an ally to the colonies in Pequot War, just so they can profit from it in Barbados, showcased how they looked at the Natives as a mean to get money.
However, this was not the sole purpose of their exchange, because Natives were the occupants of the land, they had a root, a familiarity with the land even if they were uprooted from their tribes and sent to a colony; therefore, they had the possibility of running away. In a quotation from Wendy Warren`s book, which is written by John Taylor, an Englishman observing Jamaica, “faithful Indian slave…they would either runn away or murther themselves,” shows that some natives even preferred to kill themselves instead of living as a slave which was the case in New England as well, and this cost the slave owners a good deal of money as they were losing chattel, property.67 It is crucial to add here that the slavery of the Trans-Atlantic was chattel slavery, which was a slavery type where slaves were seen as properties, goods that could be profited from. Thus Black slaves who had no roots in the New Lands and were foreigners with nowhere to run were much more preferred to the Natives who were prone to make the owners lose money and were creating anxiety for the colonial society as they were the “enemy” and keeping them
66 Downing.
67 Warren, 108.
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in the household in a slave dynamic which required to have a close relationship with the slave was less preferable than the Black slaves who did not have any history of war waging with the settlers.
The slavery dynamic in the New England colonies was different from the ideas that come to mind, like slaves working outside the house with little to no contact with the household. As Puritans followed the ideas of the Old Testament and slavery rules of it, just like the Hebrew concept of bondage, the slaves were seen as a part of the household, not a member but still a part, a dependent member of it.68 This aligned with the idea of patriarchy in the House and the fifth commandment, “honor thy father and thy mother...” as the household members were supposed to obey the head of the house. William Gouge, a Puritan clergy and author, explains this as “The English Family is a little Church, and a little commonwealth.”69 This was something that made sense to the households because it created a twisted version of “honor thy parents,” which ensured the obedience of slaves and even though there were things that differentiated between the slave and the masters, the work they both did, especially in the earlier days of the colonies, were similar to each other. As the colonies were getting established and trying to raise themselves up, the colonial societies were participating in their work, which was aligned with the covenant of work, as they were required to work too. So the labor of slaves which was either domestic labor like laundry, cooking, gathering water, taking care of animals, et
68 Greene, “Slave-Holding New England and Its Awakening,” 503.
69 William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (London, 1622).
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cetera for mostly women or fleet building or chopping out wood and forest clearing for males as there was not a great deal of agriculture, thus the work they did was quite similar to the work masters did as well.70 However, while the patriarchal structure of households and the existence of slaves alongside the family members led owners to have a sense of empathy or closeness to slaves, they were still distanced from the family by their race. Although the Colonists relied heavily on the work of the family and subsequently the work of the Black slaves for their survival, they still refused to acknowledge the importance of their work for the Household or the Puritan Mission and kept the slaves out of the realms of colonial society.71
In line with this, race created a difference between the owners and slaves. From this it can be argued that this separation and isolation from the whites was also bringing the Natives and Blacks together as they were finding solace within themselves, 72 as they were able to empathize with one another. While friendships and romantic relationships among the same races were more common, there were some cases of Native and Black lovers who were convicted of fornication offenses.73 However, it would be wrong for us to assume they were akin or in the same status as mentioned before and even though the preference for the African descendant slaves was higher, they were seen as a lower rank than Natives. There were many reasons
70 Warren, 120-130.
71 Bailey, 21-22.
72 Warren, 152.
73 For some example. See, “Jasper and Joan Fornication Case, 1672/3,” Records of the Suffolk County Court, Vol. 29, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston: The Society, 1892-1924), 233. https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/637 and George Francis Dow, Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, Vol. 5, (Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1911–21), 411. https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/Essex/index.html.
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for this; the complex of people who were African were darker than Native Americans, thus fitted more into the Ham Story, and the idea of conversion as people like John Eliot worked hard to convert Natives to create Praying Towns; towns which were connected to the colonies but were still outside of them, which was created by and for converted Natives, earlier than big groups of Blacks were converted and the already existing relations with Natives. Even though the relations between the colonies and Natives had their ups and downs, they were still more familiar than the Africans, and the colonists sometimes had a more friendly approach to them, in some examples from John Winthrop’s journal where they carried out friendly actions to them during fur trades74 or invited them home and let them sit in their table.75 Thus this created a difference in the treatment of both races, and it can even be argued that it severed the closeness that natives and Blacks felt to each other at some points as Natives helped with the capturing of Black slaves,76 moreover the Natives did partake in enslaving other Natives and selling them to the colonies because of tribal feuds.77
74 Winthrop, 138.
75 Winthrop, 59-61.
76 Warren, 200.
77 Warren, 103.
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3.2. Converting Other Races
Figure 2. “The Holy Bible Containing The Old Testament and The New Translated into the Indian Language”, John Eliot, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1663, the first complete Bible printed in North America and the first printed in a Native American language.
