Issue E031 of 4 March 2003


Slavery, Society, and the Law in America
The Evolution of Slave Law in Virginia (1607-1776)


By
Vijay Sekhon
B.A. c.(Pol. Sc. & Afro-Amer. Stud.)
University of California at Berkeley


I. Introduction

The enslavement of Africans is widely regarded as one of the most abominable periods of American history. It has troubled many a student in the United States that a country that founded itself on the idiom that "all men are created equal"1 could readily engage in such an egregious and vile practice. Nevertheless, a copious amount of scholarly material has permeated high school and college campuses around the country and has served to educate students about the realities of the entire slave experience. One now has access not only to first-hand literature of slaves who write about their experiences under the oppressive institution of slavery in both the North and South, but also a plethora of in-depth academic investigations of the various stages of the slave trade, as well as the macroeconomic foundations that perpetuated it.2

However, aside from limited knowledge about the fact that the legal enslavement of Africans culminated with the Civil War and the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution (1865-1870), few students and citizens of the United States are aware of the origins of slavery in America, its legal history, and how it gradually evolved through the 17th and 18th Centuries to adapt to the dynamics of colonial American society. This paper seeks to provide such an account (albeit briefly due to the nature and scope of this essay) by through a historiographical analysis of the colony of Virginia as a case study of the development of colonial slave law.

I have chosen to examine colonial Virginia and its legal slave history due to the fact that the colonization of Virginia has been popularized in a cornucopia of academic scholarship as a burdensome process by its white settlers; inadequate reference is given to the colony's first African American settlers and their legal and social evolution from servants to slaves.

It is not intended that this case study serve to stereotype the "typical" evolution of slavery in American colonies. In fact, the legal development of slavery in Virginia was markedly different from not only the Northern colonies (e.g. Delaware), but also its Southern counterparts (e.g. South Carolina).3 Rather, this narrowed investigation is aimed at providing the reader with a glimpse into how slavery was born and evolved in one of the 13 original American colonies from its founding until the American Revolution in 1776.

In particular, my paper seeks to answer the following questions: How did slavery first develop into law in colonial Virginia? Why did colonial Virginians sanction such an inhumane institution? And, what were the central factors in preserving Virginian slavery? I will begin answering these questions with an examination of the structure of early colonial Virginian society and the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia in 1619, and proceed to document the significant legal developments in the evolution of slave law in Virginia from 1625 to the American Revolution of 1776.

My primary argument will be similar to the one presented by C. Duncan Rice in The Rise and Fall of Black Slavery: that the two primary variables that accounted for the birth of slavery, its particular nature, and its continuation in colonial America were the types of settlers and the economic structure of the colony.4 This argument will be extended to the case of colonial Virginia; it will be shown that through this lens, much of the abhorrent peculiarities of the legal evolution and institutionalization of slavery in the colony can be explained.

II. Early Colonial Virginian Society (1607-1619)

Before proceeding to the legal evolution of slavery in Virginia, it will prove helpful to briefly outline the structure of colonial Virginian society in order to gain a more thorough understanding as to why slavery developed the way that it did in the colony.

The first settlement in Virginia was built at Jamestown in 1607. Although the region did not become a Royal Colony (of Britain) until 1625, the London Company owned the rights to the land and sought to populate it in order to attain future profits from real estate sales and leases.5 The most important tool used to populate the colony of Virginia after 1607 was the head right system. In order to attract settlers to the deserted colony, the London Company (which owned much of the land of Virginia) attempted to entice settlers with land grants of 50 acres in return for 10 years of indentured servitude.6 Over time, mainly poor white workers from England came to populate Virginia. This can be evidenced by the fact that, according to Louis Green Carr and Russell R Menard, approximately four out of every five white immigrants entered the colony of Virginia in the 17th Century as an indentured servant.7

Life for these early settlers was tough, as they were generally unaccustomed to the strenuous work of crop cultivation and subsistence agriculture.8 Settlers soon began to abandon the colony after several years of near famine, but those who learned to cultivate tobacco for a profit in 1612 saved the colony from total desertion.9 Tobacco quickly became Virginia's staple crop, but was extremely difficult to cultivate for a profit if one went at it alone. Although white indentured servants-turned-property owners initially began employing other servants from England to assist them in tobacco cultivation, many of the new farmers found that a more profitable solution lay in slavery.10

The first people to be enslaved for tobacco production in Virginia were not Africans, but Native Americans. These Native American slaves were initially acquired through warfare from 1609, which originated from colonists' attempts to secure food by theft of aborigine tribes.11 Virginian settlers also purchased aborigine war captives from Native American tribes in much the same matter as white slavers did with African populations.12 There was no law sanctioning or prohibiting the enslavement of aborigines in the United Kingdom, so the practice continued unabated.

