What Was Legal under the Slave Codes

In 1641, Massachusetts had the dubious distinction of being the first colony to recognize slavery as a legal institution. Over time, British law and the laws of other European settlers became more or less strictly tied to two factors: over time, the rights of Africans were drastically reduced in some colonies, while in others they were expanded. In the South, where labor-intensive crops such as rice, tobacco, and indigo supported the economy, slave owners slowly consolidated their control over Africa`s unpaid labor through a series of increasingly restrictive slave laws and the very prevention of private exploitation. In the central and northern colonies, slavery was less viable for a variety of other economic reasons, and sometimes for religious reasons. There, slave laws slowly became less restrictive and Africans gradually enslaved were emancipated. The same ideas about natural human rights that led to the American Revolution nurtured a nascent anti-slavery movement that led to progressive emancipation laws, laws that reduced restrictions on private manuscription and abolished slavery. An attempt to unify Spanish slave laws, the Codigo Negro, was aborted without ever going into effect because it was unpopular with slave owners in America. [27] In 1750, Georgia was the last colony in British North America to legalize slavery. Enslaved Spanish Africans were entitled to fair treatment, a share of their income and freedom. Their children did not necessarily become slaves. They had the right to personal security and there were legal mechanisms in place to escape from a cruel master.

A “slave” could legally own and transfer property. They were able to sue, a provision that turned into a right to self-purchase. Their recognition of slavery humanity, legal rights, and liberal manumission policies enabled the development of a significant population of free Africans in Florida and the Southwest in the 18th century. On the other hand, social attitudes based on race-based prejudice favored a society of color-based groups, known in Spanish colonial society as the Castas system. Castas identified people by variations in their racial background, or more precisely, the amount of African blood an individual inherited from intermarriages. The institution of slavery in America was based on the underlying premise that slaves are property, not people, and that the law must protect not only property, but also the owner from the threat of violence. After the Stono Rebellion in 1769, slave laws in South Carolina and other southern colonies became even more restrictive. There were many restrictions to impose social control: slaves were not allowed to leave their owner`s premises without permission; they could not gather unless a white person was present; they were not allowed to possess firearms; They could not learn to read or write, nor to transmit or possess “rebellious” literature. I am doing an important project to analyze the impact of slave laws and Jim Crow laws on slaves, former slaves and free blacks. And I can`t find much information. Seventeenth-century laws in Virginia, which defined the professional boundaries between indentured servitude and slavery, were flexible.

Africans were as likely to be conscripted (as servants forced to work for a time) as they were to be enslaved. The work of the contractual servants, English or African, was the work of slaves. Social relations between contract servants and slaves were also fluid during this period. Gradually, the English passed laws that transformed labour and social relations between African and English subjects from indentured servitude to racial slavery. However, Africans in the 17th century, like other colonial peoples, could and did seek justice in the courts. In 1665, the Dutch handed over New Holland to the British. For most European settlers, little changed in what would later become New York. For Africans, both enslaved and liberated, the British occupation was a major change.

Under the British, Africans lost half or all of the freedom they enjoyed under Dutch rule. Gone are the legal and social rights they could claim as Dutch subjects when no master could whip a slave African without the permission of the Dutch Municipal Council. These and other rules changed under the British. I need an exact answer to how free blacks reacted to slave codes. There is no number for reaction. If you are looking for the exact number of free blacks at the time of slavery, here is a graph I made in 2008 with this information. www.ncpedia.org/sites/default/files/census_stats_1790-1860.pdf But while slaves had the slave code, free blacks had codes for what they could do. Disenfranchisement, possession of firearms, tax increases, etc. Probably the largest contingent of slaves who gained freedom before emancipation in 1863 occurred during and after the War of Independence. The War of Independence sparked a broad anti-slavery movement in the north.

Rhode Island, whose economy depended heavily on the slave trade, although rapid progress was made in the final year of the war, lawmakers passed a compromise measure that provided for gradual emancipation without disrupting the slave trade abroad. In 1662, the Virginia court ruled that a child born to a slave mother was also enslaved. The following year, a Maryland law made life servitude mandatory for blacks to prevent them from taking advantage of precedents established in England that granted freedom under certain conditions, such as conversion to Christianity. Other colonies followed Maryland`s example. The France abolished slavery after the French Revolution, first freeing second-generation slaves in 1794. [25] Although it was reintroduced under Napoleon with the law of May 20, 1802. The first (legal) mention of slavery in Virginia dates back to 1640, when the court sentenced a “black man” to life in prison. The same court case shows how the English are using law enforcement to drive a wedge between African and English social relations. Three servants who worked for a Virginia farmer fled to Maryland. Two were white; One of them was black. They were captured in Maryland and sent back to Jamestown, where the court sentenced the three to thirty lashes and additional servitude, John Punch, the black man, was ordered to “serve his said master or agents for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere.” Other colonies adopted similar slave codes.

All slave laws made slavery a permanent state inherited from the mother and defined slaves as property. Since the status of descendants followed that of mother, the child of a free father and a slave mother was a slave. Slaves that were property could not own property or be parties to a contract. Since marriage is a form of contract, no slave marriage has legal status. In all slave codes, the color line was tight, and much black blood established a person`s race, whether slave or “free,” as a negro.