Page:Woman Triumphant.djvu/129

 fixed for which he or she should serve any person, willing to pay the captain the amount of the immigrant's debt. This servitude extended always from four to eight years, and sometimes to more. The captains had no difficulty in turning the bonds, signed by redemptioners, into cash. Cheaper labor could be obtained nowhere, and for this reason the colonists were always eager to secure the services of redemptioners. The offers were made through the newspapers or at the "Vendu," the place where negroes were bought and sold. When applicants came, the redemptioner was not allowed to choose a master or to express wishes about the kind of work that would suit him. Members of the same family must not object to separation. So it happened frequently that a husband became parted from his wife or children, or children from their parents for many years or for life. As soon as the applicant paid the debt of a redemptioner, the latter was obliged to follow him. In case this master did not need his servant any longer, he could hire, transfer or sell him like chattel to someone else.

As in such a case the redemptioner received no duplicate of his contract, the poor creature depended entirely upon the good will of his new master, who had it in his power to keep him or her in servitude far beyond the expiration of the true contract time. If any dispute arose, a redemptioner enjoyed no greater protection than a negro, like whom he was treated in many respects. If found ten miles away from home without the written consent of his master, he would be regarded as a run-away and submitted to heavy physical punishment. Persons guilty of hiding or assisting such fugitives were fined 500 pounds of tobacco for each twenty-four hours such fugitive had remained under their roof. Who captured a run-away was entitled to a reward of 200 pounds of tobacco or 50 dollars. And to the run-aways servitude ten days were added for every twenty-four hours absent, to say nothing of the severe whipping he was liable to get.

The redemptioners went through all sorts of experiences, according to the different tempers of their masters. Some were lucky enough to find good homes, where they were well treated. But many fell into the hands of heartless, selfish people, who in their eagerness to get as much as possible out of the redemptioners, literally worked them to death, to say nothing of providing insufficient food, scanty clothing and poor lodging. Many owners made use of the right to punish redemptioners so frequently and so cruelly, that a law became necessary whereby it was forbidden to apply to a servant more than ten lashes for each "fault."

Female redeptioners were quite often exposed to lives of shame, which some of the laws seemed to invite. For