At the bottom of the social scale were the chattel slaves, more than half a million in number when the war for independence commenced. Though manumission was possible in some colonies, the law held most of the slaves in permanent servitude and, whether free or bond, their color marked them off from the other classes of every rank. In economic status, slaves who were fortunate in their masters often had a position superior to that of poor whites and unhappy indentured servants; but under the best of conditions they were silent members of the social order, liable to punishment for the slightest disobedience and to terrible penalties for serious crimes. They served as the foundation of the planting aristocracy in the South and labored as the servants of the mercantile class in all sections. Voiceless themselves, they found but few spokesmen in the white race. It was with extreme caution that John Woolman composed, in 1746, Part I of his pamphlet entitled Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes in which he argued that they were "of the same species with ourselves," endowed with natural rights, and held in bondage on grounds neither righteous nor holy.
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Like so many elements of the English class structure, the English family system, with its traditions reaching back to the dawn of history and its deep entanglements in property and the struggle for existence, was transported to the American colonies. According to the well-accepted principles of the common law, the husband and father was lord and master of the family establishment, although in practice his sovereignty was often nominal enough. In this arrangement, the wife and mother—the married woman—found her personality merged in that of her husband, her legal existence suspended if not quite extinguished, and numerous disabilities imposed upon her.
On the day of her wedding her lands and houses, in case
