Chuck

Yeah.

Even into the American Revolution and beyond, there was not like a lot of government enforced punishment using prison labor.

They were still crazy for the stocks.

but there were things regarding the colonies that did have to do with punishment that did result in your labor.

And that would be if you got into trouble, say in England, you would be sentenced to transportation, either Australia or the United States, maybe even Canada, if you were lucky.

And I think 60,000 people before the American Revolution, while America was British colonies or were British colonies, were sentenced to transportation and showed up there and said, okay, what do you want me to do?

I'm here to work.

Yeah, and we should say this early indentured servitude is what they called it.

It was aimed at white people exclusively in the colonies and then later on the early United States because if the government intervened in a plantation owner-enslave person's dynamic and they removed the enslaved person and put them in jail, the poor white plantation owner was the one suffering there.

He lost a laborer.

So it was left entirely to the plantation owners to basically keep their slaves, punish their slaves essentially.

And if you've ever, have you ever seen 12 Years a Slave yet?

Yeah, I mean, I get it.

I totally understand your reticence.

But it's the way that plantation owners punished slaves is depicted throughout in really brutal, honest fashion.

And it really drives home like what it was like.

But you were left up to the guy that owned you legally

doling out punishment based on his whim, essentially, the state would not intervene.

It was just strictly up to white people, or it was just strictly directed at white people at first.

Oh, yeah, definitely.