Everyday Crimes

Social Violence and Civil Rights in Early America

Kelly A. Ryan

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781479869619
• eBook ISBN: 9781479801695
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The narratives of slaves, wives, and servants who resisted social and domestic violence in the nineteenth century

In the early nineteenth century, Peter Wheeler, a slave to Gideon Morehouse in New York, protested, "Master, I won't stand this," after Morehouse beat Wheeler's hands with a whip. Wheeler ran for safety, but Morehouse followed him with a shotgun and fired several times. Wheeler sought help from people in the town, but his eventual escape from slavery was the only way to fully secure his safety.

Everyday Crimes tells the story of legally and socially dependent people like Wheeler—free and enslaved African Americans, married white women, and servants—who resisted violence in Massachusetts and New York despite lacking formal protection through the legal system.

These "dependents" found ways to fight back against their abusers through various resistance strategies. Individuals made it clear that they wouldn't stand the abuse. Developing relationships with neighbors and justices of the peace, making their complaints known within their communities, and, occasionally, resorting to violence, were among their tactics.

In bearing their scars and telling their stories, these victims of abuse put a human face on the civil rights issues related to legal and social dependency, and claimed the rights of individuals to live without fear of violence.

Part I

The Colonial Era

Chapter 1

Young Servants and Apprentices

In 1718, Benjamin Franklin had reached the age of twelve in Boston, Massachusetts, a time when parents and their children customarily began making decisions about what trade their children would pursue. Parents of some financial means, such as Franklin’s father, secured their children’s contracts for servitude or apprenticeship to ensure the children developed the skills and education to become productive members of society. Franklin rejected his father’s vision of his becoming a clergyman, and he refused to join the family business as a soap and candle maker. Franklin was fortunate to have options. The best apprenticeships for boys involved serving for skilled artisans and usually required a fee on the part of parents; it was not regularly available to girls, the poor, and servants of color, who commonly received lesser training. Poor children, who often included Indians and African Americans, were bound to servitude or apprenticeship by Overseers of the Poor and they had little input on where they were sent. Though differences in the quality of experiences existed, the terms “servant” and “apprentice” were often used interchangeably because servitude in the early modern era simply meant a contract to work for the head of the household for wages, training, and room and board. Parents and Overseers expected masters to fulfill the basic needs of children, demanding they receive proper clothing, food, and lodging, and contracts stipulated a “decent and Christian education” in addition to any trade skills learned as part of their broader training.1 Benjamin Franklin and his father decided to apprentice him to Benjamin’s brother, James, to learn the skills of printing. Parents often chose to send their children to family members, as it was a way of ensuring their good training and treatment. Franklin quickly took to printing; he had increased access to books and he spent time outside of his apprenticeship learning to write and read more deeply.

Franklin was as assertive and resolute in his relationship with his new master as he was with his father in choosing his trade, and the relationship between James and Benjamin Franklin soon soured. Franklin secretly delivered several short written pieces for publication in his brother’s newspaper “suspecting” that his brother “would object to printing any Thing of mine in his Paper if he knew it to be mine.” Once they were published, Benjamin Franklin’s esteem among friends rose while the conflict with his brother intensified. James Franklin beat Benjamin repeatedly, citing his hubris and dilatoriness. “Tho’ a Brother,” Benjamin explained, James “considered himself as my Master, & me as his Apprentice; and accordingly expected the same Services from me as he would from another.” James Franklin likely believed that giving his brother special treatment would not benefit Benjamin’s development or training. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, masters had a responsibility to educate and promote order among their charges. Allowing an unruly servant to do as he or she pleased had negative effects on the broader community, which expected masters to control their servants. Benjamin admitted that he had become somewhat vain, but he also believed James “demean’d me too much in some he requir’d of me.”2

James Franklin’s power to discipline Benjamin derived from early Americans’ belief in the needfulness of authority figures over children and youth and obedience as a trait among them. A master’s judicious use of discipline along with kindness supposedly created peace and tranquility within the household and community.3 Masters had clear rights to use physical force, but they needed to temper this with the situational needs of individuals and the right of servants to live free from extreme bodily harm. Benjamin Wadsworth, a clergyman and educator in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggested that “If [a servant is] so foolhardy, high and stout as not to be mended by words; then correction should be us’d for his reformation.” Wadsworth proposed that limits existed on the use of corporal punishment, and the laws and practices of communities agreed. “Yet you should not correct them (as we said before of Children) in rage and passion; nor upon uncertainties, unless you are sure of their faults; nor should your corrections be cruel and unmerciful; if milder ones will do, more severe ones should ever be avoided.”4 Masters had to check their violence and aggression to maintain their authority among servants and ensure that they raised their youth properly. In addition to concerns about the futility of extreme violence as a means of correction, communities worried about the physical well-being of servants. They wanted young servants and apprentices well cared for and not permanently injured by their masters.

