History of slavery in Virginia

Slaves awaiting sale in Richmond, Virginia, 1853 work

Slavery in Virginia began with the enslavement of Native Americans, during the early days of the Colony of Virginia and through the late 18th century. They primarily worked in tobacco fields. Africans were first brought to Colonial Virginia in 1619, when 20 Africans from present-day Angola arrived in Virginia on the ship The White Lion. About that time, Native Americans were also captured and enslaved.

As the slave trade grew, enslaved people generally were forced to labor at large plantations, where their efforts helped to make plantation owners rich. Colonial Virginia became an amalgamation of Algonquin-speaking Native Americans, English, other Europeans, and West Africans, each bringing their own language, customs, and rituals. By the 18th century, plantation owners were the aristocracy of Virginia. There were also a class of people who oversaw the work of enslaved people, and a poorer class that competed for work with freed Blacks.

Tobacco was the key export in the 17th century. Slave breeding and trading became more lucrative than exporting tobacco into the 19th century. It was the most lucrative and profitable export in Virginia. Women were bred to increase the number of enslaved people for the slave trade.

In 1661, Virginia passed its first law allowing any free person the right to own slaves. Additional laws regarding slavery of Africans were passed in the seventeenth century and codified into Virginia's first slave code in 1705. Over time, laws denied more of the rights and opportunities of enslaved people, and supported the interests of slaveholders.

For more than 200 years, enslaved people had to deal with a wide range of horrors, like physical abuse, rape, being separated from family members, managing insufficient access to food, and degradation. Laws restricted their ability to learn to read and write (which meant that they could not have books or Bibles). They had to have permission to leave the plantation, and for only a specified number of hours. Initially, if they wanted to attend church, they were segregated from white congregants in white churches or they had to meet in secret in the woods because they were not allowed to meet in groups, until African Americans were able to establish black churches. The most difficult was being separated from family members when they were sold. They developed coping mechanisms, such as creating work songs to endure harsh days in the fields; they also used forms of resistance to cope. They created their own musical styles, such as Black Gospel music and sorrow songs.

In 2007, the Virginia General Assembly approved a formal statement of "profound regret" for the Commonwealth's history of slavery.

Overview

Advertisement showing tobacco workers in Virginia

When English settlers arrived in the seventeenth century in what became the colony of Virginia, there were 30 or so tribes of Native Americans who were led by Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas. Colonists starved during the colony's early years. Kathryn Knight, author of Unveiled - The Twenty & Odd of the first Africans in Virginia, states: "Basically all of those people were right off of the streets in England... [they] didn't know how to grow anything. They didn't know how to manage livestock. They didn't know anything about survival in Virginia... [Africans (and Native Americans)] saved them by being able to produce crops, by being able to manage the livestock. They kept them alive." Settlers and traders began enslaving Native Americans after founding Jamestown.

Africans were brought by Dutch and English slave ships to the Virginia Colony. The institution of slavery developed over the 17th century and was increasingly inequitable. Laws and practices limited the behavior of African Americans, for example, by not allowing blacks to meet in groups, have firearms, or raise livestock. They could only leave plantations for four hours, and needed written permission to travel. Over time, being a Christian did not prevent African Americans from life-long service. Laws vacillated over time concerning the enslavement of Native Americans. Algonquin-speaking Native Americans, English, other Europeans, and West Africans brought customs and traditions from each of their home countries and "loosely-knit customs began to crystallize into what later became known as the Tuckahoe culture.

During the colonial period, the James River valley was known for its large tobacco plantations of thousands of acres in the tidewater Coastal Plain and Piedmont plateau. Settlements were established at major river crossings where they were few stores, schools, and churches. On the large tobacco plantations, planters treated them like chattel (owned property) as field, household and skilled workers. The labor-intensive tobacco and later cotton crops of the South required large tracts of land and relied on slavery to be profitable. The gulf between the planters and the other classes became more pronounceda as planters became wealthier. In 1860, there were 20,000 enslaved people that lived in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudon, and Prince William counties.

