Barbados And America 's Slave Codes

The Virginia Slave Codes date all the way to early 1600s. During the 17th century, indentured servants, who decided to work for an affirmed amount of time in replace for their means of access to the "New World", were a handy resource of manual labor for the American colonies. Both blacks and whites served under the system (Goldenburg 1). White servants, after working out their time of agreement, often progressed to appreciated places in the society. On the other hand, their black correspondents, who totaled to about 2,000 in Virginia in 1670, were rarely given the same treatment. By the middle of the century, they were usually regarded as servants for life. In the late 1650s, laws referring to slaves started to

In contrast to the other three colonies discussed, the institution of slavery in South Carolina was initiated, legalized, and maintained for distinct reasons; the founders of the colony felt that slavery was absolutely necessary for economic prosperity and their unwavering urge to protect the institution at all costs contributed towards the severity of the slave-enforcement acts and codes. By looking at the legislation passed in South Carolina, one can grasp the extent to which slaves were legally stripped of every right imaginable, suffered barbarous treatment, and were attempted to be rendered psychologically and physically powerless--all because of the deep-seated fear of the enslaved population that was instilled within white slave owners and law-makers. In South Carolina, slavery was a horrendous business that was never questioned ethically or legally. The white settlers coming from Barbados--who had already been involved in the slave trade for years--migrated to South Carolina equipped with slaves already accustomed to difficult climate conditions (similar to South Carolina), which made them more pleasurable to slave owners expecting a strong work force. Another unique aspect to South Carolina was the overwhelming black majority in the colony for it is true that, “by 1708, less than twenty years after the decision to move from white indentured labor to black slave labor, the number of blacks in the colony exceeded whites,” (Higginbotham, 1978, pg. 152). Due to the

The origins and development of slavery in Britain’s North American colonies during the colonial period can be traced down to the fact that North American colonies were created for the economic profit of Great Britain. Reasons for the development of slavery in the North American colonies can be the switch to slavery from indentured servitude due to the desire of free labor and the results of Bacon’s rebellion, the introduction of cash crops such as sugar and tobacco and the introduction of the plantation system, and the easy access of slaves due to the triangular trade and the middle passage.

The first African Americans that were put to work in Jamestown were not treated in the way that people traditionally think of early slavery. In fact they were treated just as the indentured servants that had come from England were treated. This does not mean that they were treated with any sympathy or given easy work, but that they just were not discriminated by the color of their skin. In the beginning of the 1600s all servants had the same dream, to one day be free. In 1641, a black slave by the name of Anthony Johnson, was freed and given his own land to start his new life as an American (Johnson et al, Africans, 39). At this point in time the only things that separated people were if you were an owner or a servant and if you were a Christian or not. At some point in the mid 1700s something changed the way that the colonists saw things. All of a sudden there was no longer equal treatment of white and black slaves, the darker the color of ones skin was the worse off their life became. In 1640, three slaves tried escaping to Maryland but were unsuccessful, when they were brought upon the court two of the

The origins and development of slavery within Britain’s North American colonies in the period 1607 to 1776 was majorly in part by the English need for economic power. England had just arose as the strongest naval of the North Atlantic had they had to keep their high standing in the world. Bacon’s Rebellion, the profit received by cash crops, and the ability to easily purchase slaves through trade highly boosted Britain’s economy. The colonists within the British colony kept through economic standing and power by making themselves higher than any other through slavery.

In their thought-provoking but generally well-received book, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640-1676¸ authors T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes investigate a heretofore little-known community of free blacks. Despite the burgeoning slave trade and generally held racist beliefs in pre-Colonial Virginia, the authors argue, convincingly, that a community based more on land ownership than race as a social divider thrived, albeit only for a generation. They further explore the origins and eventual demise of this curious but egalitarian system. Though it goes against the broad swath of our cultural

The Chesapeake area in the seventeenth century was a unique community that was almost absent of racism. In this community, at this time, property was the central and primary definition of one’s place in society. The color of one’s skin was not a fundamental factor in being a well respected and valued member of the community. Virginia’s Eastern Shore represented a very small fellowship of people that were not typical of the Southern ideals during this time period and gave free blacks owning property a great deal of respect and merit usually equal to that of any white man around.