Nevertheless, these Native American slaves proved to not be hearty enough to survive the vile conditions under which they worked on the tobacco plantations due to their susceptibility to disease (primarily smallpox) and tendency to run away, so the white indentured servants-turned-landowners eventually opted to enlist Africans from the already bustling slave trade in South and Latin America (although Native Americans continued to be owned as slaves until a 1670 statute limited Native American war captives to the condition of indentured servitude).13

Two key facts should be taken from the aforementioned discussion. First, it should be noted that the initial white Virginian settlers were poor white workers from England who sought to better their lot by acquiring land through the head right system. Unlike some of their Northern counterparts, there was no overarching religious doctrine binding these early settlers. Thus, the colony of Virginia was not as restrained by religious ethics and morality during its development as many of the Northern colonies (like Delaware and Massachusetts) which, as will be shown shortly, facilitated the institutionalization of slavery in colonial Virginian law.

Second, the cultivation of tobacco as a profit-making endeavor is also fundamental to the subsequent development of slave law in Virginia. Indentured servants-turned-land owners sought extra labor to produce tobacco on their newly acquired plantations. Thus, they initially tried to utilize English servants and Native American slaves. However, the former proved too expensive, and the latter too susceptible to disease and liable to abscond. The most attractive solution lay in imported African slave labor, and it is to this trend that we now turn.

III. The Birth and Evolution of Negro Slavery (1619-1661)

The first blacks arrived on the shores of Virginia in 1619, but it was not at all clear that they were slaves in its modern definition. They were captured by a Dutch Ship from the Spanish, under whose command they had been held as slaves; thus they were captives of piracy, not warfare, and consequently not able to be regarded as slaves under British Law.14 These initial black settlers arrived on the shores as free men, but were soon divided up among the high public officials of Virginia and their friends as indentured servants to pay for their living expenses.15 Over time, some of these Africans worked off their indentured servitude and became free men, while others were condemned to lives of indentured servitude (mostly cultivating tobacco for white land owners), unable to pay off their mounting piles of debt. Nevertheless, slavery as a legal foundation in Virginia was already set prior to the arrival of the first Africans onto the shores of Virginia in 1619.

The first law in colonial Virginia that contained the word slavery was passed in 1618, and stipulated that "every man (in the colony) was to set out two acres of corn, except tradesmen following their trades, under penalty of the forfeiture of all corn and tobacco and one year of slavery to the colony."16 These laws applied to the white indentured servants who had already sparsely populated Virginia by 1618, and they were expanded to include violations of price ceilings in 1619.17 However, it should be noted that these laws neglected to include Africans (being as whites and Native Americans were previously the only inhabitants of Virginia), and the slavery referred to above was temporary, not permanent.

The first premonition to Negro slavery in Virginia slave law appeared in 1625, when the General Court of Virginia ordered Brase (a Negro) to be assigned to Lady Yeardly (a white woman) at a monthly wage of "forty pounds of good merchantable tobacco;"18 with this ruling Africans in Virginia made the transition from an indeterminate status to that of a servant. For the rest of the 1620s and through the 1630s, the laws remained the same, allowing Negroes in Virginia to purchase their freedom by working either as servants or hired field hands for white Virginians mainly cultivating tobacco, being as their legal status was that of an indentured servant.

An important aspect of this practice that should be gleaned from the foregoing discussion is the fact that white tobacco farmers found the indentured servitude of Negroes preferable to that of whites because they (the landowners) determined the wages of their black servants, which were almost always lower than those of the white servants. This preference of profit-seeking farmers would ultimately translate into the legalization of Negro slavery in Virginia.

