Richard Frethorne's An Indentured Servants, Slaves

Most of history is seen through the eyes of those of privilege, education, and wealth: royalty, nobility, and merchants. There were those of less fortune or lower class that were educated enough to be able to record their experiences and points-of-view, but they were far and few between. Especially in early America, from immigrants, slaves, free blacks, natives, and indentured servants. “In Defense of the Indians” by Bartolome de La Casa, “An Indentured Servant’s Letter Home” by Richard Frethorne, “Ads for Runaway Servants and Slaves”, “The Irish in America” by John Francis Maguire, and “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass are by or about the natives, slaves, indentured servants, and immigrants in the early

Straight off he claims, “From the fact that the Indians are barbarians it does not necessarily follow that they are incapable of government and have to be ruled by others, except that they have to be taught about the catholic faith and to be admitted to the holy sacraments. They are not ignorant, inhuman, or bestial.” (pg.3 paragraph 1) De La Casa acknowledged that, while their practices were less evolved than the Spanish, it did not mean they were any less human or developed than the Spanish, and only need a guiding hand to the Catholic faith. He described how the Spanish treated the natives like dogs, forcing them to mine for precious minerals, and compared the Conquistadors to Romans. He wrote an argument defending the natives, explaining they were not any less intelligent then the Spanish and “…they are so skilled in every mechanical art…” (pg. 4 paragraph 2) going on to say how they should be considered more advanced, or at least on par, with the rest of the

Between 1733-1772, newspapers printed “Ads for Runaway Servants and Slaves” with descriptions of the runaways, the jobs of the runaways, why they possibly ran away, who was looking for the runaways, and the rewards for the runaways. Reading the ads, you can understand why they would run away. Many of the runaways are not referred to in a human sense, but in a possessive sense and many of the ads had more than one person described. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” was written in 1845 as an autobiography of Frederick Douglass. He wrote about his time as a slave, describing the slaves’ living conditions. Douglass wrote about Colonel Lloyd, and what a horrible person he was. He described the songs the slaves would sing, and the emotion in them that could describe the horrors of slavery clearer than any book or piece of writing could.

In 1861, John Francis Maguire wrote the book “The Irish in America” describing the treatment of Irish emigrants in America. Many of the Irish emigrants were of lower class, driven to America by British dominion and starvation due to the potato rot. Maguire wrote about the hardships faced by the immigrants when they got to America. Even though the circumstances in America were horrible, most of the immigrants stayed because it was better than back in Ireland; they preferred to suffer in a place of claimed equality and freedom then go back to