Breen and Innes do a great job suggesting that a person’s conduct, not necessarily their race, played the major role in early Virginia. They make an inadvertent argument that dominance and submission were the real issue when it came to owning property at the time, not race. The large plantation owners intimidated the smaller farmers and landowners. Blacks were on the same playing field when compared along with the small farmers and landowners. Sadly, this did not last with the entrance of racial mindsets as aforementioned. There is also an argument that even though the hardest working blacks could work their way out of slavery and into freedom, they could maintain the wealth it took to perpetuate that freedom. The growing plantation system and the growing black population is what brought an end to the equal status of the free, black

During 1619 where slavery fist appeared in Virginia, a Dutch warship brought more than twenty African men and women that were obtained as slaves in the Caribbean. There were many laws that Virginia created restricting freedom of African slaves. For example, Virginia passed a law that restrained Africans from carrying weapons (Jones, 82). It seemed as if Virginia created laws year after year restricting African men and/or women into doing/not doing particular things. During 1643, a law had passed that taxed productive field hands of African American women but not white women. Again, in Virginia, planters passed a set of laws that improved differences between slaves working for a specific period and they consigned to

There is no doubt that the United States was built upon the hard work of Black-American slaves, referred to at the time as bondpeople, who were the main labor force in producing important American exports, such as cotton or tobacco, which were, in fact, the backbone of the American economy during that time. Due to bondpeople’s overall importance in keeping the United States the powerhouse that it was, the domestic slave trade was a value market that “‘was roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital, North and South combined, invested in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks’”(23). In “‘In Pressing Need of Cash,’” Daina Ramey Berry, a professor for the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, looks at a fifteen year period, from 1850-1865, of the economic factors of the domestic slave trade. Berry uses Steven Deyle’s findings in his study, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life” which examined both the "long-distance interstate trade" and the extensive local or "intrastate" trade of enslaved males and females, who were priced differently depending on their perceived market value (23). With Deyle’s findings, Berry specifically discusses the relationships among gender, age, skill, or type of sale and how those factors, generally, determined the priced paid of enslaved workers.

​When slaves came to Virginia many laws were enforced for them. Slaves were not allowed to own any belongings they were essentially property of their master. If a slaved women had children then those children followed her status as a slave. They did this so Englishmen didn’t have to take responsibility for their mixed children. In 1705 they made a law that any African American that came to America and were not Christian automatically became slaves. Slaves were mainly used to work for farming, mining, and working in factories.

Slavery was practiced throughout the thirteen colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. African slaves helped with the lucrative business of crops such as tobacco and cotton to help make the new nation an economic powerhouse. For some time, all blacks were not slaves or servants, some blacks were free men in the new world. Authors Thomas Breen and Stephen Innes of “Myne Owne Ground” used interactions between free blacks and the rest of society along Virginia’s eastern shore during the early seventeenth century. They were able to show that skin color wasn’t the most influential aspect in the treatment of blacks during this period. Blacks were able to accomplish great things and gain wealth equal to the average wealthy white man,

Slave codes as described on the book page 84 are series of laws passed mainly in the southern colonies in late 17th and early 18th centuries to defend the status of slaves and codify the denial of basic civil rights to them. Slave codes had a lot of loopholes one of the rules it did not permit was for slaves to get married because that meant the owner of the salve could not do as he wished. South Carolina took its slave code in effect in1712, these laws were then revised in 1739. Some of these slaves codes said slaves were not allowed to leave the owner's property unless they had permission to do so or were in company of a white person not necessarily did it have to be the owner. Any slave that tried to run away and/or leave the colony received

The limitation of this book is that this book could only dedicate about 10 pages in the slavery in Virginia. Since it covered so much time period, some details were overlooked.

The colonies of British North America were a very unequal place in which different classes and races were treated very differently. Despite this, ideas of freedom still developed because the colonists believed that they were being treated unfairly by the British parliament. Two documents that convey that these ideas of freedom were able to develop in a place where the citizens were not treated equally are the “Virginia Slave Code of 1705” and “The Declaration of Independence”.