Comments on: The Indentured Servant

By: Stephen Clay McGehee

Stephen Clay McGehee — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:07:03 +0000

Yes, we’ve got a post about that very topic. His name was Anthony Johnson.

http://www.confederatecolonel.com/2010/05/the-anthony-johnson-story/

By: Confederate Papist

Confederate Papist — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:59:30 +0000

If I am not mistaken, wasn’t the first slave owner in the colonies a freed black man or indentured servant that gained his freedom? I seem to remember the generalities of it but specifics escape me. It was in Virginia if I remember correctly.

By: J. Stephen Conn

J. Stephen Conn — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:48:58 +0000

Very interesting! My own Conn ancestors, three brothers from Mayo County, Ireland, eagerly sought and grabbed the opportunity to come to America as indentured servants. According to family stories handed down, indentured servitude literally saved their lives. Fleeing Ireland, they arrived in Philadelphia and one Conn brother remained there. A second brother eventually made his way to Colorado, and my own 3x great grandfather, John Thomas Conn, lived for a while in Virginia and later settled in Big Shanty (now Kennesaw) Georgia. Life was good for John Thomas in Georgia until Abraham Lincoln ordered the invasion of the Confederate States. General Sherman ransacked and burned down Big Shanty, and Yankee soldier’s killed three of his four sons, including my 2x great grandfather, William Elisha Conn. None of the Conns ever own a slave.

By: Austin

Austin — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 23:42:36 +0000

The tradition of indentured service was brought to America by the defeated Royalists/Cavaliers in the aftermath of the English Civil War. The tradition survived in varying degrees in the South and West Country of England, from which most Royalists/Cavaliers, originated until the second World War.

The practice was peculiar to the displaced Cavaliers of the Tidewater and American South. Its practice was abhored by the Puritans of New England and the Quakers of Pennsylvannia and the Mid-Atlantic colonies.

Its practice, unfortunately some would say, was a precursor to the introduction of slavery to the colonies and while it is true slavery was permitted or existed in some form at one time or another in all 13 colonies it was only in the South, due to its hierarchial culture imported by the Cavaliers from the South of England that slavery was fully accepted and implemented.

By: Linkpost 02-12-11 | Amerika: New Right, Conservationist, Traditionalist, Deep Ecology and Conservative Thought

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 02:17:22 +0000

[…] The Confederate Colonel: The Indentured Servant […]

By: Stephen Clay McGehee

Stephen Clay McGehee — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:34:39 +0000

I don’t know, but I suspect that it was a federal decision – most likely based on a court ruling rather than a specific legislation aimed at indentured servanthood.

By: Tyler Brock

Tyler Brock — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 13:03:22 +0000

I agree. I think indentured servitude is a great concept in theory, and I wish there were a way for it to still exist. Unfortunately, a few greedy souls can ruin a good thing and force the governments hand to put an end to it. If this service existed today, it would be over-regulated in a way that solely profited the government, to where neither master nor servant would benefit.

PS: Was indentured service ended through each state’s constitution one at a time or federally through the amending process? Or was it simply banned across all states without any type of ratification?