Origins, 1619-1662

Development, 1662-1705

Statutes and Court Cases

Codification, 1705-1776

Hening, ed. Statutes at Large

Revolutionary Revisions

Sources

Sources, 1806-1826 And Later

What is the purpose of each law?

Whom does each law affect?

What social impact did each law have?

Why did white Virginians (and other white lawmakers) bother with a law of slavery?

Law Of 1662

• Whereas some doubts have arisen 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 borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any christian shall committ Fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the Fines imposed by the former act. (Hening, II, 170.)

• Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of their owners made pertakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by vertue of their baptisme be made Free; It is enacted and declared by this grand assembly, and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or Freedome; that diverse masters, Freed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavour the propagation of christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of greater growth if capable to be admitted to that sacrament. (Hening, II, 260.)

• Whereas the only law in force for the punishment of refractory servants resisting their master, mistris or overseer cannot be inflicted upon negroes, nor the obstinacy of many of them by other then violent measures supprest, 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 accompted ffelony, but the master (or that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquit from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice (which alone makes murther ffelony) should induce any man to destroy his owne estate. (Hening, II, 270).

• Insurrection laws
• Oyer and terminer courts, 1692

• The "police laws" of which Stephen Douglas made so much in 1858
• "Sheep do not make insurrections"
• People without wills could be dangerous
• "fair means or foul" could be used against them
• Virginia’s courts and slaves

• Racial slavery
• Ethnocentric slavery

• real property?
• inheritance
• attachment for debt, etc.
• personal property

• slaves could be
• moved
• sold
• willed (inherited)
• given

• Trial of Dick, Accomac County, 1775
• Accused of "illegal administration of medicine"
• Luther Martin must defend
• Why bother?
• How?
• Did owner fail to control the slave?
• Customary (plantation) law sufficient?
• "Example" to slave community
• Protection of society
• Protection of property
• Efficacy; deterrent power
• Slaves’ attitudes towards the law

• James, the slave of James Gordon
• sheep stealing
• Post-Dunmore
• benefit of clergy ritual
• "GOD DAMN THE KING AND THE GOVERNOR TOO!"
• Audiences; American Revolution

• "Casual killing" law changed by 1788
• Unanimous court for execution; "buying from under the gallows"
• Manumission law of 1782

• Concerns of a hypothetical day
• Runaway slaves
• Purchase
• rumors of insurrection
• slave court justices
• George’s and Martha’s wills
• customary (plantation) law--Mount Vernon
• increase in Washington’s slaves
• court cases: chancery, breach of contract, criminal
• Dismal Swamp Company slaves
• slave hiring
• administration of John Parke Custis estate
• Washington’s national stature and responsibilities

• Slave law intertwined with the entrenched slave society Virginia had become
• Revolt and representation
• Population
• Politics
• Industrialization
• Jefferson
• Gabriel, 1800
• Nat Turner, 1831
• Free African Americans

Jefferson and his slaves

• Slave Laws in Virginia, chapter 2
• public and private roles
• other examples

• The laws of 1782, 1806 and 1816

• Provided always . . . That all slaves so set free, not being in the judgment of the court, of sound mind and body, or being above the age of forty-five years, or being males under the age of twenty-one, or females under the age of eighteen years, shall respectively be supported and maintained by the person so liberating them, or by his or her estate. . . . (Hening, The Statutes at Large, XI, 39; passed and in effect, May 1782.)

• "If any slave hereafter emancipated shall remain within this commonwealth more than twelve months after his or her right to freedom shall have accrued, he or she shall forfeit all such right, and may be apprehended and sold by the overseers of the poor of any county or corporation in which he or she shall be found, for the benefit of the poor of such county or corporation." [Shepherd, Statutes at Large, III, 252; passed January 25, 1806; in effect May 1, 1806.]

The manumission laws observed

• "I humbly and earnestly request of the legislature of Virginia a confirmation of the bequest of freedom to these servants, with permission to remain in this state where their families and connections are as an additional instance of the favor, of which I have received as many other manifestations in the course of my life, and for which I now give them my last solemn, and dutiful, thanks."
• Legislative exception: Acts, 1827-28, 25.

• Nat Turner’s Revolt
• The debates of 1831-2
• Hardening of the law
• Fear of sale; control by sale
• Changing Virginia
• The Richmond exception

• "An Act to amend the act concerning slaves, free negroes and mulattoes," passed April 7, 1831; in effect June 1, 1831. Acts Passed at a General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Richmond, 1830-31 (Richmond: Thomas Ritchie, 1831), 107-108.
• Reading and writing laws

• Sect. 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.