Benjamin Franklin was like many young men and women in New England when he rejected being beaten by his master. He claimed James “was passionate & had often beaten me, which I took extreamly amiss.” Benjamin Franklin cited James’s “passion,” portraying him as unjust and challenging his authority in the workshop. The relationship between the brothers continued to deteriorate.5 White servants and apprentices, like Franklin, were among the first of the dependent classes in early America to receive the right to legally redress their grievances about physical abuse, though Franklin did not take this route. When masters failed to fulfill their part of the contract, servants could petition the court. In the seventeenth century, courts responded favorably to the pleas that made their way through the formal court system by investigating many cases and freeing some servants from abusive masters. Young servants who did not have access to the courts or did not believe courts would effectively prevent their abuse opted to contest and prevent abuse by alternative means, including running away, fighting back, and hiding from abusive masters. The court did not approve of such behaviors. Although young servants had various options to redress abuse, not all servants found justice; courts and communities sometimes ignored claims of abuse or returned servants to abusive masters. Girls and servants of color were particularly susceptible to abusive situations. When neglected, abused servants suffered in dangerous situations with their best hope being to find a person (usually a parent) willing to help them.

By the time James Franklin began beating Benjamin, colonists in Massachusetts and New York were changing in terms of how they perceived and handled servant abuse. Young servants clearly had different conceptions than their masters of what constituted abuse. They had to assiduously assert their innocence and seek out intervention because communities were not equally disposed toward accepting servants’ claims that masters wrongfully assaulted them. During the eighteenth century, judges and juries decreasingly issued fines to masters who abused their servants. The decriminalization of abuse occurred over the long term and did not mean that servants could no longer access justice. What it did mean was that as communities’ craving for watchful masters magnified, they would intervene only in cases of severe abuse. The physical scars of violence became more important as communities lost trust in the testimony of young servants and apprentices. Even as the eighteenth century saw a decline in legal interventions, advice literature increasingly contested the use of violence in proper child rearing, and colonists began viewing adolescence and youth as stages of life requiring affection to build character.6 Children and youth protested abusive masters, and like Benjamin Franklin, they spoke up against violence or ran away, as many still had considerable agency in their lives. Youth created awareness about the dangers of abuse in servitude through their protests but did so among a culture attuned to maintaining obedience and discipline.

Processes of Contestation

Benjamin Franklin was not the first apprentice or servant to resent his treatment or suffer abuse at the hands of his master. Throughout the colonial era, youthful servants and apprentices assertively staked out their right to serve and learn a trade free from abuse in a society that accepted corporal punishment of servants within vaguely specified limits. Servants had their own conceptions of what constituted abuse, and in at least forty-four instances, servants and apprentices reported abuse to legal authorities.7 Massachusetts and New Netherland had developed and maintained processes whereby servants could redress their grievances regarding excessively cruel treatment, but these varied by region and over time. Both regions prosecuted and imposed criminal penalties on some masters who abused their servants, but New York offered abused servants freedom and fined masters for abuse more often than did Massachusetts. Extralegal protests by servants are difficult to locate in this period because of the paucity of records, but servants assiduously searched for allies, fought back, and ran from violence too. Parents proved the most reliable allies because nonfamilial bystanders often did not intervene in ways that helped servants. While protections existed for servants, their fight against abuse was critical to ensuring their safety because standards could not be set without drawing public attention to it.

Communities would not accept the murder of young white servants, but the investigations occurring after the death of white servants and apprentices show the weaknesses in community interventions to protect servants. In 1652/3, Massachusetts Court of Assistants, the colony’s highest court, prosecuted John Betts for beating his white servant Robert Knight to death “w’th a great plough staff . . . [and a] Goad upon y’e Backe, both which we find to be unlawfull weapons to strike w’th.” It was not the plough staff, however, that led to Betts’s indictment and conviction; it was the extreme cruelty with which he wielded the staff causing his servant’s death. Betts broke Knight’s back with his fierce blows, in addition to the suffering he inflicted with his fists and a stick. After the assault, Betts “neglected him and cruelly used him in sickness” by not giving him proper medical attention for the wounds. One witness who saw Knight prior to his death described him as “much maciated & decayed, strength [in] y’e inferious Limbs much decayed & somewha’t paralitick.” Neither did Betts allow Knight to rest, and the work of animal husbandry proved much too difficult to complete while suffering from a broken back. Witnesses for Betts testified that Knight was an insolent servant who stole and did not fulfill his work duties, but regardless, the court deemed the violence that Betts inflicted on Knight as criminal. As punishment, Betts was paraded to the gallows and stood with a rope around his neck for onlookers to taunt and harass him; he also suffered a severe whipping and paid a fine and the costs of the trial. In addition, the court required him to make a twenty-pound bond to ensure his good behavior in the future.8 Importantly, courts waited until Knight’s death to criminalize Betts’s behavior and little appears to have been done to ameliorate the dangers Knight faced. Colony-wide governments occasionally found fault with the practices of local communities, but they only did so in cases of murder. Such interventions were too late.9