However, between 1640 and 1660, slavery in Virginia was slowly evolving into a legal fact, much to the delight of many Virginia tobacco farmers. During this twenty year period, Africans in Virginia began to lose their legal rights vis a vis white indentured servants. The first harbinger to this melancholy trend was the case of John Punch in 1640.19 Punch, an indentured Negro servant of the white farmer Hugh Gwyn, was caught running away with two other white indentured servants to escape their contracts. The key to this case is the fact that Punch's two accomplices were given increased sentences to their indentured servitude contracts, whereas Punch was condemned to a life of slavery. The legal differentiation between white and Negro servants had begun.

Another case that exhibited the segregated treatment of black and white indentured servants was the case of John Grawere in 1641.20 Grawere, a Negro servant, had fathered a child by a Negro maid of a different master, and wanted to have the child baptized and reared in the Christian faith. The white master of the Negro maid disagreed, and Grawere attempted to use the courts to gain freedom of his child. The courts refused to manumit Grawere's child, and Grawere frustratingly bought the freedom of his child from the profits he made from the sale of hogs. The important thing to note is that, had Grawere been a white servant, he would not have had to obtain a court order to secure the freedom of his child.

Later, as documented by Robert Cope, Virginia county courts began recording and recognizing the validity of contracts involving the enslavement of blacks. The first such reference to slavery in Virginia court records came in 1646, when Francis Pott sold to Stephen Charlton a Negro woman named Marchant and a Negro boy named Will "to ye use of him...his heyers, etc. forever."21 As one can infer from this reference, although the term "slavery" is not explicitly utilized in this court record, the term "forever" portends to the nature of Will's terms of servitude to Mr. Charlton. A similar contract cited by Cope took place in 1652, in which William Whittington "bargained and sold unto John Pott...one Negro girl named Jowan, aged about ten years with her issue and produce...and their services forever."22

Thus, by the mid-1650s, the Virginia courts came to readily accept terms of permanent servitude in court records, and in 1660 an Act of the Virginia Assembly was passed fining all captains of ships bringing Quakers into the colony 100 pounds, and expelling all Quakers who were already in Virginia.23 This was done primarily to keep anti-slavery voices (which were strongest from the Quakers in the North) out of Virginia, allowing for the investiture of legalized slavery in the colony in 1661 without abundant public dissent.

IV. The Institutionalization of Slavery (1661-1776)

In 1661, the first overt Virginia slave law directed against blacks was passed by a legislature made up of primarily white landowners and tobacco farmers. The law again differentiated the punishments for runaways based upon race, stipulating that "Negroes are incapable of making satisfaction (for time lost in running away) by addition of time" of indentured servitude.24 In short, the law mandated that, while white runaways would be punished for running away with increased time of indentured servitude, their Negro counterparts would be punished with permanent bondage.

The very next year, the Virginia laws were greatly expanded with the passage of what is considered to be perhaps the single greatest legal progression toward slavery in Virginia. The law of 1662 maintained that mulatto children would follow the condition of their mother, either slave or free.25 Thus, anticipating the sexual freedom of white male slave owners, the Virginia legal system sought to sanction such abominable acts by making it legal with this law. Many white tobacco farmers would use this legalized sexual freedom to augment their farmhands (which were essentially commodities) at no expense through rape, as has been well documented in slave literature.26

After 1662, Virginia tobacco farmers, anxious to codify and expand the lucrative institution of Negro slavery, began to set legal precedents that would ensure the longevity of the dehumanizing practice. In 1667, the Virginia legislature passed a law prohibiting baptism as a means for Negroes to obtain freedom from slavery, and in 1670 a law was passed that prevented blacks and Native Americans from owning white indentured servants.27 The Virginia legislature, seeing the immense popularity of these laws amongst their white tobacco farmers, proceeded to pass the one of the most restrictive slave laws in colonial America in 1680, with the passage of the notorious Slave Codes.

