A History of Slavery in Virginia

The Basic Afro-American Reprint Library IMKIllfN LIBRARY UNIVERSITY Of CALIFORNIA^/ A HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA BY JAMES CURTIS BALLAGH Associate in History, Johns Hopkins University BALTIMORE THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 1902 JOHNSON REPRINT CORPORATION JOHNSON REPRINT COMPANY LTD. 1 1 1 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003 Berkeley Square House, London, W. 1 #31 ]/, J y THE BASIC AFRO-AMERICAN REPRINT LIBRARY Books on the history, culture, and social environment of Afro-Americans Selected by Clarence L. Holte COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS. First reprinting, 1968, Johnson Reprint Corporation Printed in the United States of America //* TO THE MEMORY OF MY AUNTS SUSAN CATHERINE WITHROW AND PHOEBE CAROLINE PATTERSON CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE vii CHAPTER I. SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVE POPULATION. - Slavery as a Stage in Social Progress 1 Origin and Progress of the Modern Slave Trade 3 Importation of the Subjects of Slavery 6 Restrictive Duties and Petitions to the Crown 11 Prohibition Attempted and Realized 19 -Slave Population and the Domestic Slave Trade 24 CHAPTER II. DEVELOPMENT OF SLAVERY. Legal Status of the Slave. Origin of Status , 27 Status of the Early Negroes and Indians 28 Relation of Servitude to Slavery 31 Subjects and Principles of Enslavement 45 Mulattoes, Mestizos and Persons of Color 56 Incidents of Slavery; Rights and Duties , 62 Penal Legislation concerning Slaves 82 Social Status of the Slave. Regulation by Custom 96 Personality of the Slave and Customary Rights 97 Maintenance, Guardianship, Education and Liberty 102 Negro Preachers 110 CHAPTER III. MANUMISSION, EMANCIPATION AND THE FREE MAN. Withdrawal of Restrictions to Liberty 116 Public and Private Manumission 119 Suits for Freedom 123 - Transportation of Freedmen 125 Anti-Slavery Sentiment 127 Plans for Emancipation < 130 Slavery Polemics and Apologetics 142 Status of the Free Negro 145 BIBLIOGRAPHY 149 V PREFACE. In the literature upon American slavery there is no such dis tinctive study of its institutional origin, development and relations as has been made of certain similar forms of social organization in Europe. This fact will serve to explain the method, con structive rather than narrative, of the present volume and the reference, somewhat more general than the title suggests, to the experience of other American colonies and States, and to that of Europe where it has seemed necessary. It is recognized that objective views of the local character of slavery in every division of the present United States where it has existed are prerequisite to its true history in this country. My wish has been to contribute to this end by a careful investigation of the institution as it existed in one of these, Virginia, with a candid statement of results. The priority of this colony and the long coexistence there of forms of dependence give unusual interest and value to its institutional experience, and make it the natural starting point of the general inquiry. For the invariable kindness with which the historical materials relating to the subject have been made accessible to me I desire to thank particularly, among many who have aided me, Messrs. Philip A. Bruce and W. G. Stanard, of the Virginia Historical of the State L. Society ; W. W. Scott, Virginia Library ; John Campbell, Secretary of the Washington and Lee University; Frederick W. Page, Librarian of the University of Virginia; Dr. Philip R. Uhler, Provost of the Peabody Library, Balti more, and Hon. A. R. SpofTord, of the Library of Congress, Washington. Portions of Chapter II. have appeared, in somewhat modified form, in the pages of the Conservative Review and the permission to make use of this matter is due to the courtesy of the editors of that periodical. vii viii Preface. I take especial pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to my colleagues, Professor J. M. Vincent for valuable assistance at every stage of the progress of the book through the press, and Professor W. W. Willoughby who also has read the proof-sheets, and to Mr. N. Murray, of the Johns Hopkins Press, for suggestions. Acknowledgment due to others is to be found in the footnotes and in the appended bibliography. J. C. B. JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, April 8, 1902. HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA. CHAPTER I. THE SLAVE TEADE AND SLAVE POPULATION. African slavery has had a long institutional history. Both the literature and the monuments of ancient Egypt show that the Ethiopian slave was known not only to classical but to remote antiquity. The origin of domestic slavery in Africa is to be referred to the same general cause to which are ascribed other historic forms of slavery, viz. : some essential or actual inequality between individuals or sets of individuals in their broad social relations. Such an inequality continued and intensified, gradually and almost