Cotton Mather, while talking about his slaves:
I will remember that they are in some sense my children, and by taking care that they may want nothing which may be good for them and so far as the methods of instituting piety into the mind which I use with my children may be properly and prudently used with my servants, they shall be partakers in them. Nor will I leave them ignorant of anything wherein I may instruct them to be useful to other generations..... He [the master] shall give the slaves Bibles.78
78 It was quoted from Cotton Mather. See, Carter Godwin Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War (Kessinger Publishing, 2010), 59.
34
In societies such as New England Colonies, where religion played a prominent part in people`s lives and on how the colonies were ruled, being a member of the church meant that one had some political rights and a social existence. Thus everything was tied up to the church, yet the slaves who were a part of the society, even though they did not participate in it actively, were not church members until the late eighteenth century, so they had no rights nor an official existence within the community. While some slaves wanted to change their religion, maybe to achieve some sort of freedom or participation in society, it was not a successful attempt as the reasons for converting slaves, which was a common practice, were different for owners.
A reason, maybe the most crucial one, as one could argue, behind the conversion of Native tribes was so they would be stripped from their own culture, which was very much intertwined with their own religion and can be assimilated into the colonies. This assimilation can be seen in John Eliot`s missionary works, where he converted Natives and created ‘Praying Towns’ in Massachusetts. As this could have been attempted on de-villanizing, rehabilitating the “enemy” who was the colonies` neighbors essentially or who were in the houses, working for them, similar79 to this was the case for the conversion of Blacks. As mentioned before, the nature of slavery in Puritan colonies required a more intimate relationship with the slaves; thus, having a heathen in the house created tension. This was especially
79 Neal Salisbury, “Red Puritans: The ‘Praying Indians’ of Massachusetts Bay and John Eliot,” The William and Mary Quarterly 31, no. 1 (1974): 27–54, 28, https://doi.org/10.2307/1918981.
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important as Puritans believed in the concept of “sin for sin,” which meant sinning would lead to more sinning, and the Calvinistic Doctrine of “Total Depravity”, which meant that because of the First Sin, humankind was prone to sinning and in a society that believed in communal salvation, having someone in the household who was sinning and worshipping the devil brought the downfall to all. Therefore the conversion of slaves was something to help to ease the tension and fear that was created by slaves` religion but also to help with their own faith by ensuring the safety of the community. While discussing the benefits of converting slaves, it would be wrong not to talk about the monetary gain of such conversions. The slaves who were converted were not beneficial the buyer in terms of work as they needed to have Sundays off or at least have time to pray that day or to be taught the Scripture which took their time. However, converted slaves had more demand despite such shortening of work time, because they were not endangering the faith of the household or the community.80 Thus selling a converted slave was a lucrative business that had a market even in England as the ‘Praying Indians’, converted Natives were popular and sold to there.
Another advantage of conversion on their faith can be seen in Cotton Mather’s “The Negro Christianized,” which was written later on as the numbers of Black slaves increased. He narrates how bringing salvation to slaves was vital to
80 Marcus W. Jernegan, “Slavery and Conversion in the American Colonies,” The American Historical Review 21, no. 3 (1916): 504–27,517, https://doi.org/10.2307/1835009.
36
them. He said that “to convert one is better than helping out 100000 poor.”81 Thus, the Blacks in the households were a benefit and opportunity for the owner. However, the idea of doing good deeds was not enough for some to convert slaves and have them in the churches as Mather did in his church, where he had both slaves and slave merchants attend his church and sermons. Therefore, Mather needed some other selling points to bring salvation to slaves, he claimed that God made all from one blood, so he believed that “thy negro is thy neighbor” and they should not let their neighbor face the wrath of God. He also mentioned that “Ye also have a master in heaven”, which was a language that justified slavery and meant that by refusing to bring slaves to service of God, they denied their God as they did not let their servants serve God. Furthermore, he preached that while the owners took advantage of the work of slaves if they withhold the salvation from them, because they are part of the household, they would bring damnation with ‘their superstitions and their neglect of God.’82 These ideas of Mather were also strengthen with verses from Bible like “If any provide not for his own and especially those of his own house, he had denied the faith and is worse than an infidel”83 which fit into the idea of having slaves as a part of the household and highlighted the importance of it.
81 Cotton Mather, The Negro Christianized, An essay to Excite and Assist the Good Work, the Instruction of Negro-Servants in Christianity: Four Lines of Scripture Texts (Boston, 1706), 2.