The 1680 Virginia Slave Codes were explicitly passed as a reaction to Bacon's Rebellion of 1676. In 1676, a white tobacco farmer named Nathaniel Bacon aggregated an army of farmers to attack neighboring Indian tribes in western Virginia. The two sides (the tobacco farmers and Indian tribes) had been fighting off and on for decades over land and trade disputes, and Bacon decided to attack in spite of the opposition of Governor Berkeley, who had signed a peace treaty with the neighboring tribes.28 Bacon proceeded to defeat the neighboring Indian tribes, and then marched on Jamestown declaring Berkeley a sellout to the aborigines. Bacon was ultimately defeated by Berkeley later that year, but the significance of the Rebellion is the fact that many Negro slaves were offered their freedom by Bacon if they fought on his side against Berkeley and his militia, and many slaves accepted his offer.29

The 1680 Virginia Slave Codes were explicitly passed to prevent the insurrection of Negro slaves that was now feared after the ideas that permeated during Bacon's Rebellion, but implicitly served to institutionalize the legitimacy of Negro slavery. Among other things, the codes stipulated that blacks could neither congregate in large numbers nor remain on another plantation for more than four hours, and that they must obtain written authorization to leave a plantation at any given time.30 White tobacco farmers were happy to see their profitable investments (their slaves) legally secured in their possession with ameliorated fears of rebellion.

Over the next two decades, laws were passed in Virginia that tightened the slave owners' grip over their slaves and the few free blacks that resided in Virginia.31 In 1691, the first law prohibiting intermarriage between blacks and whites was passed, thus solidifying socioeconomic differences between the two groups; whites were to be unequivocally codified as free, and blacks as slaves.32 In addition, in 1692 a law was passed mandating that all blacks (including free) give up ownership of horses, cattle, and hogs.33 Many other laws of this nature were passed in these two decades, but the important thing to note is the fact that, slowly but surely, the Virginian tobacco farmers were creating a political, economic, and social institution of slavery that would suit their needs. By institutionalizing slavery in the laws of Virginia, the white farmers hoped to stave off objections to slavery from the North (which had been beginning through religious movements such as from the Quaker community) and ensure its viability long into the future (thereby maximizing the landowners' future profits). They did this by passing the Virginia Black Code of 1705. The Code combined most of the laws passed in the 1680s and 1690s regarding Negro slaves, but added that black slaves should be counted as real estate, rather than people.34 This was done primarily in order to secure inheritance issues and ease economic transactions between slave owners and their creditors.35 The aforementioned Code set a precedent for future defenses of the practice of slavery by amalgamating slave laws and court decisions into a distinct and coherent document that served as the law of Virginia for decades to come. It was now frequent for slave owners to defend their inhumane acts by maintaining that their actions were "lawful" in the colony (and soon state) of Virginia.

From 1705 until the American Revolution of 1776, Virginia slave law did not change appreciably due to the fact that the necessary laws to promote the institution of slavery were already in place with the Code of 1705. Tobacco farmers were content with their control over their property, and instead sought to cash in on their lucrative investments by seeking ways to increase tobacco production. However, during this period slight changes were made in the slave laws to facilitate economic transactions among creditors and slave holding debtors. The most often cited of these laws was passed in 1727, which consented that inherited slaves could be sold to pay debts of the individual who had perished (thus allowing for creditors to reclaim their loans at the expense of those to whom the slaves had been willed).36

Following this trend, a law was passed in 1752 that stipulated that entailed lands (lands passed on to male heirs in wills) of deceased plantation owners that were broken up by acts of the Assembly (including slaves) for public purposes had to be replaced by lands (and slaves) of equal or greater value. Also, in 1769, the House adopted the policy of recording the names of all entailed slaves so as to provide a legally codified means of settling land disputes between and among heirs.37 Nevertheless, some laws were passed in the decades prior to the American Revolution to pacify growing discontent from settlers of the Northern colonies (and some religious groups within Virginia itself), who protested the inhumane treatment of Negro slaves on Southern plantations. Consequently, the Virginia state legislature began to pass laws mitigating (at least legally) the severity of punishment for slaves in order to prevent adamant protesters from Northern colonies from traveling South and voicing their concerns, potentially disturbing the mode of life that the Virginian tobacco farmers had so carefully crafted over the years.

Accordingly, an act was passed in 1769 that prevented county courts from castrating a slave unless he had "attempted to ravish a white woman." And, a 1772 act provided that the death penalty could not be inflicted on a slave unless a majority of the Virginia state court approved.38 It should be noted that these laws were undoubtedly not dutifully enforced. They were merely adopted to stave off complaints from outside and within regarding the egregiousness of slave life in colonial Virginia.

