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Ten years since servants were "bought" in New-York, as really as in Virginia, yet the different senses in which the word was used in the two states, put no man in a quandary. By voluntary contract they engaged to work a given time to pay for their passage. This class of persons called "redemptioners," consisted at one time of thousands.
The same year he "received from on board the Brig Anna, from Ireland, two servant men for whom I agreed yesterday viz Thomas Ryan, a shoemaker, and Cavan Bowen a Tayler Redemptioners for 3 years service by Indenture." These cost him twelve pounds each.
Large numbers of these immigrants were "redemptioners," as they were called; that is to say, they were persons who had been obliged to sell themselves to the shipping agents to pay for their passage. On their arrival in Pennsylvania the captain sold them to the colonists to pay the passage, and the redemptioner had to work for his owner for a period varying from five to ten years.
The fact that negroes not bound for a term were coming to be appraised as high as £30, while the most valuable white redemptioners were worth not above £15 shows also the tendency toward the crystallization of slavery before any statutory enactments declared its existence. Until after the middle of the century the laws did not discriminate in any way between the races.
It is said that these redemptioners were often treated much more harshly and cruelly than the negro slaves, and any one who assisted one of them to escape was severely punished.
As it is healthful to exhaust all such questions, let us turn aside a moment, to give a passing glance at this very material subject. At the time when the Constitution was adopted, three classes of persons were "held to service" in the country apprentices, redemptioners, and slaves.
The farmers increased with still greater speed; for the planters in recruiting their gangs of indented laborers were serving constantly as immigration agents and as constantly the redemptioners upon completing their terms were becoming yeomen, marrying and multiplying.
On the city's south side sprung up the new city of Lafayette, now the Fourth District of New Orleans, and many of the aforetime redemptioners moved thither. Its streets near the river became almost a German quarter. Other German immigrants, hundreds and hundreds, landed among them and in the earlier years many of these were redemptioners.
Grandsteiner, the supercargo, had lived; but of 1800 homeless poor whom the Dutch king's gilders had paid him to bring to America, foul ships and lack of food and water had buried 1200 in the sea. The vessels reached port and the passengers prepared to step ashore, when to their amazement and dismay Grandsteiner laid the hand of the law upon them and told them they were "redemptioners."
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