In the year 1680 10,000 poor English men, women and children were sold into slavery in the American and Caribbean plantations. Irish and Scottish kidnapping victims were not included in this total and certainly numbered fewer, as Ireland had been emptied in the previous decade and the Scottish slave trade would not go into full swing until 1682, when King Charles II put restrictions on the sale of English slaves.

In 1673 the Royal Africa Company began shipping up to 5,000 slaves per year to the English plantations on the North American coast, with Virginia and New York their primary ports of call..

Florida was a Spanish Outpost.

Georgia was Indian land 50 years away from being settled by the English.

The Carolinas were still a managed tribal wilderness, with a few coastal plantations enslaving Indians, whites and having imported their first black slaves from the Caribbean in 1671. In 1677 white, back and Indian slaves had rebelled together.

Virginia still reeled from Bacon’s mixed-race slave rebellion in 1676 and would suffer its last unrest in 1682 with the Tobacco Cutting Riots. By 1687 the Virginia forests had been cleared and poor whites migrated west to form a buffer zone of Indian fighters and slave catchers, many of them moving North into Pennsylvania to be slave owners [mostly of whites] themselves, and also into Maryland… Still, by 1687, six in seven whites are slaves. As late as 1720, unborn whites were being sold for bond indentures of “the customary” 30 years.

Maryland slaves were 10 white to one black, as the colony was too impoverished to afford African imports. There was a slave uprising among white servants in 1686, instigated by Scottish POWs sold into slavery in 1685. White slaves would continue as the mainstay in Maryland until the 1750s many deserted their masters for the frontier.

New Jersey is founded in 1681 as it is annexed by William Penn under the terms of his charter. In 1683 it receives its first black slaves.

Pennsylvania is founded in 1682 with a treaty between William Penn and the Delaware Indians, who received trade tomahawks and guns in return for acting as security against French incursions and the revolt or escape of white slaves. The first black slaves are shipped in on the Isabella in 1684. Blacks work primarily as house and body servants, with the cheaper whites used for land clearance. Black slaves in Philadelphia would stand at 2% of the population in 1710 and rise to 8% by 1770, being a tiny slice of the un-free labor force.

New York had been a hub of white and black slavery under Dutch rule for more than 50 years. In 1680 two Dutch tourists describe in their journal how an Englishman made his dying white servant dig his own grave. Vast numbers of white and black slaves mixed and would foment two rebellions in the 1700s.

In 1680, Boston received 120 black slaves. However, in 1687 each house in Boston had six slaves, indicating that about one in six Boston slaves were black. Having not yet recovered from the Indian wars of the mid to late 1670s, and with French and Indian hostility growing, many white slaves outside of the major cities were pressed into service as unwilling soldiers, eventually to assert their independence, culminating in a rebellion that toppled the Governor in 1689. As late as 1721, Benjamin Franklin was enslaved by his brother. The use of un-free men as Indian fighters in New England fairly guaranteed that these northern plantations would provide much of the impetus for rebellion against England, which was the ultimate authority behind enslavement, in the 1770s.

New Hampshire did not receive its first black slaves until 1708, indicating that all slaves in the 1600s in New Hampshire and Maine were white.

As with the mixed-race escaped slaves Fredrick Douglas, Moses Roper and William Wells Brown of the 1800s, the ability to read and write was the prime indicator that a slave’s bid for freedom might be successful. One could not impersonate a free man without the ability to read and write. Indeed, James Revel was spared more work in the fields and elevated to the stature of an actual apprentice and body servant due to his ability to read and write. For this reason records of black slavery are much more common than of their white counterparts, as blacks were more likely to be chosen for body servant and household duties than whites, especially where female servants were concerned.

White slave mistresses did not want some “Irish slut” tempting her husband and felt more secure in having black girls around the house. This, together with the fact that white females were enslaved less often than males, by ratios as high as five to one, accounts for the high number of female black slave memoirs and the total absence of white slave girl memoirs. The only voice of white female servitude this researcher has been able to uncover was from Elizabeth Sprigs, a Maryland slave from 1756, who wrote a letter to her father describing her wretched condition. As we have no women's words considering their condition from James Revel's time, this sad letter below, from a far more genteel time, two generations removed from James' own age, must suffice.

Maryland, Sept’r 22’d 1756

"Honored Father

"My being for ever banished from your sight, will I hope pardon the Boldness I now take of troubling you with these, my long silence has been purely owning to my undutifullness to you, and well knowing I had offended in the highest Degree, put a tie to my tongue and pen, for fear I should be extinct from your good Graces and add a further Trouble to you, but too well knowing your care and tenderness for me so long as I retain’d my Duty to you, induced me once again to endeavor if possible, to kindle up that flame again. O Dear Father, believe what I am going to relate the words of truth and sincerity, and Balance my former bad Conduct my sufferings here, and then I am sure you’ll pity your Destress Daughter, What we unfortunate English People suffer here is beyond the probability of you in England to Conceive, let it suffice that I one of the unhappy Number, am toiling almost Day and Night, and very often in the Horses drudgery, with only this comfort that you Bitch you do not halfe enough, and then tied up and whipp’d to that Degree that you’d not serve an Animal, scarce any thing but Indian Corn and Salt to eat and that even begrudged nay many Negroes are better used, almost naked no shoes nor stockings to wear, and the comfort after slaving during Masters pleasure, what rest we can get is to rap ourselves up in a Blanket and ly upon the Ground, this is the deplorable Condition your poor Betty endures, and now I beg if you have any Bowels of Compassion left show it by sending me some Relief, Clothing is the principal thing wanting, which if you should condiscend to, may easily send them to me by any of the ships bound to Baltimore Town Patapsco River Maryland, and give me leave to conclude in Duty to you and Uncles and Aunts, and Respect to all Friends

"Honored Father

"Your undutifull and Disobedient Child

"Elizabeth Sprigs"

Source: Elizabeth Sprigs, “Letter to Mr. John Sprigs in White Cross Street near Cripple Gate, London, September 22, 1756”

It is quite obvious that Elizabeth was sold by her father for some wrong she had done. It should be noted, that at this very time, Scottish Slave Peter Williamson was undergoing his ordeal, as described in Stillbirth of a Nation. Like James, Elizabeth must have already known how to read and write before her enslavement.

Below is a link to an article on Elizabeth and her plight.