Indentured Servant Analysis
Elizabeth Springs' letter to her father on September 22, 1756, is both a letter of apology due to her failure to communicate and a review of the horrendous conditions she was working under as an indentured servant. This paper reviews -- through historical context -- the situation that many indentured servants from England suffered through and puts Springs' letter into a perspective.
The Letter from Springs to John Spyer
Elizabeth Springs is clearly in distress. And to add to her distress over the terrible working conditions in the American colonies she is feeling guilty and sad that she left England under a cloud as to her relationship with her father. "My being forever banished from your sight…" she begins, hoping to touch her father's heart with her present pathos. It seems clear that it wasn't just a matter of Elizabeth leaving without her father's permission, but rather there was some kind of a confrontation before she left.
Knowing that she had "…offended [him] in the highest degree" prior to leaving England has caused her to "put a tie" to her "tongue." In other words she had not written to him apparently out of fear that the tension at the time of her departure meant they would not in any event be back in communication with each other. She was under the assumption that this father-daughter relationship was ended: "…I should be extinct from your good graces," she said.
But immediately after that she brings up the "care and tenderness" her father had shown to her over the years, and that little thought caused her to try and "…kindle up that flame again" with her father. She implores her father to...
Another major cause of exodus was the decline of linen manufacturing from 1771 to 1773. Many thousands of people suddenly lost their jobs and joined the hundreds going to America. "The linen trade... had entered upon a period of stagnation, and the consequent distress gave an impetus to the emigration to the land of promise" (Dunaway, 1944, p. 30). Religious persecution suffered by the Ulster habitats was another reason
But, it was an evil system in which "armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom," were contracted to provide labor "without compensation" (Blackmon). In conclusion, while it is true that the Civil War ended and the Emancipation Proclamation (and the 13th Amendment) supposedly freed the slaves, there was still a dark social policy of indentured servitude, as pointed out in this paper. There
indentured servants and company towns. Specifically, it will research and discuss how sociological concepts apply to these topics. Sociologically, company towns and indentured servitude are two of the most complex topics of life in historic America. Indentured servants placed their trust in others to eventually gain their freedom and a better life, while company towns existed to better the company, rather than the residents. These two forms of controlled
environment strictly controlled by its owning company, woman often found difficulty obtaining any kind of role outside of domestic duties. Work in company towns was generally reserved for males, which granted them the responsibility of providing for their families while restricting their wives to the duties at home. Women's lives within company towns, aside from placing them in a position of dependence on their husbands, were quite dull. In
Domestic Life as a Woman in a Slave Family I am a black female slave living in Virginia in the late 17th Century. I was born into slavery on a plantation and all I have ever known is slavery. My slavery was passed on to me by my mother, who was raped by the old plantation owner here in 1660 (DuBois & Dumenil, 2016, p. 55). I was married to
Indentured Servitude With Slavery in the Colonies Compared Indentured Servitude with Slavery in the Colonies America is a country that was built upon the labor of those who were not in power. Much of the labor in the early days of the colonies and states came from indentured servants and slaves. Though both kinds of labor have similarities, the lives of indentured servants and of slaves differed distinctively. Eventually, over the
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