Note 2 — NEGRO SERVITUDE IN THE UNITED STATES[A]

Several years before 1619, Negroes in England were sentenced to work in the colonies. "Two Moorish thieves [negroes] in London were sentenced to work in the American colonies. And they said no, they would rather die at once." Brown adds: "I do not know whether they were sent to Virginia or not." (The First Republic in America, p. 219. See also postnote 14.) Again, "I do not know that these negroes were the first brought to the colony of Virginia. I do not remember to have seen any contemporary account which says so. The accounts which we have even of the voyages of the company's ships are very incomplete, and we have scarcely an idea of the private trading voyages which would have been most apt to bring such 'purchas' to Virginia." Pory wrote in September, 1619: "'In these five months of my continuance here, there have come at one time or another eleven sail of ships into this river.' If he meant that these eleven ships came in after he did, at least three of them are not accounted for in our annals." Washburn, Slavery as it once prevailed in Massachusetts, pp. 198, 327.