Slavery Comes to America

The first slaves were introduced into the English-American colonies by a Dutch trader, who, in 1619, sold twenty of them to the settlers at Jamestown, Va. After that the trade between North America and Africa was carried on quite vigorously; but some of the colonies remonstrated, and in the Continental Congress, and also in the public mind, there was a strong desire evinced to abolish the slave-trade.

Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick were banished from the colony of Massachusetts, in 1658, under penalty of death if they should return. Their crime was the embracing of the principles and mode of worship of the Quakers. Their two children remained behind in extreme poverty. They were fined for non-attendance upon the public worship carried on by their persecutors. The magistrates insisted that the fine must be paid, and passed the following order: " Whereas, Daniel Southwick and Provided Southwick, son and daughter of Lawrence Southwick, absenting themselves from the public ordinances, having been fined by the courts of Salem and Ipswich, pretending they have no estates, and resolving not to work, the court, upon perusal of a law which was made upon account of debts, in what should be done for the satisfaction of the fines, resolves, that the treasurers of the several counties are and shall be fully empowered to sell said persons to any of the English natives at Virginia or Barbadoes to answer the said fines.

" Endicott, it is said, urged the execution of the measure with vehemence; but, to the honor of the marine service, not a sea-captain in the port of Boston could be induced to become a slave-dealer to please the General Court. They were spared the usual brutal whipping of contumacious persons as a special mark of humanity.

In 1662 the Virginia Assembly passed a law that children should be held, bond or free, " according to the condition of the mother." This was to meet the case of mulatto children, born of black mothers, in the colony. It was thought right to hold heathen Africans in slavery; but, as mulattoes must be part Christians, a knotty question came up, for the English law in relation to serfdom declared the condition of the child must be determined by that of the father.

The Virginia law opposed this doctrine in favor of the slave-holders. Some of the negroes brought into Virginia were converted to Christianity and baptized. The question was raised, " Is it lawful to hold Christians as slaves ?" The General Assembly came to the relief of the slave-holders by enacting a law that slaves, though converted and baptized, should not therefore become free. It was also enacted that killing a slave by his master by " extreme correction " should not be esteemed a felony, since it might not be presumed that " malice prepense " would " induce any man to destroy his own estate." It was also enacted, as an evasion of the statute prohibiting the holding of Indians as slaves, " that all servants, not being Christians, imported by shipping, shall be slaves for life." Indian slaves, under this law, were imported from New England and the West Indies. Freed slaves were then subjected to civil disabilities.

In 1681 the legislature of Maryland passed a new act to remedy the evils of intermarrying of whites and blacks. The preamble recited that such matches were often brought about by the instigation or connivance of the master or mistress, who took advantage of the former law to prolong the servitude of their white feminine servants, and at the same time to raise up a brood of mulatto slaves. The new law enacted that all white feminine servants intermarrying with negro slaves were free, at once, after the nuptials, and their children also; and that the minister celebrating and the master or mistress promoting or conniving at such marriages were subjected to a fine of 10,000 pounds of tobacco.