Plantation owners in Virginia during the 18th century became wealthy, and members of the planter aristocracy, by growing tobacco and having enslaved unpaid people perform other agricultural and domestic work. They were far outnumbered by indentured servants, slaves, and poor white people. Thomas Anburey, an English officer, visited Colonel Randolph's house in Goochland in 1779 and opined that Virginia plantations were owned and operated by refined, educated people. The people that had the most interaction with bondspeople were generally considered to been uneducated and unworldly, yet generally of cordial attitudes. However, they were “accustomed to tyrannize with all their good qualities, they are rude, ferocious, and haughty, much attached to gaming and dissipation".

Plantations were small in number in colonial Virginia, but were key to the economic welfare of the state. Yet, history often "whitewashes" the realities of slavery during the 19th century by focusing on the history of the plantation owners and the architecture of the plantation manors and relegates the history of enslaved people to the margins of the history of the plantation. Although, as plantations attempt to provide a full picture of colonial life and slavery, some visitors prefer not to hear it.

Slavery continued until the passage of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in 1865. There were laws enacted and other practices that limited African Americans rights and opportunities after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Slavery

Native Americans

Main articles: European enslavement of Native Americans and Slavery among Native Americans in the United States

Around the same time that Africans first arrived in 1619, some Native Americans were enslaved by the English, some slaveholders had both African and Native American slaves, who worked in their tobacco fields. Laws regarding enslavement of Native Americans vacillated between encouraging and discouraging slavery. The number of enslaved native people reached a peak in the end of the 17th century. Slavery of Native Americans declined due to illness and escapes. In addition, the Atlantic slave trade provided great quantities of Africans. But enslavement of indigenous people continued into the end of the eighteenth century. By the 19th century, they were either incorporated within the African American communities or were free.

Europeans sold guns for slaves in an existing indigenous trading market, and encouraged allied tribes to provide the slaves by targeting Indian groups on the periphery of English settlements.

— Indian Enslavement in Virginia 

Indigenous people were generally taken in the greatest numbers during battles between the English and Native Americans. They fought or attacked one another for years, partly because of the English people's hunger and the Native Americans' distress that they were losing their land. On March 22, 1622, 347 or more colonists were killed and English settlements were set on fire during an Indian massacre. Approximately 20 women were taken from Martin's Hundred and were said to have been put into "great slavery". Captured Native Americans were sent to British colonies in the West Indies to work as slaves.

First Africans

Main article: First Africans in Virginia

Africans landing at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619

In late August 1619, twenty or more Africans were brought to Point Comfort on the James River in Virginia. They were sold first in exchange for food, and then sold in Jamestown to intended slaveholders. The Africans came from the Kingdom of Ndongo (formerly known as Angola).

By 1620, there were 32 Africans and four Native Americans in the "Others not Christians in the Service of the English" category of the muster. who arrived in Virginia, but that number reduced by 1624, perhaps due to the Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–1632) or illness. William Tucker, born in 1624, was the first person of African descent born in the Thirteen Colonies.

There were 906 Europeans and 21 Africans in the 1624 muster. By 1625, the Africans lived on plantations. Many of the people took Christian names and were baptized. A slave ship carried 100 people from Angola to Virginia. By 1650, this had increased to about 300 Africans.

Before 1660, the First Africans were subject to a range of arrangements. Some were enslaved for their lifetimes. Some, like white indentured servants, had an arrangement to work for a certain number of years and then they were freed.

Mary and Anthony Johnson were among those who were able to attain their freedom and establish a farm. Increasingly, though, Africans were treated as slaves into the last half of the 1600s. In 1640, one black servant, John Punch, who ran away was sentenced by the Virginia courts to be a slave for the rest of his life. Two white indentured servants who ran away with Punch had four more years added on to their servitude.

Unpaid servants

Further information: § Indentured servitude, and Indentured servitude in Virginia

Household and farm work was performed by indentured servants and enslaved people, including children. Indentured servants, generally brought from England, worked without pay for a specific period of time. They exchanged their labor for the cost of their passage to the colony, room and board, and freedom dues, which were stipulated to be provided to the servant at the end of the indenture period. It could include land, a gun, and other supplies that would help them become established on their own. The tobacco fields of Virginia were mostly worked by white indentured servants in the seventeenth century. By 1705, the economy was based upon slave labor imported from Africa.

