from Bermuda. Rhode Islanders joined the parade in 1647 and soon were
among America’s foremost slavers. Soon slavery was common in “British
America.”
Curiously, given the horror of enslavement and transport to the New
World, the colonists almost immediately thought of the blacks as their
defenders. Slave men were frequently enrolled alongside whites in the early
militias. Unconsciously, the colonists and their British governors were
adopting a very ancient practice: the Egyptians used Nubian slaves as sol-
diers; the Athenians used Scythian slaves as policemen; wealthy Romans
often armed large bands of their Balkan slaves as bodyguards; and the later
Islamic states assembled whole armies of Turkish and Circassian slaves. In
America, necessity was the mother of re-invention. Out of fear of the still-
free Indian tribes on their frontiers, whites armed blacks to fight against
them. In 1641, the Dutch governor of New Netherland armed “the
strongest and fleetest Negroes.” In 1652, the General Court in Massa-
chusetts ordered all inhabitants including “Scots and Negroes” to be
armed and trained to fight. South Carolina and Rhode Island adopted the
practice and continued it into the first decade of the eighteenth century.
Other black slaves were employed to build fortifications because they
were cheaper than free whites, who had to be paid. In 1699, the earl of
Belmont wrote to the Lords of Trade in London, urging them to send more
“negroes from Guinea, which I understand are brought hither, all charges
whatever being borne, for ten pounds apiece, New York money, and I can
clothe and feed them very comfortably for nine pence apiece per day sterling
money, which is threepence per day less than I require for [white] soldiers.”
Despite the saving in cost, the experiment was soon dropped. Massachusetts
led the way in 1656 and Virginia followed in 1680. Eventually, all colonial
governments acted to curb what they feared might become “black power.”
Probably this sequence of enrolling blacks and then curbing them was
a function of the growing size of the black population. As long as there were
few blacks in the American colonies, they posed no threat of revolt even if
armed; as their numbers increased, the colonists grew apprehensive and
ceased to arm them. Between June 1699 and October 1708, thirty-nine
ships brought to Virginia some 6,607 blacks, of whom 679 were imported
by the recently established Royal African Company of London and 5,692
168 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA