Treatment of Africans and Their Descendants in Colonial Virginia between 1629 And 1705
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Introduction
In early 1501 Spain and Portugal began shipping African slaves to south Africa after Christopher Columbus discovered Africa, where the slaves where to work on European Plantations and after which in around 1600s English colonist in Virginia started buying Africans to help grow tobacco.
In 1962, a law was enacted for Negro women’s children to serve according to the condition of the mother. Some doubts arose whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any Christian shall committee fornication with a negro man or woman, he or she so offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act. The birthright of Negros was based on the status of the mother and rather than the father.
Christians were guided by a law enacted in 1667 declaring that baptism of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage (History 2021). Doubts arose whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of their owners made partakers of the blessed sacrament of baptism, should by virtue of their baptism be made free; It is enacted and declared by this grand assembly, and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptism doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom; that diverse masters, freed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavor the propagation of Christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of growth if capable to be admitted to that sacrament. This exempted them from the slavery after converting to Christianity.
This statute of 1669 about the casual killing of slaves was enacted. This was the only law in force for the punishment of refractory servants, resisting their master, mistress or overseer cannot be inflicted upon negroes, nor the obstinacy of many of them by other than violent means suppress, Be it enacted and declared by this grand assembly, if any slave resist his master or other by his masters order correcting him, and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be accepted felony, but the master or that other person appointed by the master to punish him be acquit from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that prepended malice should induce any man to destroy his owner estate.
References
Encyclopediavirginia.org. 2021. Free Blacks in Colonial Virginia – Encyclopedia Virginia. [online] Available at: <https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/free-blacks-in-colonial-virginia/> [Accessed 19 October 2021].
History Is Fun. 2021. How did slavery develop in colonial Virginia? – History Is Fun. [online] Available at: <https://www.historyisfun.org/learn/learning-center/how-did-slavery-develop-in-colonial-virginia-2/> [Accessed 19 October 2021].
Jewett, Clayton E., Clayton E. Jewett, and John O. Allen. Slavery in the South: A State-by-state History. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004.