Enslaved people were generally held for their lifetimes. Children of enslaved women were enslaved from birth per partus sequitur ventrem. Some people believe that since the muster and other records used the term "servant" that it meant that blacks who landed in Virginia were indentured servants. Unlike indentured servants, slaves were taken against their will and when slaves were first sold for food, it was clear that they were considered property. The term "indentured servant" was a euphemism for slavery when referring to Black people. Michael Guasco, historian at Davidson College and author of Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World states, "There's pretty much overwhelming consensus here: there's really no evidence to argue that the Africans were not envisioned as slaves."

Enslaved Blacks were treated much more harshly than white servants. Whipping of Blacks, for instance, was common.

Domestic, field, and skilled labor

From Monday through Saturday, enslaved people were assigned specific duties. Most people, including children, were farm hands. Domestic work, another duty, included preparing and serving food, cleaning, and caretaking of white children. Lastly, others were trained to be blacksmiths, carpenters, and coopers. Those who had livestock or gardens tended to them on Sunday. It was also a day to be with loved ones and for worship.

Children also worked. For instance at Monticello, small children helped with tasks at the main house and looked after very young enslaved children until they were ten years of age. They then worked in the fields, the house, or performed a specific skill like nail or textile making. At the age of 16, they may have been forced into a trade. Life was more difficult for children who worked in the fields, particularly on large plantations. Domestic work was not as onerous and provided opportunities to overhear current events and news. It was most difficult when family members were sold away from the farm or plantation. And, some planters were cruel in their delivery of punishment.

Further information: Slave health on plantations in the United States

Offenses against slaves

Enslavers had control of the people that they enslaved. They could favor some, make life miserable for others, tease them with hollow promises for emancipation, brutally rape, and severely punish slaves. They could also control what happened to their children, which was a very powerful tactic. To make it more difficult, slaves could not testify against their masters. In 1829, the North Carolina v. Mann case was brought before the North Carolina Supreme Court, and it was determined that slaveholders had the right to treat enslaved people in anyway that they chose, including killing them, in order to better the submission of the enslaved to their enslavers.

From the 1600s until 1860, it was common for white planters or other white men to rape enslaved women. Professor Angela Davis maintains that "there could hardly be a basis for 'delight, affection and love' as long as white men, by virtue of their economic position, had unlimited access to Black women's bodies."

Into the first half of the 19th century, it was common practice at southern universities, like the University of Virginia (UVA), for white men to rape the enslaved women and children who served them. Between 100 and 200 black men, women and children who worked at the university were mistreated and beaten. The behavior was accepted by law enforcement and the learning institutions. In September 1826, two men at UVA caught the same sexually transmitted disease, which indicated that they had been with the same woman. She was raped by both men. When they found out that the had a venereal disease—George Hoffman, Turner Dixon, and other classmates—found the 16-year-old victim and beat her until she was bloody. After her owner complained to the school, the boys were reprimanded and paid $10 to the slaveholder.

After 1808, when Congress made importing slaves from the West Indies or Africa illegal, the slave trade grew in the country through breeding enslaving women so that the children would be sold for profit.

See also: § Slave trade and breeding

Formalized slavery

Main articles: Slave codes § England's American colonies and the United States, and Fugitive slave laws in the United States

It was in Virginia that a legal process emerged guaranteeing that the 'cruelty of slavery and pervasive racial injustice were guaranteed by its laws.'

—Leon A. Higginbotham quoted in "The 'Twenty and Odd': The Silences of Africans in Early Virginia Revealed" 

A law making race-based slavery legal was passed in Virginia in 1661. It allowed any free person the right to own slaves. In 1662, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law that said that a child was born a slave if the mother was a slave, based on partus sequitur ventrem. Specifically, "all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother." The new law in 1662 meant that white fathers had no responsibilities towards their mixed-race children; They could sell their children or put them to work.

Since children followed their mother's status, enslaved women bred children that increased a slaveholder's work force. It met the economic needs of the colony, which suffered perpetual labor shortages because conditions were difficult, mortality was high, and the government was having difficulty attracting sufficient numbers of English indentured servants. This resulted in generations of black and mixed-race enslaved people. Among the most notable were 7/8 white Sally Hemings and her siblings, fathered by planter John Wayles, and her four surviving children by Thomas Jefferson. This was in contrast to English common law of the time. Slavery created a racial caste associated with African descent regardless of children's paternal ancestry. The principle became incorporated into state law when Virginia achieved independence from Great Britain.

