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Substitute “person” for “thing” and the old adage, “A place for everything, and everything in its place” describes perfectly the 17^th and early 18^th century devotion to order in human relations. In a sermon delivered to the Massachusetts General Assembly in 1762, Abraham Baldwin described healthy societies as “composed of various individuals, connected together, related & subservient to each other.” In such a society, everyone was connected and no one was superfluous: “each contributes it’s [sic] part to the Perfection and Happiness of the Body.” From the mightiest ruler to the most humble subject, each and every person occupied a divinely appointed place. The famous preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards of Northampton was typical in celebrating the “beauty of order in society...different members of society have all their appointed office, place, and station, according to their several talents, and every one keeps his place, and continues in his proper business.”

It would be hard to overestimate the powerful hold this vision of a divinely inspired “sweet subordination of persons” exerted on 18^th-century New England society. Family status and connections helped to determine one’s “place,” from the town offices a man should hold to assigned seating for worship in the meeting house. 

Those living in servitude in another's household--apprentices, wage laborers, indentured servants, and enslaved people most of all--occupied the lowest rungs In a society predicated on inequality of condition.