Murder cases reveal the importance of community allies and bystanders who helped servants secure safety prior to escalation of abuse. In the 1600s, white servants routinely turned to legal authorities and neighbors when they experienced cruel treatment, as well as lack of food, clothing, shelter, and training in their professions. New England, New Netherland, and later New York stipulated that servants had a process to redress their grievances. When masters “Tyrannically and Cruelly abuse their Servants,” servants could make an actionable complaint to court officials. According to laws in New York, upon a servant’s first complaint, the court warned the master against such treatment, but if the abuse continued, Overseers or constables would “protect and Sustain such Servants in their Houses till due Order be taken for their Relief” at the next sitting of the court. In Massachusetts, legal protections also extended beyond the courts, and servants fleeing from “the Tyranny and Cruelty of his or her Master” could arrive at any free man’s household and expect protection until the “Magistrate or Constable” settled the affair. In cases of more egregious violence, the courts put other measures in place. In colonial New Netherland and New England, laws stipulated freeing maimed servants.10

Servants confronted a variety of difficulties when protesting abuse, including societal beliefs about the authority of parents and guardians to physically discipline unruly children and young adults. Early Americans viewed children as being at a developmental stage that required oversight, and English and Dutch societies accepted physical punishment so long as it was not excessively used.11 The Dutch Reformed Church, like Puritans and Pilgrims, had a more moderate stance than the Catholic Church toward the development of children, believing that proper religious and educational guidance had positive results.12 In cases of stubborn children, early modern parents generally agreed that physical discipline played a role in shaping them; in such cases, ministers and writers warned against exacting punishment during throes of anger and to always explain the reasons for physical punishment. It’s clear that physical discipline was acceptable, but both the English and Dutch had measures and writing that suggested abuse could harm the development of children.

The ambiguity in the laws regarding “Immoderate correction” and “cruelty” required that protesting servants establish two points: their behavior had not warranted the punishment and the assault was unreasonably severe. Servants and apprentices petitioned for relief, claiming masters meted out abuse without any “just Reasonable Cause” or “just Occasion” for doing so. Courts used servants’ testimonies and their witnesses to establish the veracity of complaints, and court officials also saw for themselves the wounds suffered by apprentices and servants. To make the best cases possible, servants understood that it was important to report abuse quickly. Bruises, cuts, and welts helped make cases, as well as any testimony they could find about their good behavior. Masters tried to persuade the court that their servants’ bad behavior demanded assaults. When Jan Everzen Bout found himself on trial for abusing a servant in New Amsterdam, he claimed his servant “is a stiffnecked thing and will not listen to what is said to her.”13 The two holes he bored through the child’s head indicated that more than the servant’s impudence caused the violence.

Servants believed the use of whips or rods was illegitimate in discipline, but the wielding of implements was hardly the only determining factor in deciding an abuse case. In 1710, a servant in Boston complained against his master for “Striking him with unlawful Instruments” and “grievously bruising and wounding” him. The court, however, returned him to his master, whom the court forced to make a bond to “not Abuse him by cruel and unmerciful Punishment.” The bond required a master and two other persons (serving as “sureties” for the bond) to agree that if the master abused the servant again within a stipulated time period the master and sureties would all lose the money bonded. While the potential loss of funds was significant, it did not constitute a punishment for the act committed and was only a preventative measure against future abuse. Another servant complained of the same master again in 1714, maintaining he received a “cruel Whipping,” but again courts returned the servant to his master, posed no fine, and told the master to avoid “Cruelty.” In addition to these cases, in 1639, a servant boy sought help by showing his battered body to several persons who looked specifically to see the marks of the whip, “but no blood” was found on the body. The witnesses did not report the abuse to JPs, but admonished the master that he had given the boy “sufficient correction for that time.” They also sought to ensure the child had proper sustenance. The child eventually died and only after that did the court say the use of rods was unlawful, which suggests the mixed messages in communities.14 Community members did not object to the use of whips and rods, and the courts deemed them unlawful only when they resulted in death or maiming.15 Northern masters rationalized the use of tools as a suitable means to punish servants so long as the tools were means to reform behavior and did not leave lasting marks.

Communities accepted young white servants’ ability to redress their grievances in court, and officials heard and processed their petitions even if they did not always agree with servants. Between 1630 and 1685 in Plymouth, at least six servants brought forth charges of abuse, and the courts removed three of these servants from their masters, admonished one master for the abuse, reproved one servant for being disorderly, and, in the final case, dropped the charges because the servant died.16 In Massachusetts Court of Assistants, an additional eight servants pushed for relief, but only one servant received freedom. Similar contestations and outcomes of abuse appear in Essex County, Massachusetts, where, between 1640 and 1682, fifteen servants protested, with the court deciding nine in favor of servants. In only one of these cases did the court place the abused servant in another household. In more remote Maine, no records of servants’ complaints exist prior to 1700, though suspicious murders of servants had occurred both there and in Plymouth.17 The landscape of Maine likely made self-emancipation through running away more attractive than turning to legal authorities.

Servants actively protested abuse in Dutch New Netherland as much as they did in Massachusetts. However, New Netherland offered white servants more room to get out of their servitude contracts when they protested abuse. Servants, the sheriff, or the schout (a public prosecutor) bought fifteen cases to the courts in New Netherland and New York between 16...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: The Colonial Era
• Part II: The Imperial Crisis and War
• Part III: The Early Republic
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author