A Different Mirror: Part 1, Chapter 3: The Hidden Origins of Slavery Summary & Analysis

Caliban could have also been African. Like Indians, Africans were also captured during the 16th century and taken to England; although they were intended to be translators rather than exhibits, the English population gawked at them as they had done at the captive Natives. Already during this time, a racist ideology had developed within England wherein blackness was associated with dirt and sin, and whiteness with sacred purity. The English once again accused Africans of being devil-worshipers possessed by uncontrolled sexual desire.

When The Tempest debuted in London, there was as yet no plan to bring Africans to the Virginia colony. However, in 1619, a Dutch man sold English settlers in America twenty black men who had probably been captured as prisoners of war in Africa. The formerly enslaved abolitionist Olaudah Equiano wrote an account of the absolute horror of being captured from his Igbo homeland and brought to America on a slave ship. Yet although the first Africans brought to America were “sold,” they were likely indentured servants rather than slaves.

For many years, there remained fairly few Africans in Virginia, even as huge numbers of captive Africans were being brought to the Caribbean. Gripped by racism, English colonizers were likely hesitant for there to be too large a population of Africans in their settlement. Instead, they brought white indentured servants from England, Germany, and Ireland to work on the tobacco plantations. Many of these were convicts, while others had been tricked or kidnapped. In America, black and white workers were illegible to each other, and “mutual feelings of fear and hostility undoubtedly existed.” However, they were united by their oppression.

Sometimes white and black workers ran away together, while others engaged in sexual liaisons. If this was discovered, both parties were punished. Over time, black workers found themselves with fewer and fewer rights. They lost the right to bear arms, and soon the first black workers were assigned enslaved status. They began to be sold as property, required to work not for a set period of time but for the rest of their lives. By the 1650s, about 70% of black people in Virginia had slave status. During this time, most planters still preferred using white indentured servants to meet their need for labor. However, the number of these workers coming to Virginia eventually began to decrease, and at this point there was a drastic increase in the rise of Africans brought to America.

The Tempest depicts an “interracial class revolt” in which the white jester and butler conspire with Caliban to overthrow Prospero. The jester and butler at first think of Caliban as a “monster,” but eventually agree to work alongside him once they realize what they could gain from it. In the end, however, Prospero thwarts their plot.

White indentured servants hoped to become landowners after their servitude ended; America thus represented an opportunity for them to become more wealthy and respected. However, these plans were thwarted by planters whose wealth, status, and power had already vastly increased due to the tobacco boom. These planters established themselves as elite, increased the terms of indentured servitude, and imposed harsher punishments for running away. Frustrated and angry, white workers began planning rebellions. In 1663, nine workers were convicted of conspiring to overthrow the Virginia government, and several were executed.

Yet this did not quell the unrest. The landowning class were particularly fearful of the fact that the resentful white workers were armed. In 1676, a planter named Nathaniel Bacon led a rebellion, creating a militia that included many white workers and attacking Indians of the Susquehannah and Occaneechee tribes. Governor William Berkeley charged Bacon with treason, and Bacon marched his army of 500 to Jamestown. At this point, black workers also joined the army, burning Jamestown down. However, government forces managed to suppress the rebellion by tricking the workers into believing that they were being freed, only to then return them to their “masters.”

Yet even though the uprising had been quashed, the landowning elite remained nervous. The planters decided to seek a more permanent solution, involving mass importing enslaved Africans as the primary source of labor in the colony. By the end of the 17th century, enslaved people counted for almost half of the colony’s population. Every new African who arrived on America’s shore had enslaved status. The new labor system was a caste system, wherein white people were given total control over the enslaved Africans. There was also an expansion of what it meant to be black, known as the “one-drop rule.” Mixed-race children were automatically enslaved.

Thomas Jefferson was himself an enslaver, and profiting from slave labor made him one of the richest men in Virginia. By 1822 there were 267 people enslaved on his property. Jefferson himself admitted to using cruel punishments on enslaved people. Paradoxically, he also claimed that slavery was “an immoral institution” that clashed with American values. He was tormented by guilt about being an enslaver and said that he planned to free the enslaved people he held captive once his debts were paid off, but this never happened. He also lamented the negative impact of slavery on white children, who were harmed by their proximity to such a cruel and perverse institution.

While Jefferson wanted slavery to eventually be abolished, he also believed that black people would have to be removed from America. Noting the difficulty of this task, he advised a gradual removal, which would include sending all enslaved children to Haiti (the first and only country in which enslaved people had rebelled, abolished slavery, and become an independent black nation). Jefferson was adamant that black people were intellectually inferior to white ones, and dismissed the writings of Phyllis Wheatley, a formerly enslaved African woman who criticized slavery as an evil hypocrisy.

The black mathematician Benjamin Banneker condemned Jefferson’s hypocrisy in a letter to him, accusing him of failing to enact the principles of the American Revolution. Jefferson’s diplomatic reply concealed the fact that he maintained that Banneker, like all black people, was simple-minded. He also supported the myth that black people were sexually aggressive and was particularly horrified by the idea of miscegenation. This was ironic, considering that Jefferson himself fathered several children by an enslaved woman named Sally Hemings. During Jefferson’s life, rumors and satire about his “relationship” with Hemings abounded in the press. Jefferson nonchalantly denied the charges.

In 1784, shortly after the death of his wife, 41-year-old Jefferson went to Paris with his daughter. Three years later, his teenage daughter Polly joined him, accompanied by her enslaved servant, 15-year-old Sally. Sally was very light-skinned and white-passing, and was known to be extremely beautiful. According to Sally’s daughter, this was when Sally became Jefferson’s “concubine.” Because she was free in France, Sally did not want to return to America with Jefferson. However, she did go, and gave birth to five children by Jefferson (one of whom died in infancy). Today, DNA tests have confirmed that Jefferson was indeed the father of these children.

Jefferson’s belief that black people would have to be expelled from America following abolition rested in his fear that the formerly enslaved would seek revenge against their captors in a “race war.” Yet this was also part of his reason for wanting abolition in the first place. As long as slavery existed, the threat of violent rebellion was too great. At the same time, the institution of slavery was so widespread and embedded that it could not be easily undone.