Additional laws regarding slavery were passed in the seventeenth century and codified into Virginia's first slave code, An act concerning Servants and Slaves, in 1705. Any confusion about whether Africans and Native Americans were to be treated as indentured servants or slaves was cleared up by the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705, which stated that people who were not Christians, or were black, mixed-race, or Native Americans would be slaves and treated like personal property or chattel. Slaveholders were given permission to punish enslaved people and would not be prosecuted if the slave died as a result. It specified punishment, including whipping and death, for minor offenses and for criminal acts. Slaves needed written permission to leave their plantation. The slave code also prevented bondspeople from seeking justice before a court. A slave could not give testimony against a white.

Plantation economy

Main articles: Plantation economy and Plantation complexes in the Southern United States

An Overseer Doing his Duty, 1798, Benjamin Henry Latrobe Sketch book, III, 33, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, image of enslaved women working swiddens, common when rotating crops. It came from The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas : A Visual Record, Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr., Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia, 2006

Virginia planters developed the commodity crop of tobacco as the chief export. It was a labor-intensive crop, and demand for it in England and Europe led to an increase in the importation of African slaves in the colony. That was because planters were unable to get the number of workers that they needed from England and with indentured servants there was an expiration date on their service. Slaves, on the other hand, served for their lifetimes and children that were born to them were also enslaved. Large plantations became more prevalent, which changed the culture of colonial Virginia that relied on plantations for its economic prosperity. The plantation "served as an institution in itself, characterized by social and political inequality, racial conflict, and domination by the planter class."

Tobacco farming in eastern Virginia had depleted the soil so that by 1800, farmers began to look to the west for good land to raise crops. John Randolph said in 1830 that the land was “worn out.” Corn and wheat were grown in the Piedmont plateau and the Shenandoah Valley. The number of slaves in the Shenandoah Valley were never as high as in eastern Virginia. For one thing, the area was settled by German and Scotch-Irish people, who were not interested in slavery. Secondly, in western Virginia, the economy was based upon raising livestock and farming. It was not economical to have slave labor except for the few tobacco farms, coal mines, or the salt industry. The coal and salt industry leased enslaved people who were hired out, mostly from eastern Virginia, because their risk of death was high enough that purchasing enslaved people was not cost effective. Poor white people also worked in these industries. The slaves that were no longer needed or marketable within Virginia were hired out or sold to the cotton fields of the Deep South. In 1860, 3% of western Virginia's population (18,451) were slaves, while slaves in eastern Virginia were 30% of the population (490,308).

Eastern Virginian's interests were very different from those in western Virginia. The state of West Virginia was formed in 1861 from the western counties of Virginia. It achieved statehood in 1863. West Virginia chose not to join the Confederacy and became a free state during the American Civil War.

With a shortage of white labor, blacks had become deeply involved in urban trades and businesses. In this setting, slaves were able to buy their way out of slavery.

Culture

Main article: African-American culture § African-American cultural history

African Americans developed cultural traditions that helped them cope with being enslaved, supported family members and friends, and promoted human dignity. Music, folklore, cuisine, and religious practices by blacks influenced the broader American culture.

People brought from Africa against their wills played an integral role in the American story. Their contributions ranged from vocabulary to agriculture to cuisine, including staples like rice that were a key part of the English colonies' success. They probably also brought some Christian practices that they learned from the Portuguese Catholic missionaries in Africa.

— Olivia B. Waxman, author of The First Africans in Virginia Landed in 1619 

Enslaved African Americans fostered pride, groomed their children, and taught life lessons through folklore of African legends, parables, and proverbs. They used animals to represent human traits, such as tortoises to represent tricksters. Other figures used their guile and intelligence to get the better of powerful enemies.

Religion and music

See also: Black church, Religion of Black Americans, and Hoodoo (spirituality)

Churches were built and operated by white people. Free blacks and enslaved people may have been able to worship in these churches, in separate space for blacks, until blacks established their own churches.

