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The Catholic Refuge - A Plantation of Trade
In early Maryland, the money in a man's pocket was a leaf. Tobacco was the colony's currency — wages, debts, fines, and the minister's salary all reckoned in pounds of cured leaf. A refuge founded for conscience had to pay for itself, and tobacco was how. But the crop was hungry for two things above all: land, and labor.
This is the story of the world the refuge was actually made of. The headright system that turned every imported human into fifty acres and concentrated the colony's land in the hands of the great planters. The indentured servants — three-quarters of all who came — young…
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