White servitude was one of the major institutions in the economy and society of early colonial British America. In fact more than half of all the white immigrants to the British colonies sold themselves into bondage for a period of years in order to migrate to the New World. Professor Galenson's study of the system of indentured servitude analyses rigourously the composition of this labour force and provides a quantitative description of the demographic, social and economic characteristics of more than 20,000 indentured immigrants. The author examines the interactions between indentured, free and slave labour and provides a framework for analysing why black slavery prevailed over white servitude in the British West Indies and the southern mainland colonies and why both types of bound labour declined to insignificance in the northern colonies of the mainland.

"Eugene McCormac writes that running away was characteristic of servitude and that it cut into profits." - Liberation Theology Along the Potomac (2011) "In Eugene McCormac's study of indentured servants in Maryland, he notes that in the Assembly of 1637/38 there were fifteen former servants." - Social and Political Disorder in Proprietary Maryland (1970) "From Eugene McCormac in 1904...to Gloria Main...historians have seen the plantation system as inimicable to the interest of free craftsmen." - Colonial Chesapeake Society (2015) Is there any truth to claims that white people were kept as slaves on early colonial American plantations? University of California Professor of American History, Eugene Irving McCormac (1872-1943), answers this question and more in his 85-page book "White Servitude in Maryland, 1634-1820." In introducing his book, McCormac writes: "For a number of years the involuntary emigrants probably outnumbered those who went of their own free wills....The system of servitude thus early established in Virginia was adopted by Lord Baltimore as a means of settling and developing the colony of Maryland. Too poor to send out settlers himself, he induced others to transport servants in return for grants of land in the new colony."

"In this groundbreaking work, Richard Hayes Phillips has collected the names of more than five thousand children kidnapped from Ireland, Scotland, England, and New England, and sold into slavery in Maryland and Virginia, c. 1660-1720. By English law dated 1659, it was lawful for justices of the peace to kidnap children found begging or vagrant and ship them to the plantations as servants without indentures. The younger the child, the longer the sentence, and the colonial county courts were the judges of their ages. These five thousand names, culled from the Court Order Books, some of which have not been examined for centuries, have now been compiled into one genealogical index. In almost every case the entries provide the name of the child, the name of the owner, the date they appeared in court, and the age assigned by the judges, many of whom owned the very children they were sentencing to servitude. For ease of use, the volume contains an index to the ships--and their captains--that imported these kidnapped children, as well as a surname index to guide the researcher to alternate or incorrect spellings as found in the Court Order Books. The Introduction to Mr. Phillips's book describes the history and conditions of white servitude in colonial Maryland and Virginia, along with an annotated list of the sources he consulte"--The publisher.

The essential, “richly researched”* biography of Harriet Tubman, revealing a complex woman who “led a remarkable life, one that her race, her sex, and her origins make all the more extraordinary” (*The New York Times Book Review). Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history—a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. Now, in this magnificent biography, historian Kate Clifford Larson gives us a powerful, intimate, meticulously detailed portrait of Tubman and her times. Drawing from a trove of new documents and sources as well as extensive genealogical data, Larson presents Harriet Tubman as a complete human being—brilliant, shrewd, deeply religious, and passionate in her pursuit of freedom. A true American hero, Tubman was also a woman who loved, suffered, and sacrificed. Praise for Bound for the Promised Land “[Bound for the Promised Land] appropriately reads like fiction, for Tubman’s exploits required such intelligence, physical stamina and pure fearlessness that only a very few would have even contemplated the feats that she actually undertook. . . . Larson captures Tubman’s determination and seeming imperviousness to pain and suffering, coupled with an extraordinary selflessness and caring for others.”—The Seattle Times “Essential for those interested in Tubman and her causes . . . Larson does an especially thorough job of . . . uncovering relevant documents, some of them long hidden by history and neglect.”—The Plain Dealer “Larson has captured Harriet Tubman’s clandestine nature . . . reading Ms. Larson made me wonder if Tubman is not, in fact, the greatest spy this country has ever produced.”—The New York Sun

Excerpt from White Servitude in Maryland: 1634-1820 The system of servitude thus early established in Virginia was adopted by Lord Baltimore as a means of settling and developing the colony of Maryland. Too poor to send out settlers himself, he induced others to transport servants in return for grants of land in the new colony. Many who did not wish to go in person furnished Baltimore money for transporting servants and received their pay in lands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Relates how Benjamin Banneker's grandmother journeyed from England to Maryland in the late seventeenth century, worked as an indentured servant, began a farm of her own, and married a freed slave.

Tobacco and Slaves is a major reinterpretation of the economic and political transformation of Chesapeake society from 1680 to 1800. Building upon massive archival research in Maryland and Virginia, Allan Kulikoff provides the most comprehensive study to date of changing social relations--among both blacks and whites--in the eighteenth-century South. He links his arguments about class, gender, and race to the later social history of the South and to larger patterns of American development. Allan Kulikoff is professor of history at Northern Illinois University and author of The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism.