Slavery was introduced by the Spaniards into the West Indies. They first enslaved the natives, but these were unequal to the required toil, and they were soon almost extinguished by hard labor and cruelty. Charles V. of Spain granted a license to a Fleming to import 4,000 Negroes annually into the West Indies. He sold his license to Genoese merchants, who began a regular trade in human beings between Africa and the West Indies. These were found to thrive where the native laborers died. The benevolent Las Casas and others favored the system as a means for saving the Indian tribes from destruction; and the trade was going on briskly when the English, under the influence of Hawkins, engaged in it in 1562. Ten years before a few negroes had been sold in England, and it is said that Queen Elizabeth's scruples were so far removed that she shared in the profits of the traffic carried on by Englishmen.
At Jamestown, Virginia, approximately 20 captive Africans are sold into slavery in the British North American colonies.
In 1619, the first twenty blacks arrived in Virginia on a Dutch vessel. The first Africans in America arrived as Indentured Servants via Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. From 1619 to about 1640, Africans could earn their freedom working as laborers and artisans for the European settlers. Africans could become free people and enjoy some of the liberties like other new settlers. By 1640, Maryland became the first colony to institutionalize slavery. In 1641, Massachusetts, in its written legislative Body of Liberties, stated that "bondage was legal" servitude, at that moment changing the conditions of the African workers - they became chattel slaves who could be bought and solely owned by their masters.
THE LAW STEPS IN 1641
Massachusetts is the first colony to legalize slavery. The transformation form indentured servitude to racial slavery happened gradually. There were no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history. However, by 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced at least on black servant to slavery. In 1654, John Casor, a black man, became the first legally recognized slave in the area that became the United States. A court in Northampton County ruled against Casor, declaring him property for life, "owned" by the black colonist Anthony Johnson. Since persons with African origins were not English citizens by birth, they were not necessarily covered by English Common. Law. Elizabeth Key Grinstead successfully gained her freedom in the Virginia courts in the 1650's by making her case as the daughter of a free Englishman Thomas Key and his negro slave.
NO ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY 1662
Virginia enacts a law of hereditary slavery meaning that a child born to an enslaved mother inherits her slave status.
Shortly after the Elizabeth Key trial, in 1662 Virginia passed a law on partus, stating that any children of enslaved mothers would follow her status and automatically be slaves, no matter if the father was a freeborn Englishman.
EMERGE IN CONFLICT 1676
In Virginia, black slaves and black and white indentured servants band together to participate in Bacon’s Rebellion.
To some extent, Bacon’s Rebellion was a conflict within the Virginia elite. The leader Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy and ambitious planter who had arrived in Virginia in 1673, disdained Berkeley’s coterie as men of “mean education and employments.”His backers included men of wealth outside the governor’s circle of es.But Bacon’s call for the removal of all Indians for the colony a reduction of taxes at the time of economic recession, and an end to rule by “grandees” rapidly gained support from small farmers, landless men, Indentured servants, and even some slaves.
In 1676 Bacon gathered an armed force for an unauthorized in indiscriminate campaign against those he called the governor’s Protected and darling Indians.” He refused order to disband and marched on Jamestown, burning it to the ground.The governor fled, and Bacon became the ruler of Virginia.His forces plundered the estates of supporters.Only the arrival of a squadron of warships from England restored order.Bacon’s Rebellion was over.
SLAVERY EXPANDS1694
Rice cultivation is introduced into Carolina. Slave importation increases dramatically.
By the mid-eighteenth century, three distinct slave systems were well entrenched in Britain’s mainland colonies: tobacco-based plantation slavery in entrenched in Britain’s mainland colonies: tobacco-based plantation slavery in the Chesapeake; rice –based plantation slavery in South Carolina and Georgia; and nonplantiation slavery in New England and the Middle Colonies.The largest and oldest of these was the tobacco plantation system of the Chesapeake, where more than 270,000 slaves resided in 1770, nearly half of the region’s population.
RACIAL OPPRESSION IS LAW1705
The Virginia Slave Code codifies slave status, declaring all non-Christian servants entering the colony to be slaves. It defines all slaves as real estate, acquits masters who kill slaves during punishment, forbids slaves and free colored peoples from physically assaulting white persons, and denies slaves the right to bear arms or move abroad without written permission.
SLAVE CODES AND RESISTANCE
The slave codes robbed the Africans of their freedom and will power. Slaves did resist this treatment, therefore strict and cruel punishment was on hand for disobeying their masters. Slaves were forbidden from carrying guns, taking food, striking their masters, and running away. All slaves could be flogged or killed for resisting or breaking the slave codes. Some slave states required both slaves and free blacks to wear metal badges. Those badges were embossed with an ID number and occupation.
Freedom was always on the minds of the enslaved Africans. How to gain that freedom was the big question. American historical records have identified some of those attempts and some of the people involved in the African's quest for freedom on American soil.
Refusing to obey their masters' demands created a duel crisis on the part of the resisting slaves and their demanding owners. The most common form of resistance used by the slaves was to run away. To live as a runaway required perfect escape routs and exact timing. Where to hide, finding food, leaving the family and children behind became primary issues for the escaping slaves. Later, the severe punishment had to be faced whenever a hunted slave was caught and returned to bondage.
Many slaves ran off and lived in the woods or vast wilderness in the undeveloped American countryside. This group of slaves were called "maroons," for they found remote areas in the thick forest and mainly lived off wild fruits and animals as food. Some of these maroons ran off, lived, and even married into segments of the Native American populations. They were later called Black Indians.
CHAINS TIGHTENS1712
An alleged slave revolt in New York City leads to violent outbreaks. Nine whites are killed and eighteen slaves are executed.
The eighteenth century’s first slave uprising occurred in New York City in 1712, when a group of slaves set fire to houses on the outskirts of the city and killed the first nine whites who arrived on the scene.Subsequently, eighteen conspirators were executed; some were tortured and burned alive in a public spectacle meant to intimidate the slave population.
SILVERS OF HOPE1731
The Spanish reverse a 1730 decision and declare that slaves fleeing to Florida from Carolina will not be sold or returned.
In September 1739 a group of South Carolina slaves, most of them recently arrived for Kongo where some, it appears, had been soldiers, seized a store containing numerous weapons at the town of Stono. Beating drums to attract followers, the armed band marched southward toward Florida, burning houses and barns, killing whites they encountered and shouting “Liberty.” (Florida’s supposedly tyrannical Spanish rulers offered “Liberty and Protection” to fugitives for the British Colonies.)
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