As can be discerned from the nature of the Virginia slave laws passed after 1705 and before the American Revolution of 1776, nothing was done to substantially alter the foundations of the institution of slavery in the colony; the laws were merely adapted to the changing economic and political needs of the white tobacco farmers.

V. Conclusion

The foregoing discussion has served to illuminate the fundamental reasons why slavery developed the way that it did in colonial Virginia from 1607 to 1776. As C. Duncan Rice delineated in The Rise and Fall of Black Slavery and as I have outlined in this paper, the two central underlying factors that shaped slavery in colonial Virginia were the demographical composition of the settler population and the economic structure of the colony.39

In short, the poor white settlers who came to inhabit colonial Virginia in 1607 were less constrained by religious doctrines than their Northern counterparts, which consequently facilitated their involvement in the dehumanizing practice of slavery. Also, once the cultivation of tobacco became of central importance to the survival of the Virginia settler population and the affluence of the colony itself in 1612, the institution of slavery became a lucrative economic enterprise to a much greater extent than in Northern colonies. Thus, as has been shown through the legal analysis above, Virginians sought and were able to construct and codify the custom of slavery from 1625 to 1776, and it proved to survive and prosper for almost one hundred more years.

Breaking this tradition would prove difficult, as Virginian slavery persisted through the American Revolution, despite the glimmer of hope of freedom offered to slaves of Patriot slave owners by Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment.40 Even at the Constitutional Convention in 1789 the aforementioned words of the Declaration of Independence ("all men are created equal") would not apply to blacks, as the 3/5 Compromise and the delayed cessation of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade until 1808 were promised to Southern colonies in order to secure ratification.41 It would not be until after the American Civil War and the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that slavery would legally come to an end in Virginia. Even then, blacks' struggles were not complete in Virginia, as de facto slavery continued for decades with the notorious sharecropping economy of the South.

However, the purpose of this paper has been to document the evolution of slavery in one of the American colonies, and explain why the institution developed the way that it did in Virginia. Again, it must be noted that slavery and its legal evolution differed from colony to colony (sometimes dramatically, especially in North-South comparisons), but hopefully after reading this paper the reader will develop the curiosity to research parallel studies of other colonies. One will find that the remarkable permanence of slavery, particularly in Southern colonies, can be significantly explained utilizing analyses of the settler demography and economy of the colony in question.

References
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Brown, Kathleen M. (1996). Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Campbell, Charles. (1860). History of the Colony and the Ancient Dominion of Virginia. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Company.

Carr, Louis Green and Russell R Menard. (1979). "Immigration and Opportunity: The Freedman in Early Colonial Maryland." In Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Catterall, Helen H. (1926). Judicial Cases Concerning American Slaves and Negroes. Washington: Carnegie Institution, 63.

Chandler, J.A.C. and T.B. Thames. (1907). Colonial Virginia. Richmond: Times-Dispatch Company.

Colonial National Historical Park. (1999). "African Americans at Jamestown." Jamestown Historic Briefs. Sponsored by the National Park Service. Available online at http://www.nps.gov/colo/Jthanout/AFRICANS.html. Last visited on October 25, 2002.

Cope, Robert S. (1973). Carry Me Back: Slavery and Servitude in 17th Century Virginia. Pikeville, Kentucky: Pikeville College Press.

Courtis, Carol and Heather Wilkie. (2002). "Colonial Virginia: Introduction." Provided by the La Trobe University Department of History Website. Available online at http://www.his.latrobe.edu.au/histres/vce/vcetitles/virgext/intro.html, Last visited on October 26, 2002.

Deal, J. Douglas. (1993), Race and Class in Colonial Virginia: Indians, Englishmen, and Africans on the Eastern Shore During the Seventeenth Century. Garland Publishing Company.

Declaration of Independence. (1776). Ratified on July 4, 1776 by 56 signatories representing the original 13 colonies of the United States of America.

Douglass, Frederick. (1997). The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Penguin Books.

