Richard Frethorne's Argumentative Essay

Opening doors of hopes and dreams for thousands of people, the discovery of the New World rapidly broadened the minute and stubborn perspective of the world people once knew. Promising of wealth, new lives and freedom, many sold their life to servitude for a taste of America. But instead of wealth, they found debt. Instead of a new life, they found death. Instead of freedom, they found the endless cycle of poverty. Although few made gains, many, like Richard Frethorne, were left impoverish and destitute. Frethorne’s letter supported Hofstadter’s adverse views on indentured servitude in three main criteria: the disappointment of the New World, the inescapably torturous life of an indentured servant, and the countless deaths that diffused throughout the journey. The life in America came with many hardships; many of which people couldn’t even dream of.
Storms shaking. Rodents skittering. The journey was home sickening. Subsequently, diseases and sickness overcame the boat. Hofstadter disclosed the severe and atrocious conditions of the passengers as “racked with fever or lying in their own vomit”, having “only begun to feel the anguish of the early American experience”, explaining how the boats reeked of death with its “high mortality”. Being open to foreign pathogens, the foreigners were severely affected. Additionally, Frethorne’s story of people dying of sickness by “scurvy or the bloody flux” reinforces Hofstadter’s view of the high death total. Frethorne accounted of the twenty they came with, half of them were dead where they “look every hour when two more should go”. With most boat passenger already dead, Frethorne points out how death awaits them inland as well when foretells the eighty murders that happened due to rogues. With detailed reports of death that occurred, Frethorne outstandingly supports Hofstadter’s outlook on the substantial deaths that comprised the experience of