Christian ministers, primarily Methodists and Baptists, preached to them about redemption and hope. Black Gospel music, sung as a group, was an act of fellowship. They sang about deliverance, salvation, resistance, and sorrow, in the form of sorrow songs. Shouts were a means of expression during religious ceremonies. African traditions were integrated into African American religion.

Some people were able to attend church and others met secretly in the woods to worship. Either way, religious practices—like music, call-and-response forms of worship, and funeral customs—helped blacks manage "the dehumanizing effects of slavery and segregation" and feed their souls.

Music was prevalent among communities of African Americans. Work songs, or field hollers, were used on plantations to get through the work day. Satirical songs imparted feelings of oppression and abuse. Blacks took European music that they heard and created their own style with foot patting, off-key notes, and rhythm patterns.

Further information: African-American music § Historic traits

Food

Main article: Soul food

Enslaved people's diet was controlled by what food was given to them, often a mainstay of corn and pork. At hog butchering time, the best cuts of meat were kept for the master's household and the remainder, such as fatback, snouts, ears, neck bones, feet, and intestines (chitterlings) were given to the slaves. Cornbread was common among enslaved people, and there were many other ways that corn was prepared, like porridge, hominy, grits, corn cakes, waffles, and corn dodgers. Enslaved adults were typically given a peck (9 liters) of cornmeal and 3-4 pounds (1.5–2 kilos) of pork per week, and from those rations come soul food staples such as cornbread, fried catfish, chitterlings, and neckbones.

Enslaved Africans augmented their rations with cooked greens (collards, beets, dandelion, kale, and purslane) and sweet potatoes. Excavations of slave quarters found that their diet included squirrel, duck, rabbit, opossum, fish, berries and nuts. Vegetables included okra, turnips, beans, rice, and peas.

Like other ways in which early Virginians shared knowledge and traditions of their heritage with one another, they prepared food based upon European, indigenous, and African foods. They created gumbo, fricassee, fried foods, and soups, made from scraps of meat and vegetables. Soul food originated from the limited rations given to enslaved people by their planters and masters. Food was prepared in their fireplaces.

According to Booker T. Washington, who grew up on a tobacco plantation in Virginia, often the only food was scraps. If there was nothing for breakfast, he ate the boiled Indian corn that was prepared for the pigs. If he did not get to it before the pigs were fed, he picked up pieces around the pig troughs. He remembers as a young boy being awakened to eat a chicken acquired by his mother, likely taken from the plantation, and cooked in the middle of the night.

How or where she got it I do not know. I presume, however, it was procured from our owner’s farm. Some people may call this theft. But taking place at the time it did, and for the reason it did, no one could ever make me believe that my mother was guilty of thieving. She was simply a victim of the system of slavery.

— Booker T. Washington

Clothing

The clothing that enslaved people in Virginia wore varied depended upon when they lived, what positions they had, and the practices of their enslavers. They could not retain their choice of clothing from Africa, except that some women wore cloth head wraps of West African practices. In the 18th century, if they worked in the fields, they likely wore uncomfortable, simple European-style clothing. It was certainly made of inexpensive and inferior fabric, like Negro cloth and osnaburg made from hemp and flax. Some people found the clothing so uncomfortable, that they tried to take it off when able.

More durable and comfortable fabric, like jean cloth, was used in the 19th century. With the increased cotton production, ready-made clothing of blended fabrics was common. If someone worked in the house or held a liveried position, they had higher quality clothing or uniforms. Girls wore simple gowns and then adult dresses beginning in puberty. Boys clothing varied as they aged. They wore simple gowns, short pants, and then long pants. They were given shoes and sometimes hats. Clothing was generally handed out twice a year.

Personal touches were found in vegetable-dyed fabric, sewn-on glass beads or cowrie shells, or hand-fashioned necklaces. People planning to run away acquired better clothing, so that they would be less conspicuous. They stole clothing or purchased it, if they were able to make money.

Slave trade

Transatlantic slave trade

Joseph Swain, "Slaves aboard a slave ship being shackled before being put in the hold", a wooden engraving

Virginia became part of the transatlantic slave trade when the first Africans were brought to the colony in 1619. According to Olivia B. Waxman, "Because of the central role of the English colonies in American history, the introduction of the transatlantic slave trade to Virginia is likewise central to this ugly and inescapable part of that story. In addition, the type of race-based chattel slavery system that solidified in the centuries that followed was its own unique American tragedy."

The United States Congress enacted an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves that was effective as of 1808. This increased the domestic slave trade business.

Domestic slave trade and breeding

Virginia's domestic slave trade grew substantially in the early 19th century. It became the state's most lucrative industry, making more money exporting enslaved people than was made from tobacco. There were more than 300,000 more female slaves than males, because the women were used to breed. White men fornicated with enslaved women as they wished, but consequently they also obtained large, strong male slaves to breed good field workers, giving them an incentive to provide health care that would ensure women's fertility and successful childbirth. Robert Lumpkin ran, as part of his slave jail, the country's largest human breeding farm.

Women who worked in the main house of a plantation were more likely to be raped than other enslaved women. After she gave birth to a child, there was often discord between the woman and her child and the wife of the man who fathered the children. It was not uncommon for girls of 13 years old to begin being bred, and this breeding continued until she had delivered 15 children.

Richmond was the largest slave trade center in the Upper South. Two million enslaved people are believed to have been transported or walked to the Deep South from Richmond. They were needed for the cotton fields.

Sale

Richmond was a hub and the largest seller of enslaved people in Virginia. When enslaved people were sold, it meant that communities and families were likely dispersed to different places. It was common for people to be separated from their spouses and children, perhaps for the rest of their lives. People were taken from the plantation and put into jails or slave pens of slave traders. They could have been held there for weeks and they may have been subject to physical inspections. When they were auctioned, it was possible that they were sold again to another trader or ultimately sold to work plantations in the Deep South.

The prices for enslaved people varied based upon age, gender, and the time period. Women were valued at 80% or 90% of men's price. Children were valued at 50% of the "prime male field hand". In the late 1830s, the high rate was $1,250, due to a boom in the cotton industry. In the late 1850s, the highest value was about $1,450. In between those years, the value dipped substantially.

The District of Columbia – Slave Market of America, includes Alexandria slave dealers. American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836

Alexandria was also a center of the slave trade. In 1847, with the District of Columbia retrocession the city became again part of Virginia. A prime reason for the retrocession was that the end of slavery in the District of Columbia was a primary abolitionist goal, much talked about (gag rule). Once again part of Virginia, Alexandria's slave trading business was secure.

See also: Lumpkin's Jail and Franklin and Armfield Office

Controls and resistance

Main article: Treatment of the enslaved in the United States

Slaveholders had ongoing concerns that bondspeople might runaway or revolt against them. To manage that, there were a number of controls. One tactic was to prevent African Americans from learning how to read and write. They limited opportunities for groups of people to meet and prevented them from leaving the plantation. If someone ran away, physical punishment was meted against black people in a public forum. Severe beatings or whippings could be disfiguring. white people were charged with working the number of days that the enslaved person or people were away or have had other consequences due to laws. Other tactics were incentives, religion, the legal system, and intimidation.

There were various forms of resistance, but the most effective means was having their own culture of religion, music, folklore, and music. Others included working at a slow pace, stealing food, or breaking the slaveholder's property. Even though the risks were well-known, some people still tried to escape when they could.

Revolts

Main articles: § Controls and resistance, Slave rebellion § North America, and Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War

During the 19th century, there were three major attempted slave revolts in Virginia: Gabriel's Rebellion in 1800, Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831, and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, organized by a white man. After the Nat Turner's rebellion, thousands of Virginians sent the legislature over 40 petitions calling for an end to slavery, and Richmond's newspapers argued fiercely for abolition. What ensued was "the most public, focused, and sustained discussion of slavery and emancipation that ever occurred in...any. . .[S]outhern state,” according to historian Eva Sheppard Wolf. The petitions were not positive on the issue of free Blacks; "The [latter] insurrection prompted the first and last concerted effort by a Slave State to abolish slavery within its borders. Charles Faulkner, from western Virginia, and Thomas Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, led the losing struggle. Their Bill would have freed all children born of slave parents after July 4, 1840. [Thomas R.] Dew opposed it; his book, Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature, was influential in assuring its defeat." In 1723, the Virginia legislature ended the ability of slaveholders to independently free their slaves and required each manumission to be approved by an act of the legislature.