Essah, Patience. (1996), A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press

Felty, Darren. (2002). "Significant Dates: 1492-1700." On the website for his American literature course at Trident Technical College. Available online at http://www.tridenttech.edu/english/felty/201_1492-1700.html. Last visited on October 26, 2002.

Finkelman, Paul. (1993), "The Crime of Color," Tulane Law Review, June Edition.

Garman, Gene. (1998). "Founding Principles Rejected: Colonial Virginia." Available online at http://www.sunnetworks.net/~ggarman/, Last visited on October 27, 2002.

Gomez, Michael A. (1998). Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Haley, Alex. (1976), Roots: Saga of An American Family Volume IV, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Press.

Jacobs, Harriet A. (2000). Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Littlefield, David C. (1981), Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in South Carolina. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

McCarthy, Finbarr. (1995), "Participatory Government and Communal Property: Two Radical Concepts in the Virginia Charter of 1606," University of Richmond Law Review, March Edition.

Morgan, Edmund S. (1972). "The Labor Problem at Jamestown." Journal of American History, Volume 59.

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). (1999). "The Terrrible Transformation." Africans in America. Available online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p262.html. Last retrieved on October 21, 2002.

Rice, C. Duncan. (1975). The Rise and Fall of Black Slavery. New York: Harper and Row.

Riker, William. (1986). The Art of Political Manipulation. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sage, Judd. (2002), "Colonial America: The Period of Colonization (1607-1700)," On the website for Sage's History 121: U.S. History 1 course at Northern Virginia Community College, Available online at http://www.nv.cc.va.us/home/nvsageh/Hist121/Part1/Colonial2.html, Last visited on October 26, 2002.

Stampp, Kenneth M. (1989). Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Vintage Books.

Taylor, Ula. (2002), University of California-Berkeley professor of African American Studies, Lectures for African American Studies 116: Colonialism and Slavery Before 1865, September 18 and 23.

Vaughan, Alden T. (1972). "Blacks in Virginia: A Note on the First Decade." William and Mary Quarterly Volume 3, Number 29.

Virginia Center for Digital History, (2002), "Virtual Jamestown," Available online at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/laws1.html#15, Last retrieved on October 23, 2002.

Walton, Jr. Hanes and Robert C. Smith. (2000). American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom. New York: Longman Publishing Company.

Washington, Booker T. (1965). Up From Slavery. New York: Avon Books.

Wegerman, Karen W. (2000), "For the Better Government of Servants and Slaves: The Laws of Slavery and Miscegination." The Legal Studies Forum, presented by The American Legal Studies Association.

White, Deborah Gray. (1999). Ar'n't I A Woman? New York: W.W. Norton Publishing Company.