82 Mather, 10.
83 Tim.5.8.
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John, Saffin says in “A Brief and Candid Answer”: “…it is no evil thing to bring them out of their own Heathenish Country, where they may have the Knowledge of the True God, be Converted and Eternally saved.”84
The owners who followed Mather’s preaching believed they were helping to save the soul of the slaves and making them happy while also ensuring slaves were not jeopardizing their own faiths. However, there were more layers to this, as Puritans were the chosen people who had the mission to spread their faith to all, and the slaves were an easy target. “It is natural for men to promote their own religion, shall Christians fall short of Mahometans or of Idolaters?”85 While fulfilling such a mission, again, another interest of the owners was fulfilled as well. With the promise of an equal and just existence in the afterlife, the converting of slaves meant they would be less prone to rebel against slavery, and the idea of “honoring thy father and thy mother” was interpreted as being dutiful and obedient to the masters and mistresses.86 This meant that when the slaves were baptized, they were more likely to be obedient and less rebellious as the nature of the Gospel justified both the hierarchy and slavery.
It is important to state that although being a church member meant some rights, as mentioned before, it was not a promise of freedom. When they were
84 John, Saffin, “A Brief and Candid Answer to a Late Printed Sheet, Entitled, The Selling of Joseph,” (Boston, 1701), printed in George H. Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts New York (1866), 254.
85 Mather, 5.
86 Mather, 23.
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converted, it meant they were free from the devil.87 This was important to point out, especially by Cotton Mather when he was encouraging the conversion, as Hebrew laws of slavery meant that one could not enslave one of their own, which meant Puritans could not enslave a Christian. However, while they were baptized, Mather claimed that slaves would still be slaves as both Canon Law nor Civil Law did not say anything against it as “English Laws were made when the Lords & the Slaves, were both of them Christians;…” 88thus “…The Baptised [sic] then are not thereby entitled unto their Liberty.”89
Furthermore, even though slaves were now Christianized and ‘thy brother’, they were not one of them, and were separated by a big difference in the eyes of the colonies, their races. Therefore even when the slaves were converted, they were only ‘blessed with the light of the gospel’ and were not ‘blessed’ with any rights or freedom.
3.3. Abolitionism in New England
While mentioning religion as a tool for justifying slavery, it would be inaccurate not to talk about how religion was used in abolitionist narratives as well. Although other sects which were disliked by Puritans like Quakers who are known with their role in Abolition Movement and in the late seventeenth century, were the ones to criticize slavery openly as they are a sect that believed in equality, therefore
87 Mather, 9.
88 Mather, 17.
89 Mather, 17.
39
condemned the slavery with a religious base, the “Golden Rule,”90 where they said treat others like you want to be treated and non-violence, as violence is an irrevocable part of slavery, some Puritans carried out some distaste for slavery as well. Although not all of them supported the liberation as they were slave owners, they had some concerns with the morality of the institution. For example, a Puritan theologian, Jonathan Edwards, while talking about the mistreatments of slaves said “clearly shews the Reason why I should not despise and abuse him.”91 However, as it is not the main point of the paper or the Abolition movement did not come officially until the end of the eighteenth century, in this part of the paper, while mentioning the abolitionist approaches in the Puritan Community, what will be showcased is how this ‘benevolent’ act of abolitionism was laced with racism. It should be pointed out that abolition was not a popular concept among Puritans even though there were some names like Samuel Rishworth in the earlier days of the colonies who was against the enslavement of Africans and was even demoted from the council for his thoughts92 or later examples like Samuel Sewall who supported it and as Puritans believed that slavery was a benevolent act or a compassionate one at times as owning slaves meant taking care of them, to ‘protect’ them and save them from eternal suffering. It was a way not to justify slavery but also a way to minimize its cruel nature as they believed that even if the slaves wished for freedom because
90“Do unto others as you want others to do unto you,” Matthew 7:12
91 Jonathan Edwards, “Note on Job 31:15,” Edwards Blank Bible, Jonathan Edwards Collection, General Collection ( Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University) And to learn more about the Puritans who had struggled morality of slavery. See, Bailey, 116-123.
92 Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800. (London: Verso, 2010), 226.
40
they were not in the hands of “sadists’ but just ordinary people who cared for them, it was unproblematic while also being permitted by ecclesiastical laws.93
Sewall`s “ The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial” was a pamphlet that was published in 1700 in Boston to show how wrong slavery was by using the Biblical story of Joseph, where he was enslaved by his brothers as a result of rising number of Blacks in the community. He claimed that “Liberty is auro pretiosior omni,” more precious than any gold.94 He argued that even though Abraham had slaves, the Israelites did not buy one another and enslaved one another, he refused the legitimacy of the lawful captivity as slaves were taken by unlawful wars just like the wars between Jacob’s sons and their brother Joseph.95 However while he was talking about the wrongness of slavery, he does not do it out of his love for slaves as he said “And there is such a disparity in their Conditions, Color & Hair, that they can never embody with us, and grow up into orderly Families, to the Peopling of the Land: but still remain in our Body Politick as a kind of extravasat Blood”96 where he saw the slaves as an alien race that cannot fit into their society, that cannot be a citizen97 or benefit to the body politics.98 Another example of his not-so-benevolent act against slaves was apparent in his later work “An Essay or Computation that the Importation of Negroes is not so profitable as that of White Servants,” which was in the name of
