Servitude in America: Human Trafficking and the German Redemptioners in the New World
The Crossing Part IV
Frontpiece of Gottlieb Mittelberger’s 1756 book, Reise nach Pennsylvanien
Readers, by the time you read this, I’ll be in Sweden—I managed to get a place at an artist residency there, and a grant to pay for the entire trip, and I’ll be gone for about three weeks. I’ll be photographing along the High Coast, and I’m spending some time in Stockholm visiting museums.
Today I’m writing about something I learned a few years ago: the indentured servitude of the Palatine passengers that sailed the Atlantic to the New World. Consider this advertisement from a newspaper, the Lancaster Journal, dated December 29, 1798: A number of healthy German MEN and WOMEN Redemptioners, (among which are several Mechanics) just arrived in Lancaster, and to be sold for a term of years. Apply to Adam Reigart, Jun.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably no idea about these “redemptioners.” They fall in between two economic strata prevalent in the colonies at the time: the free man, who could bargain for wages and quit at any time, and the slave, who was treated as property and had no hope of being freed. The redemptioner—in England, they were known as the “indentured”—is essentially someone who is sold into labor for a number of years. But why?
In England, before an emigrant could board a ship, they had to sign a labor contract. Among the English you’ll hear the term indentured servant—you serve out an indenture, essentially, but once that service is completed, you are essentially free. But the Germans weren’t bound by this rule regarding a labor contract; rather, they would sign an agreement with the captain of a ship to pay their fare when they reached the colonies, and if they couldn’t pay, they were sold by the captain as his property. Once sold, they were required to serve a certain number of years before they would be freed.
How did this happen? It turns out, it often happened by blatant dishonesty—and Gottlieb Mittelberger published his account of this travesty in 1756.
One of the most fascinating books I’ve come across is Gottlieb Mittelberger’s Reise nach Pennsylvanien—the Journey to Pennsylvania, published in Germany in 1756, with the telling subtitle that reads, in part, a detailed account of the sad and unfortunate circumstances of most of the Germans that have emigrated, or are emigrating to that country. I reference the 1898 version, translated by Carl Theodor Eben, a member of the German Society of Pennsylvania.
In the address to the reader at the outset, Mittelberger writes that “the most important part of this publication will no doubt be found in the account of the fate that awaits the unfortunate people who leave Germany to seek uncertain prosperity in the New World, but find instead, if not death, most surely an oppressive servitude and slavery.” His purpose in writing the book, in part, was to dissuade his countrymen from making the journey at all. He himself was only to stay for some four years.
In 1750, Mittelberger would have been about thirty-six years old. He was employed as a schoolmaster in his native country of Enzweihingen but lost his job early that year. In the spring, he was offered employment in New Providence, Pennsylvania as both a schoolmaster and an organist. The book begins with this journey over the ocean.
In May, he first went to Heilbronn to pick up an organ, and with that in tow sailed both the Neckar and Rhine Rivers to the port of Rotterdam in Holland, the embarking point for Germans sailing to Philadelphia. That trip, plus his waiting in Rotterdam, took an astounding seven weeks. From Rotterdam, he joined about 400 other passengers, Palatines among them, and sailed across the North Sea to Cowes in England, where he spent nine more days. When they finally sailed, it took until October 10—all said, a journey of 23-weeks from his homeland to Philadelphia.
Based on his journey, Mittelberger wrote this book because, as he writes, “many Wurtembergers, Durlachers and Palatines, of whom there are a great number there who repent and regret it while they live that they left their native country, implored me with tears and uplifted hands, and even in the name of God, to make this misery and sorrow known in Germany, so that not only the common people, but even princes and lords, might learn how they had fared, to prevent other innocent souls from leaving their fatherland, persuaded thereto by the newlanders, and from being sold into a like slavery.”
The real evil was the newlander. It is “the outrageous and merciless proceeding of the Dutch man-dealers and their man-stealing emissaries; I mean the so-called newlanders, for they steal, as it were, German people under all manner of false pretenses, and deliver them into the hands of the great Dutch traffickers in human souls.”
Note the word, traffickers. As in, “human trafficking,” which even today remains a crisis in the world, and which we all deplore—save the traffickers themselves, not to mention whatever sordid type supports them. To put it simply, these traffickers conned the Germans out of their freedom, and Mittelberger sets out to explain how.