Freedom

Main articles: Freedman and Free Negro

Opportunities for most enslaved African Americans to attain freedom were few to none. Some were freed by their owners to honor a pledge, to grant a reward, or, before the 1700s, to fulfill a servitude agreement. A few were bought by Quakers, Methodists, and religious activists for the sole purpose of freeing them (a practice soon banned in the southern states). Many ran away to free territory, and some of these "fugitives" succeeded in avoiding capture and forced to the South.

—Buying One's Freedom, Emancipation of Enslaved African Americans, African American Identity 

There were many enslaved people who attained freedom prior to the American Civil War. Some were freed, or voluntarily emancipated by their slaveholder through manumission. Rare after 1800, some people were able to purchase their own freedom. As the abolition movement grew in popularity, more people were freed.

Many of the free blacks were highly skilled. Some were tailors, hair stylists, musicians, cooks, and artisans. Others were educators, writers, business people, planters, and cooks. Notably freed people include Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Absalom Jones, and Richard Allen. Thomas L. Jennings invented a dry-cleaning method for clothes. Henry Blair was a scientist who patented a seed planter.

Indentured servitude

Main article: Indentured servitude in Virginia

Indentured servitude was an arrangement where unpaid workers made a contractual arrangement for a certain number of years, generally four to seven years. The unpaid work payed for their passage to Virginia as well as any pre-arranged agreement about the property or supplies to be received when they were freed. For instance, they could receive a cow, a year's supply of corn, new clothes, and a firearm. They could also receive 25 or more acres of land. The length of time could be extended for women who got pregnant or for people who tried to runaway. It was a harsher life than that of free people, but it was not as restrictive and harsh as slavery.

In the early colonial period, Africans had informal servant arrangements for a certain period of time, but the period of time was often extended or became life-long servitude. Unlike their European indentured servant counterparts, they were unable to write back to their home country and so any rights that they had, or thought that they had, were exploited. Any leniency or freedom that Blacks may have had was taken away legislatively in 1705 with An act concerning Servants and Slaves.

There was a distinction between how white and Black people were recorded in early muster (census) records. white indentured servants were recorded with their date of arrival, surnames, and marital status. Blacks were just listed by their first name. Not having the date of arrival meant that the end of the contract could not be calculated. According to Professor Norrece T. Jones, Jr., "The fact that we don't have this on these early accounts of the population for Africans suggests that already there is a distinction between these two different types of dependent labor."

One of the first Africans to come to Virginia and subsequently freed was Anthony Johnson, who then held a contract with John Casor as an indentured servant. Casor fulfilled their agreed-upon arrangement, and worked another seven years. They went to court, and the judge determined that Casor was to be his slave for the rest of his lifetime. In the case of Philip Cowen, he was inherited by a cousin of Amye Beazlye, who died in 1664 and stipulated in her will that Cowen was to work for the cousin for eight years and be given a suit of clothes and three barrels of corn at the end of the term. The cousin held him for an extra three years, and then told him he was going to be held again for nine years. In a court case initiated in 1675, the court decided that Cowen should be released and given the money to pay for the suit and food.

In an unusual court case, John Graweere, an indentured servant, filed a petition to purchase his son. The boy was born to an enslaved woman. Graweere wanted to raise him as a Christian. The court ruled in 1641 in his favor and he was able to free his son.

Run away

Main articles: Quilts of the Underground Railroad, Fugitive slaves in the United States, and Slave patrol

A $100 bounty for a runaway slave named Abram from Richards' Ferry, Culpeper County, Virginia. Special Collections, University of Virginia

Another way to attain one's freedom was to run away, which made them a fugitive slave. Both indentured servants and enslaved people ran away for several reasons. They may have been in search of family members that they were separated from. They fled abusive masters and hard labor.

Slaves from Virginia escaped via waterways and overland to free states in the North, some being aided by people who lived along the Underground Railroad, which was maintained by both whites and Blacks. Although there were a number of measures to control enslaved people, there were still many that ran away. In doing so, they had to cross wide rivers or Chesapeake Bay, which was subject to storms that made the passage more difficult. People often headed for Maryland and places further north such as New York and New England, and may have run into hostile Native Americans.