93 Warren, 128.
94 Sewall, 1.
95 Sewall, 3.
96 Sewall, 2.
97 Greene, “Slave-Holding New England and Its Awakening,” 521.
98 Body Politic meant that Puritans believed that they were a communal society like a metaphorical body.
41
the pamphlet. Here he stated how the death of slaves cost much money to the owners, thus was not beneficial and did not work well when compared to the Whites as the Black Slaves were more expensive than indentured servants and "Negro slaves are eye servants; they are lazy, thievish, and great liars.”99 His approach to slaves and slavery almost appears as the liberty he was talking about was not a liberty for the slaves but a liberty to get rid of them. Even when Sewall claimed that all men were the sons of Adam and deserved liberty, his exclusion of natives, as he never mentions them in his writings, showed that his support of abolishment was based on his distaste for the slaves instead of a distaste for the slavery institution.
Although Cotton Mather was not an abolitionist in any way, because of his church having blacks and his general approach to them, he was seen as someone who was benevolent in some ways.100 However, while talking about his reasons behind the conversions, similar to Sewall, even when he was doing something ‘for the good of the slaves’, he still had racist ideas. In his writing on converting slaves where he says ‘those wretched negroes" and talks about the Curse of Ham and claiming they were not the descendants and uses terms like “blackened and schorched by the sun of Africa”101 or “heal their minds under the beams of the sun of righteousness”102 which holds prejudice against slaves. Again in a similar fashion, even showcased by the name of it, “the Negro Christianized,” Mather too excluded Natives from his
99 Greene, “Slave-Holding New England and Its Awakening,” 522.
100 Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York: Welcome Rain Publishers. 2002), 264, ISBN 1-56649-206-8.
101 Mather, 2.
102 Mather, 2.
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narrative. The reasoning for this was that the society saw Natives as more eligible to be blessed by the light of the Gospel than Blacks, thus the society did not need much convincing to convert them.
As the Natives were getting converted before Blacks and were seen as a better fit for the society and church, this created a dichotomy between the treatment of the slaves, even when they were freed. Here it must be stated that the Natives who were free were a larger population than free Blacks and had some standing and legal rights within the society. The Blacks who were freed did not hold a considerable existence in society, not by numbers or privileges. From this, it can be concluded that Sewall`s works were not popular nor successful as he was seen as wrong in the eyes of colonies as they believed that knew that God allowed slavery, and servitude of other sorts, as he did with mastery and ownership, thus his arguments even when they were based on verses and claimed slavery was a sin, were not accepted, especially when the colony was built upon such understandings and with the work of slaves.103
As mentioned before, Blacks and Natives were treated differently from each other, both in slavery and in freedom. While some Natives were free because they were converted and lived in the Praying Towns, in peace and with the guidance of the Gospel, or lived in the colonies with some rights. For example, when one harmed the property of the ‘Reds’, they were punished with the removal of their title, which
103 Warren, 213.
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was one of the harshest punishments one can get within the colony,104 or in Ipswich Massachusetts, as time passed and more and more Natives began to accept Christianity, in 1660 the quarterly court explained that they should be treated equal to settlers,105freedom came to Black slaves differently. Some were freed after their masters died, even though they were usually passed down as heritage to the masters` children because of their chattel status, some achieved freedom as they had the compassion of their masters, some bought their freedom or some were freed after they got sick, handicapped, or old, and were no longer in working conditions.106 It can be deduced that Natives had a better status in the hierarchy of colonies than Blacks as some were a part of the society, were colonized and assimilated and their freedom did come with the religion. However, even though they were in higher status than Blacks, because of their newfound God and the general racist ideas of Blacks being the descendants of Sham, they were not protected by that God when there was a war between the Natives and colonies.107
When freedom did come to Blacks, it still did not give them much opportunity, they were not able to return to their homelands, and unsuitable for many jobs in the eyes of the colony. It was dangerous to be parted from the settlement and live outside by themselves, so dangerous that getting banished from
104 To learn more about the punishments that were given in New England Colonies. See G. B. Gunn, “Deterrence and Retribution,” in Early American writing ( Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1994).
105 Warren, 106.
106 To learn more about how Blacks were freed with some cases and how they were treated. See Warren, 118-202.
107 Warren, 92.
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the colony to the wilderness was a severe punishment given to heathens; other sects in the Puritans case as the life outside of colonies or tribes was unsafe. Although this punishment`s importance was getting kicked out of the body of liberties, as the Blacks were usually overlooked in this case, it was more of a safety issue for them. For example, in the case of George March`s slave from Warren, after his escape when his body was found, it showed no signs of violence, so it was decided that his death was because of the dangerous conditions outside of the settlements as he had “nowhere to run.”108 Thus many Blacks, as they did not own any property of their own, continued with living alongside their masters with their rules and were employed by them, which meant that the freedom came more in the name than in actions.
Even when they were freed, spoke the language of the whites, or wore the clothes of whites, they were never seen as the same as social equals. People still ordered them around even if they were unbeknownst to the free Blacks, their items got confiscated or they were chased, taunted by whites.109 Alternatively, even if they were treated ‘nicely’ it was still belittling as the colonies acted towards them as if they were children or inferiors, which they were in the eyes of the colonies, “Angola was a husband, a father, a free man, and yet the governor felt free to stroke him on the head and almost paternalistically offer land to the man he was stroking.”110 Another proof of this inferiority was apparent in James Winthrop, a jury`s letter to
108 Warren, 199.
109 Warren, 140-141.
110 Warren, 136.
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Jeremy Belknap, a clergyman about abolition, where he said the marriage between whites and Blacks were still forbidden and while the white participant was punished by a fee, Blacks were punished by whippings.111 Greene says, “…the Negro because of his color, continued in an inferior social status,”112thus showing even when they were free they did not had the same liberties as the whites as they were not able to go to other towns from the one they lived in nor had the same legal privileges even though they were taxed.113
As time passed and the Free Blacks` numbers rose, the colonies did not hold back on showcasing their distaste for the wandering free Blacks within their societies. For example, in 1707, an act was passed in Massachusetts which forbade the gathering of Black servants in the house of a freed one without the knowledge of their owners. They had curfews on which hours they could go around the city, and the able-bodied Blacks and Mulattos were supposed to serve in the military when they became 16 years old.114 However, when Blacks were taken for the military to be able to get transferred to another military station, they were still not allowed on wagons
111 James Winthrop, James Winthrop to Jeremy Belknap, March 4, 1795, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Series 5, Vol 3, (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Sociery, 1887) 390, https://archive.org/details/s5collections03massuoft.
112 Lorenzo J. Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England 1620-1776, 299.
113 To learn more about how free Blacks treated as inferior to whites. See, Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England 1620-1776, 298-305.
114 Warren, 226.
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without doing some work like street cleaning or highway work.115 Thus this shows that even though they were free from the whims of a master, a mistress or a household, they were not free from the whims of the societies, authorities, and whites.
115 Moore, 61-62.
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Chapter IV
Aftermath
4.1. Profit and Power
“What went we out into this wilderness to find?
Leaving our country, kindred, our fathers` houses?
We travailed a vast ocean.
For what? Was it not for the pure and faithful dispensation
of the Gospels and the Kingdom of God?”116
John Cotton, the first teacher in the First Church of Boston, a clergy, and a minister in Massachusetts Bay Colony, claimed that the reason for the move to the New World was to gain knowledge along with the spread and protection of their faith. However, only knowledge was not enough to sustain a colony, nor was it a lucrative business. It can be said he was aware of this as he acknowledged that some might come for trade and for the sake of gaining a wealth, which was a reason a religious man like him approved of. Along with this, also he acknowledged that some did travel for the sake of finding a place to them to prosper as England was becoming too crowded for them to be able to grow financially. Thus as Cotton claimed, the move to the New World was the right choice for the most important things; God and Money.117
116 The Witch, directed by Robert Eggers (United States: A24, 2015), 00:01:22 to 00:01:54.
117Warren, 31-32.
48
Though every idea of colonization, whether it was based on religious ideals, missions or exploitation, had a goal for profiting, as mentioned before again and again, the New England Colonies needed money to both fulfill their Royal Charter and to make colonies last. Colonies were not able to survive with the sole mission of religion; thus, Puritans needed to profit to survive and to stay, so piety and profit went hand in hand, and slavery made that grip tight.118 Even though slaves cost money to care for or took a toll on the owner when they died, got killed or ran away, the slave trade was a very lucrative business that helped with the prosperity of the colonies. “Slavery had always been there, at the center of the trade that had helped New England grow and flourish.”119So much so that when one owned slaves, it was seen as a status symbol, a social capital.
As said before with the covenant of work, money and wealth were associated with closeness to God, they were on the road to salvation, thus having a greater power in the colonies. Especially in the case of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as they were becoming powerful with the money, they were starting to set an example for the rest of the colonies where their ecclesiastical legal system and their trade works were favored and followed by others.120 As Massachusetts Bay Colony started to gain power and became a setting stone for the rest of the colonies, they began to control the coastal trade and became the richest of them all.121 This meant that they
118 Warren, 35.
119 Warren, 208. 120 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana or The Ecclesiastical History of New England from Its First Planting in 1620, until the Year of Our Lord 1698 (1702), Chapter 6.
