A Comparative Approach
While slave labor comprised the majority of the plantation workforce across the Americas, it was never the sole labor system in use.
Historical records now show that slaves often worked alongside transported laborers and/or indentured servants. One document in the `Our Americas' Archive Partnership2 (a digital archive collaboration on the hemispheric Americas), James Revel's poem The Poor Unhappy Transported Felon's Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation, at Virginia, in America. . ., provides rare insight into life and labor in colonial America. As such, educators can use the document as a teaching tool within AP History or college introductory History courses.
Very little is known about Revel, but his account, composed at some point during the eighteenth century, traces his path from rebellious teen to Chesapeake tobacco laborer. In the document Revel states that he lived in England until he was caught stealing and was sentenced to transportation, which was, A just reward
for my vile actions base. As one historian notes, transportation was Britain's, adopt[ion] [of] foreign exile as a punishment for serious crime (Ekirch, 1).
During their period of exile, felons could experience a wide array of treatment at the hands of their employers as, Parliament enacted laws to prevent their early return home but took no steps to regulate their treatment either at sea or in the colonies (Ekirch, 3). Revel's exile began in Virginia where he worked for a farmer who was abusive and cruel.
Upon his master's death, Revel was sold to a tenderly and kind individual who eventually arranged for Revel to travel back to England as a free man. For a solid overview of transportation as a British punishment, see Frank McLynn's Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England (2002).
While slave labor comprised the majority of the plantation workforce across the Americas, it was never the sole labor system in use.
Historical records now show that slaves often worked alongside transported laborers and/or indentured servants. One document in the `Our Americas' Archive Partnership2 (a digital archive collaboration on the hemispheric Americas), James Revel's poem The Poor Unhappy Transported Felon's Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation, at Virginia, in America. . ., provides rare insight into life and labor in colonial America. As such, educators can use the document as a teaching tool within AP History or college introductory History courses.
Very little is known about Revel, but his account, composed at some point during the eighteenth century, traces his path from rebellious teen to Chesapeake tobacco laborer. In the document Revel states that he lived in England until he was caught stealing and was sentenced to transportation, which was, A just reward
for my vile actions base. As one historian notes, transportation was Britain's, adopt[ion] [of] foreign exile as a punishment for serious crime (Ekirch, 1).
During their period of exile, felons could experience a wide array of treatment at the hands of their employers as, Parliament enacted laws to prevent their early return home but took no steps to regulate their treatment either at sea or in the colonies (Ekirch, 3). Revel's exile began in Virginia where he worked for a farmer who was abusive and cruel.
Upon his master's death, Revel was sold to a tenderly and kind individual who eventually arranged for Revel to travel back to England as a free man. For a solid overview of transportation as a British punishment, see Frank McLynn's Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England (2002).
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