imperceptibly creates a status marked by distinct incidents, which in time assumes the form of a definite social institution, recognized first in custom, then in law. Slavery represents thus a stage in social progress, tending constantly to emerge wherever social units of unlike order or capacity are brought into continued competitive contact in the struggle for existence. The practical economic and political principle of subordination in such a case replaces the more theoretical conception of coordination and cooperation. His torically speaking, industrial society in a large sense has, with out exception, been founded upon the subserviency of one activity or agent of labor, or set of such activities or agents, to another. The gradation of labor forms, even in the case of a single individual agent, is but the simplest expression of a similar truth. As society is not composed of a single unit, neither is it composed, as at present constituted, of compound 1 2 History of Slavery in Virginia. equal ones. Society, and particularly industrial society, is essentially complex. Complexity appears within the simplest social unit itself, and is reflected in the manus of the husband and in the dominium of the father, which latter in ancient society developed institutionally into the patria potestas. The Roman clientela and the German comitatus illustrate the same truth, more especially in the political sphere. Ancient slav ery, medieval vassalage and villainage, modern servitude and slavery, and forms of dependent so-called free labor all par take of a common quality of subordination in their origin and development. From a past institutional standpoint at least the mere existence of such results sufficiently denies the doc trine of natural equality and inalienable rights in the social sphere. Given inequality of capacity or condition, whether natural or acquired, the evolution of the various forms in which dependent labor has found expression is determined by environment, and the particular form by the degree of the relation of dependence. Historic connection then of examples of these various forms as antecedent and consequent is not a necessary assumption, though in some cases it is a certain or plausible one. In the case of slavery at least the various phases it assumed in ancient times, in Babylonia, Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, Greece and Rome for instance, present an institutional continuity that may have been based more or less upon actual contact, but it is also true that local conditions have existed amongst all known peoples at some stage of their development sufficient to account for the native origin of the most characteristic features of this institution. We may assume, then, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that African slavery had such an independent origin and that in development its con nection with past as with future foreign forms of slavery was one of institutional similarity rather than of causal relation. Regardless of the continuity of the idea of modern slavery in Africa, Europe, and America, it is to be remembered that the sanction and growth of slavery depended upon local causes, The Slave Trade and Slave Population. 3 and for this reason its form and incidents materially differed in these three countries and indeed in different parts of the same country. Thus the patriarchal institution of the Eng lish colonies had little in common with the type of the penal or galley slave to be found in the Spanish West Indies. The era of awakened commerce and discovery, that marked the transition of the mediaeval into the modern world, first brought Europeans into contact with African slavery as an already developed institution. Negroes under their tribal customs enslaved their kindred for debt, for crime, and as a matter of systematic poor relief. So, too, the sparing of the captive enemy to become a slave, the most fertile and humane source of slavery, was commonly practiced in native inter 1 tribal warfare. The Moors, also, from early times enslaved 2 not only the blacks around them but also Christian whites. It was through the Moors that Europeans were first made acquainted with the benefits to be derived from the African slave trade. 3 When in the first half of the fifteenth century, the ener getic Prince Henry of Portugal, better known as Prince Henry the Navigator, was actively pushing the course of Portuguese discovery along the west coast of Africa, Antony Gonzales, one of his mariners, captured, in 1440, two Moors near Cape Bajados. The prince ordered the exchange of the Moors for a proffered ransom of ten blacks, and these were brought from the Rio del Oro to Lisbon in 1442. He justi fied his act on the ground that the negroes might be Christian ized but the Moors could not. Two years later the Company of Lagos, chartered by the king and engaged in discovery on the African coast, imported two hundred negroes from the islands of Nar and Tidar. Of these the king received his 1 Snelgrave, Account of Guinea, 158.

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