121 Warren, 61.
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were gaining even more power and started to act as if they were free and had no ties
with England, which was a problem for the Kingdom so much so that King Charles
II of England revoked the Charter of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1684 after they
refused to follow his orders. After this, the Dominion of New England in America,
an administrative union of the colonies to change legal and authoritative systems
came in 1686. However, these were insufficient and drove the colonies, specifically
Massachusetts, further away from the Kingdom as they were unhappy with the new
ruling systems and acts. Therefore, the Boston Revolt of 1689 happened where
people were against Sir Edmund Andros, the governor that was appointed by
England and took the government back to the leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony,
the other colonies, which were also ruled by appointed governors, were given back to
old authorities as well. When The Glorious Revolution happened, and King James II
was replaced by his daughter, Mary II, the Dominion was no longer existent. This
disorderliness of colonies was unacceptable for England, thus the Royal Charter of
1691, the Massachusetts Charter, was placed where the English rule on the colony
was established. This, of course, caused unease within the society and created a tense
environment.
Another thing that caused anxiety within the colony was the existence of
people from other races, as said before, Puritans were a closed-off community, thus a
xenophobic one, so when slavery was getting more and more popular, the idea of
strangers within the colonies were not welcomed just as the strangers. When the
Royal African Company`s monopoly came to an end in 1698, it opened commerce
50
for private competition, and when the Asiento of 1713, Asiento de Negroes which
gave England the monopoly of supplying four thousand eight hundred slaves
annually to Spanish American, 122 the New Englanders who had bad soil for
agriculture had the idea to look for a source of money they can make out of the sea.
While fishing was an option, the Dutch and the whale-hunting Quakers were the
stakeholders of the business, thus slave trade became a popular way to earn money
through the sea in the 18th century.123 Subsequently, as the number of slaves rose, the
tension climbed higher, and the regulations that restricted slave trade and the
treatment they received grew harsher.124 For example in Connecticut, in 1715, the
Natives that were brought to the settlements were not allowed to speak with other
Natives and people who brought them needed to pay a fine as people believed that
Natives committed crimes and disturbed the peace, or slaves were not allowed at
nights by themselves.125 Moreover, the excess of all, slaves, anxieties, power and
profit started to cause problems within and to the colonies.
4.2. Excess of Anxieties Leads to Harsher Ways and Hysterias
The colonies that were built in New England were ruled by an ecclesiastical
legal system where the church was the lawmaker and judge of the communities. They
122 Too learn more the Agreement between England and Spain and how the slave trade worked.
See,VG. Sorsby, “British Trade with Spanish America Under the Asiento 1713-1740” (Doctoral
Dissertation,University of London,1975).
123 Greene, “Slave-Holding New England and Its Awakening,” 498.
124 Greene, “Slave-Holding New England and Its Awakening,” 513.
125Bernard Christian Steiner, History of Slavery in Connecticut (The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore,
1893), 14-15.
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were the chosen people that would build a city upon a hill and create the ideal
society, and to be able to thrive with this ideology, they acted very strictly or even
bigoted to keep the society on the path of salvation. In a society where communal
salvation was seen as the only way they could reach the grace of the God and
importance of the welfare of the society, body politics justified every cruel action
which was done to oppress the other.
Gunn, while talking about the harsh punishments of Puritans:
They deserved what they got for violating the social contract. The justice
system dealt in fear, pain, and death, but it also stood for the moral ideals and
social values that criminals had rejected. The protection of society by
whatever means necessary took precedence over the suffering of
wrongdoers.126
Again in such a conservative society, one`s sin meant a problem, damnation
for the whole society thus, loving thy neighbor quickly turned into observing and
even accusing thy neighbor as the power of the marginal one held was a source of
fear in such isolated communities. This resulted in people turning to each other and
living in fear of both hellfire which was a constant reminder of the church and
accusations as hearsay or gossip were enough evidence. Moreover, the wars fought
against local tribes, like King Philip War, created a tense environment with a fear of
survival in the New Land. According to the research paper of Ayşe L. Kırtunç,
126 Gunn, Deterrence and Retribution, 179.
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societies that are ruled by bigotry, oppression, and fear would lay the groundwork for
social hysterias and witch hunts, and New England was not an exception too.127
These and the already very ecclesiastical legal culture mentioned before, led
to chaos and mass hysteria within the society, as can be seen in the cases of the
Salem Witch Trials. It was not only the after-effect of such a religiously opposed
society, but a religious purification of the town which was dealing with the Devil,
himself. As the colonies grew more and more in time, people started to seek more
land, power, and bigger wealth, which also had a religious side, with how Calvinism
was centered around the covenant of work. As the arrival of new people created a
lack of Salem`s resources, the families that depended on the agriculture started to
seek more land, power, and wealth. People started to covet on their neighbors' lands,
wealth, and personal feuds between families increased, leading to the false
accusation of thy neighbor where people were accused and killed for political or
economic benefits behind the religious façade. The imprisoned or executed witch`s
money was left to be shared between the governor, executer, judge, and informant, so
it was clear that the accusation of a rich person benefited many people. For example,
the money and property that belonged to the healer women, which was earned
through their work, was a strong reason behind their accusation like Bridget Bishop`s
case.128 Also, the racist looks on the ethnicities were a great cause of their false
127 Ayşe L. Kırtunç, “Cadı Kazanı`nın Sönmeyen Ateşi,” Ege Batı Dilleri Ve Edebiyatı Dergisi, vol. 9
(Ege Üniversitesi Basımevi, 1992).
