Search results
The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 (formally entitled An act concerning Servants and Slaves), were a series of laws enacted by the Colony of Virginia 's House of Burgesses in 1705 regulating the interactions between slaves and citizens of the crown colony of Virginia. The enactment of the Slave Codes is considered to be the consolidation of ...
- Jamestown & Tobacco
- The First Africans & John Punch
- Early Slave Laws & Biblical Justification
- Later Slave Laws of The 1660’s
- Virginia Slave Laws of The Early 1700’s
- Conclusion
Jamestown was founded in 1607 and struggled to survive for the next three years. The original colonists had been hearing stories of the riches of the New World for years as Spain grew wealthy from their colonies in the West Indies and South and Central America. These colonists arrived in Virginia under the impression that they need do little more t...
The first Africans arrived in Virginia more or less by accident. In 1619, a Dutch ship in need of supplies docked at Jamestown and traded around 20 enslaved Africans to the governor Sir George Yeardley (l. 1587-1627) for necessary provisions. Yeardley is considered by some scholars as Virginia’s first slave owner but there is evidence that these fi...
By 1650, more Africans had been enslaved because there were not enough indentured servants to work the tobacco fields. Enslaved Native Americans knew the land and could easily run off to find freedom with other tribes, but Africans did not have that advantage and so, along with other considerations, became the slave of choice. By 1662, slaves outnu...
Once the Bible was invoked as justification, any law could be passed with impunity. By 1669 a law had been passed releasing any white master, mistress, or overseer from responsibility in killing a slave. Since slaves were considered property, it was reasoned, and no one would intentionally destroy one’s own property, killing a slave was considered ...
This law was enlarged upon in 1705 when the Virginia General Assembly declared that any servant who was not a Christian and who accompanied a white master into the country would be considered a slave. These people would be subject to the same laws that applied to slaves including a white colonist’s freedom to kill them for any reason as long as com...
As noted, Virginia borrowed their model from the English of Barbados who set the standard for the brutal slave policies which appealed to the colonists’ need for a sense of safety. The more restrictive the measures placed on the black population, the less chance there was of their ability to mount a major uprising. Even so, the white colonists of N...
- Joshua J. Mark
Sep 28, 2023 · In 1705, Virginia enacted its first Slave Codes, codifying into law the difference between enslaved Black people and indentured servants of any color. If you weren’t an indentured servant or a ...
- William Spivey
By the end of the 1670s, black slaves began to replace both white indentured servants and Indian slaves as Virginians’ primary source of labor. William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619 (New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 2: ...
slavery in the United States. slave code, in U.S. history, any of the set of rules based on the concept that enslaved persons were property, not persons. Inherent in the institution of slavery were certain social controls, which enslavers amplified with laws to protect not only the property but also the property owner from the danger of slave ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Slave codes varied slightly from colony to colony, but most made bondage a lifelong condition and ensured that all descendants of enslaved people would be enslaved as well. Other codes prohibited them from voting, owning property, testifying in court against whites, gathering in large numbers, traveling without permission, or marrying whites.
Study Aid: Slavery and the Law in Seventeenth-Century Virginia | 1662 General Assembly determines “Negro women’s children to serve according to the condition of the mother.” 1667 General Assembly passes “An act declaring the baptisme of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage.” 1669 Virginia passes an act regarding the casual killing of enslaved people: “If any slave resist his ...
