pay their passage.

A regular system was then established, by which a poor person desiring
to settle in New Jersey would be brought over free. When one of these
emigrants took passage on a ship, he signed a contract which gave the
captain of the vessel the right to sell him, as soon as he arrived in
America, for enough money to pay his passage. This white man was thus
bought, when he reached New Jersey, exactly as if he had been a negro
slave; and he was subject to the same rules as those which governed
other slaves. Of course, he was made the subject of great imposition;
for the captain would naturally desire to get as large a sum of money as
possible for each redemptioner, and therefore would be perfectly willing
to sell him for a long term.

The people who owned redemptioners could sell them again if they chose;
and it often happened that some of them passed into the possession of
several families before they finally served out the term for which they
had been sold. All sorts of people became redemptioners,--mechanics,
laborers, and even professional men. Among the people who sold
themselves into limited slavery there were schoolmasters, and it is
stated that at one time the supply of redemptioner schoolmasters was so
great that they became a drug in the market.

In the days before there were many regular schools in New Jersey, much
of the education must have been carried on by what we now call private
tutors; and a schoolmaster who could be bought as if he had been a horse
or a cow was often a very convenient piece of property. If a family
should own a teacher who was able only to instruct small children, it
would be very easy, when these children grew older and able to undertake
more advanced studies, to sell this primary teacher to some family where
there were young pupils, and buy one capable of teaching higher
branches.

It is said that these redemptioners were often treated much more
harshly and cruelly than the negro slaves, and any one who assisted one
of them to escape was severely punished. There was good reason for this
difference in the treatment of the two classes of slaves; for a negro
was the property of his master as long as he lived, and it was
manifestly the interest of the owner to keep his slave in good
condition. But the redemptioner could only be held for a certain time,
and, if his master was not a good man, he would be apt to get out of him
all the work that he could during the time of hi