128 Sarah-Nell Walsh, “Bridget Bishop” Virginia University Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive
(2001), https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/people/bishop.html.
53
accusations as it was easy to blame them when the white men already saw them as
devil worshippers and called the devil as “black devil” which also worked as they
were seen as a source of anxiety within the colonies.129 The most well-known
example of this in the witch trials is Tituba, a slave who belonged the Samuel Parris,
the minister of Salem who was the first person to be accused of witchcraft and
‘inviting the devil’ to the colony. While she refused her accusations first, the young
settlers blamed her for her different practices and after the beatings of his master, she
confessed her crimes as her master instructed her on how to do it and blamed others
for witchcraft too.130 She was sent to jail although other than eyewitnesses, they had
no proof.
While the idea of being ideal or a model was achieved in a way as they were
the model to other New England Colonies, as stated before in the paper, because of
their success and power as a settlement which was very much linked with religion as
covenant of work and conversion was economically beneficial for the growing and
strengthening of the colony, Winthrop`s colony contradicted with the ideals of a
‘Modell Christian’ who believed in charity and brotherly love. Alongside the
powerful colonies that refused to act tied to Old World, the extreme punishments that
were given by the strict authorities caused the English rule to feel inclined to take
control back and renew the Royal Charter, and this made them bound to the Anglican
129 Veta Smith Tucker, “Purloined Identity: The Racial Metamorphosis of Tituba of Salem Village”
Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 4 (2000): 624–34, 628, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2645907.
130 To learn about the interview with Tituba where she talks about her accusation and her confession.
See, Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700), 189.
54
Church once again and weakened the rule of Calvinism. Thus, the Puritan identity
started to change and transform from a hostile xenophobic one to a more British one,
yet this change was towards Old World, not other races within the societies, as they
stayed under shackles and were alienated until the end of the century. 131
“In solemn meeting, the congregation rescinded the excommunications-this in March
1712. But they did so upon orders of government. The Jury, however, wrote a
statement praying forgive-ness of all who had suffered… To all intents and purposes,
the power of theocracy in Massachusetts was broken.”132
131 Thomas S. Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism (New haven: Yale
University Press, 2013), 3.
132 Arthur Miller, The Crucible (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 132.
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Chapter V
Conclusion
As stated in the introduction, this thesis aimed to analyze how Puritans used
religion to shape and give grounds for slavery institution in New England in the
seventeenth and early eighteenth century which was racialized chattel slavery as it is
an important part of Puritan Colonies history as it helped them grow and prosper and
consequently effected the treatment and racism Blacks and Natives faced later on
history. The paper mainly covers the Massachusetts Bay colony and the narratives
and works of individuals like John Winthrop, John Saffin, Samuel Sewall, and
Cotton Mather as primary sources, along with Massachusetts Historical Society
archives for documents, cases, pamphlets, and entries about slaves. Although the
historiography on these documents and the era examines slavery`s existence in the
British American Colonies, they are mostly unilateral as they handle slavery and
religion separately, or even when they are together, it is either about Blacks or
Natives. Therefore, a more in-depth and comprehensive research is needed to inspect
the religious ties of slavery, racism, and perceiving slaves in Puritan New England.
This thesis aims to help to fill the gap and to inspire scholars to uncover the
understudied Northern Colony Slavery part of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
56
When Puritan settlers came to New England, the land was plentiful, although
it needed some ‘cleaning’ from Natives, however, the labor was lacking as the
settlers consisted of families who came with the idea of living their religion instead
of using the land or doing hard labor to build the colonies. While Puritans believed in
working as much as possible to earn the grace of God and that idleness brought the
devil, building a settlement was no easy task. Thus, a need for working bodies was
apparent, which was then gratified by slavery. As Puritans lived their lives guided by
religion, to fit the slavery institution, they used religion to justify it. They used parts
of the Bible like verses or stories like Cham’s curse “his curse to be a servant was
laid, first upon a disobedient sonne Cham, and wee see to this day, that the Moores
Chams posteritie, are sold like slaves,”133 to give a reasoning and reasonable ground
for the slavery. They argued that as Adam had slaves, it was also allowed for them to
use them. It is important to note that slaves and Blacks did not mean the same thing
at this time; therefore, Cham’s story was not the only one that was used. And as they
started to dwell in slavery, they started to become a part of the Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade along with Barbados and the West Indies with which New England had both
close ties and trade. As Puritans bought slaves, they started to profit from slaves`
work, furthermore, they met with the lucrative Triangular Trade. They started to sell
Natives as their land was more needed than their bodies and they preferred the
Blacks who had no ties to or in the New World and buy Blacks and started to acquire
wealth and power from the Trade.
133 Jordan, 62.
57
As religion shaped the institution of slavery, it also shaped how slaves were
treated. New England saw and treated slaves within the household, a part of the
household patriarchy and they had a distinction between Native and Black slaves.
Since the wars that were made with Natives to achieve their lands and their
knowledge of the land and their ties with tribes made them a ‘bad’ slave that would
be prone to run away and would be a potential enemy while Blacks who were a
stranger to the lands would be a better fit. However, as both were others with ‘devil
worship’ as their religion, they needed to be converted for the sake of the households
as they had intimate contact with the slaves where they did the same work that
settlers did and for the sake of the community that believed in Communal Salvation.
As the conversion of Natives started to happen earlier and free ones were converted
as well to be assimilated to colonies, the retreatment they received was different and
arguably better than Blacks, whose conversion never meant any liberties, just
freedom from Devil. However, this conversion was not for the sake of the well-being
of slaves, as it can be seen from the ideas of conversion never bringing any social
rights or stance but for the sake of the masters again as Cotton Mather reminded that
if the owners were keeping their slaves in the dark and if they were not educated
them with the words of the Lord, the sins of slaves were on the owners. Thus, both
with the calming promises of Mather134 that converting would not mean freedom and
securing the owners’ households and faiths, the conversion benefitted the settlers
more than the slaves.
134 Mather, 9.
58
While religion played such an important part in slavery, it was also used in
anti-slavery narratives. This was not only limited to the Puritan sphere as Quakers
used biblical stories too, yet the Puritan ones were varied from them, at least with the
reasons for such distaste. As Puritans believed in the importance of hard work,
making someone else do their work was not ideal as it would have meant that the
owners were doing idleness when his or her slave was working, but again as they
also believed in this importance, it soon started to mean that the more money one
had, the more they were closer to achieving God’s Grace. Furthermore, as slavery
was a very lucrative business, it started to become as the more slave one had or the
more, they dwelled in the slave trade, the better Puritans they were. Thus, the antislavery
was not a very popular idea as was the case with Sewall’s work. They knew
from the Old Testament that God allowed slavery so even when Sewall was trying to
condemn slavery with the story of Joseph, it was not followed by many. Also, with
Sewall’s works and narrative, it can be argued that his dislike was not exactly
towards slavery but towards the slaves themselves. He said that slaves, Blacks in this
case as he excluded Natives from his work, would always be foreigners within the
colonies, thus it was better to be rid of them.135 There he showed that even when the
subject was anti-slavery, the important part was the settlements and not the morally
wrong sides of the slavery. Here, it is essential to say that some Puritans, like Samuel
Rishworth, who opposed to slavery from the earlier days of the colonies or Jonathan
Edwards, a later example, did have some concerns with the morality of slavery,
135 Sewall, 2.
59
however it could be argued that it was not enough to support an abolitionist stance as
he owned slaves too.
Lastly, in the paper after talking about the religious shaping or justification of
slavery, slaves, and other races, to sum it all up and bring an end to the period even
though slavery continued until the eighteenth century, the aftermath of such religious
actions is crucial. After slavery brought wealth and money to the colonies, especially
Massachusetts Bay, as they were both the ideal for the rest and were the owner of
coastal power, the colonies started to see themselves as free entities that had no ties
to the Crown even though they were all royally charted, British owned colonies.
Moreover, such drift from the crown or such powerfulness was not welcomed by the
Old World. Another thing disliked by the British that when the crown started to take
power back with the Dominion of New England the restlessness of the society grew.
Moreover this restlessness when added to the anxiety that was caused by the number
of slaves that was rising, as even when they were converted, they were the ‘others’,
the colonies started to act harsher towards the others and their own. The rise of
tension and harshening of punishments in an already harsh, bodily punishment136
giving colony, helped to lead the way to a hysteria known as the Salem Witch Trials,
where the settlers started to accuse each other ‘for the sake of the colony’ based on
racial prejudices, hunger for money and political power or personal feuds. Therefore,
when the English rule renewed the Royal Charter and made them bound to Anglican,
136 Puritans believed in bodily punishments as they believed in body politics, thus when one hurt the
body politics, they would be punished according to how they hurt it.
60
it ignited the hysterias, harsh treatments, and disorderliness which made the colonies
felt as if the English was enslaving them, 137 moreover placing Puritans in the
‘bounded position’ and putting a halt on the freedom they felt due the power and
wealth that were achieved through Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
137 “Winthrop Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Series 6 (1889-1892), 326.
61
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Appendix
Figure 3: “A Modell of Christian Charity,” Cover page, New York Historical
Society MS.
71
Figure 4: “Portrait of John Winthrop,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections
Online.
72
Figure 5: “Portrait of Cotton Mather,” Engraved and published Boston by Peter
Pelham, 1728, Met Museum