American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia

The meaning of the term is introduced in Chapter 7, but the term itself is first used in Chapter 10. Freedmen were those who finished their term of servitude or tenancy then acquired their headright or some land and became a small farmer. Morgan uses this term to distinguish a group of free small landholders from servants still working off their contracts.

This term is introduced in Chapter 5. A headright was 50 acres of land paid to new settlers who came to the colony on their own or to those who paid the transportation costs of another person. The company adopted the headright to give each settler a larger stake in the colony’s success. Morgan uses this term to show how the planters, the assembly, and the king manipulated headrights to disadvantage the freedmen by forcing land scarcity instead of honoring their headrights and allowing them to exit servitude into the role of small landholder.

This term is introduced in Chapter 2. Impressment was the act of taking men by force and putting them on military expeditions to Europe or to the New World. The men pressed into service were usually poor, including beggars and the unemployed. Morgan uses this idea to show how the first workers to arrive in the New World lacked the skill or the will to work or survive in the wilderness.

This term is introduced in Chapter 5. A magazine was a subcorporation that was allowed to sell goods to settlers in exchange for the settlers’ produce. Morgan uses this term to show how the Virginia colony changed from an economy that operated on exchange to one that operated on credit. Magazines were forced to accept the promise of payment when the next year’s crop came in; often, they were never paid back.

The Navigation Acts are referred to in Chapters 7 and 9 but not explicitly discussed until Chapter 10. The Navigation Acts were laws enacted by Parliament to prevent the colonists from trading with the Dutch. Morgan examines the acts to highlight how the colonists traded their tobacco with the Dutch in the 1640s and 1650s, which secured tobacco’s central place in the economy as the colony’s main export crop.

This term is introduced in Chapter 5. A quitrent was an amount charged on headrights and became another source of income for the colony. Morgan uses this term to show how the company and the king added minor taxes to the heavy tax load of the Virginians. Morgan traces taxes throughout the work since opposition to the Stamp Act in the late 18th century would become integral to Virginians’ justification for the American Revolution.

This term is first introduced in Chapter 10. A tithable was a person, a man over the age of 15 or a woman who engaged in tobacco production, who was taxed. Morgan uses this term to show how the population of freedmen grew over time and how the crushing tax rates that tithable small farmers had to bear partly led to Bacon’s Rebellion.