ABSTRACT
The nearly seven hundred servants who decided to risk the known and unknown hazards of running away between 1620 and 1750 made of the practice an institution of protest against all forms of unfree labor. The master class discouraged the footloose servant from attempting to overthrow his obligations by playing upon him the hot breath from the fires of hell. The masters, then, had government and law on their side, both the ministry and the tremendous might of custom endorsing the institution of bound labor, whether the individual was voluntarily or involuntarily a partner to an enforceable labor contract. The masters, through their ministers, exhorted the servant population to be content with their lot and to avoid that evil day of absconding as they would the fires of hell. Awareness of being alien must have made the ties which bound one to a master weaker than they would have been had the servant wholeheartedly accepted his master’s culture and mores.