NOTES
1 Declaration of Independence (1776).
2 For first-hand accounts of slavery, see Booker T. Washington, (1965), Up From Slavery, New York: Avon Books, Harriet A. Jacobs, (2000), Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, and Frederick Douglass, (1997), The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, New York: Penguin Books; for an analysis of the stages of slavery (capture, middle passage, and seasoning), see Michael A. Gomez, (1998), Exchanging Our Country Marks, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 154-185; and for a summary of the macroeconomics of the slave trade, see Kenneth M. Stampp, (1989), Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, New York: Vintage Books.
3 For an outline of slave legal history Delaware, see Patience Essah, (1996), A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press; for a similar examination of South Carolina, see David C. Littlefield, (1981), Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in South Carolina, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
4 C. Duncan Rice, (1975), The Rise and Fall of Black Slavery, New York: Harper and Row, 46-47.
5 J. Douglas Deal, (1993), Race and Class in Colonial Virginia: Indians, Englishmen, and Africans on the Eastern Shore During the Seventeenth Century, Garland Publishing Company, 11.
6 Ibid., 125-126, and Finbarr McCarthy, (1995), "Participatory Government and Communal Property: Two Radical Concepts in the Virginia Charter of 1606," University of Richmond Law Review, March Edition, 9.
7 Louis Green Carr and Russell R Menard, (1979), "Immigration and Opportunity: The Freedman in Early Colonial Maryland," in Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 206-207.
8 Judd Sage, (2002), "Colonial America: The Period of Colonization (1607-1700)," On the website for Sage's History 121: U.S. History 1 course at Northern Virginia Community College, Available online at http://www.nv.cc.va.us/home/nvsageh/Hist121/Part1/Colonial2.html, Last visited on October 26, 2002.
9 Deal, 93.
10 Ibid., 88.
11 Carol Courtis and Heather Wilkie, (2002), "Colonial Virginia: Introduction," Provided by the La Trobe University Department of History Website. Available online at http://www.his.latrobe.edu.au/histres/vce/vc etitles/virgext/intro.html, Last visited on October 26, 2002.
12 Helen H. Catterall, (1926), Judicial Cases Concerning American Slaves and Negroes, Washington: Carnegie Institution, 63. 
13 Edmund S. Morgan, (1972), "The Labor Problem at Jamestown," Journal of American History, Volume 59, 600. 
14 John C. Ballagh, (1902), "History of Slavery in Virginia," Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; Alden T. Vaughan, (1972), "Blacks in Virginia: A Note on the First Decade," William and Mary Quarterly Volume 3, Number 29, 425.
15 Cope, 6.
16 Ibid., 7. It should be noted here that corn was produced in Virginia as a secondary crop to assist in the subsistence of the early Virginian farmers.
17 Ibid., 7-8.
18 Ibid., 8.
19 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), (1999), "The Terrrible Transformation," Africans in America, Available online at http://www.pbs.or g/wgbh/aia/part1/1p262.html, Last retrieved on October 21, 2002; and Ula Taylor, (2002), University of California-Berkeley professor of African American Studies, Lecture for African American Studies 116: Colonialism and Slavery Before 1865, September 18.
20 Catterall, 58; and Paul Finkelman, (1993), "The Crime of Color," Tulane Law Review, June Edition.
21 Cope, 9.
22 Ibid., and Karen W. Wegerman, (2000), "For the Better Government of Servants and Slaves: The Laws of Slavery and Miscegination," The Legal Studies Forum presented by The American Legal Studies Association, 3.
23 Gene Garman, (1998), "Founding Principles Rejected: Colonial Virginia," Available online at http://www.sunnetworks.net/~ggarman/, Last visited on October 27, 2002.
24 Ibid., 11.
25 Virginia Center for Digital History, (2002), "Virtual Jamestown," Available online at http://www.iath.vir ginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/laws1.html#15, Last retrieved on October 23, 2002; and Kathleen M. Brown, (1996), Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 116, 126.
26 See Deborah Gray White, (1999), Ar'n't I A Woman?, New York: W.W. Norton Publishing Company, 174-175; and Alex Haley, (1976), Roots: Saga of An American Family Volume IV, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Press.
27 Colonial National Historical Park, (1999), "African Americans at Jamestown," Jamestown Historic Briefs, Sponsored by the National Park Service, Available online at http://www.nps.gov/colo/Jthanout/AFR ICANS.html, Last visited on October 25, 2002.
28 J.A.C. Chandler and T.B. Thames, (1907), Colonial Virginia, Richmond: Times-Dispatch Company, 223-238.
29 Charles Campbell, (1860), History of the Colony and the Ancient Dominion of Virginia, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 283-312. Berkeley's militia was initially defeated by Bacon's army, but reinforcements from the United Kingdom ultimately led to Bacon's defeat.
30 Ibid.
31 Throughout this period there were free blacks (and some very prosperous, notably Anthony Johnson) amongst the Negro slaves cultivating tobacco. However, with the passage of the aforementioned laws, their rights vis a vis their enslaved counterparts were increasingly curtailed. See Deal, 265-403.
32 Colonial National Historical Park.
33 Ibid.
34 Darren Felty, (2002), "Enlightenment and Revolutionary Movement Dates (18th Century)," On the website for his American literature course at Trident Technical College. Available online at http://www.trid enttech.edu/english/felty/home.htm, Last visited on October 26, 2002.
35 Ula Taylor, September 23.
36 Robert E. and B. Katherine Brown, (1964), Virginia 1705-1786: Democracy or Aristocracy?, East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 88.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 69.
39 Rice, 46-47.
40 Brown, 261-262.
41 Hanes Walton, Jr. and Robert C. Smith, (2000), American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom, New York: Longman Publishing Company; William Riker, (1986), The Art of Political Manipulation, New Haven: Yale University Press, 89-102. 



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