File:"Jewels" found at Alexandria, by the Federal Army; consisting of chains, bracelets, and anklets supposed to have belonged to the "First Families" of Virginia - S.C. Upham, 310 Chestnut St. LCCN2010652102 (cropped).tif

Shackles found at Alexandria by the Federal Army; consisting of chains, bracelets, and anklets. Supposed to have belonged to the "First Families" of Virginia

In 1849, slave Henry "Box" Brown escaped from slavery in Virginia when he arranged to be shipped by express mail in a crate to Philadelphia, arriving in little more than 24 hours.

There were at least 4,260 ads published of runaways in Virginia from 1736 to 1803. If someone helped catch a runaway, they were given the cash award stipulated in the ads. Advertisements were often placed in newspapers when runaways were captured. If someone ran away a number of times, and were returned to the slaveholder, some were branded, were shackled, or had the hair cut in a way that made them identifiable.

Illustration from Harper's Weekly, July 4, 1863 of Gordon, a slave who escaped to Union lines during the American Civil War, displaying scars from severe whippings

Sometimes, black and whites ran away together, with far different repercussions. In 1643, the Virginia General Assembly passed laws about runaway servants and slaves. In 1660, the General Assembly stated that "in case any English servant shall run away in company with any Negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by addition of time…[he] shall serve for the time of the said Negroes absence." An act concerning Servants and Slaves of 1705 allowed for severe punishment, to the point of killing slaves. There were no consequences for excessive punishment or killing slaves after this law.

Further information: Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Self-purchase or family members's purchase of freedom

Another path to freedom was to purchase it by saving their wages. In 1839, 42% of the free blacks in Cincinnati, Ohio had paid for their freedom. Moses Grandy, born in North Carolina but worked in Virginia, purchased his freedom twice. That could only occur if they were hired out for work and allowed to keep a portion of the earnings, or if they had a specific skill and worked on their own time after their work on the plantation was completed for the day, and were allowed to keep their earnings.

If a former slave wanted to purchase the freedom of their wife and children, the process would take years. They had to convince the slaveholder to allow family members to be purchased. If they agreed, a price was set. The arrangement was often broken if the slaveholder died before the wife or children were freed.

Mary Hemings, an enslaved woman from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and two of her children were purchased by her common-law husband, Thomas Bell. She was unable to purchase of her two oldest children, Betsy Hemmings and Joseph Fossett, who was later freed in accordance with Thomas Jefferson's will. His wife Edith Hern Fossett and her children were not freed. Joseph and his brother-in-law Jesse Scott purchased the freedom of Edith and their children. Also from Monticello, Israel Jefferson purchased his freedom with his wife's assistance. Peter Hemmings was purchased by a family member and then was freed. Mary Colbert's freedom was obtained by family members.

Freedom suit

In 1658, Elizabeth Key was the first woman of African descent to bring a freedom suit in the Virginia colony. She sought recognition as a free woman of color, rather than being classified as a Negro (African) and slave. Her natural father was an Englishman (and member of the House of Burgesses). He acknowledged her, had her baptized as a Christian in the Church of England, and arranged for her guardianship under an indenture before his death. Before her guardian returned to England, he sold Key's indenture to another man, who held Key beyond its term. When he died, the estate classified Key and her child (also the natural son of an English subject) as Negro slaves. Key sued for her freedom and that of her infant son, based on their English ancestry, her Christian status, and the record of indenture. She won her case.

Manumission

Main article: Manumission

Some enslaved people were manumitted by their enslavers. In some cases, people were freed because they were held in good esteem by their enslavers, sometimes it was because the enslaved were no longer useful. In other cases, mixed-race children of white slaveholders were freed.

White residents of Virginia found freed blacks to be a "great inconvenience" and were suspicious of their ability to influence enslaved people and accused them of crimes. So laws were passed to make it more inconvenient for the blacks and their enslavers. In 1691, a law was passed that required freedmen to leave the colony and required former slaveholders to pay for their transportation. In 1723, a law was passed that made it harder to free slaves:

No negro, mullatto, or Indian slaves, shall be set free, upon any pretence whatsoever, except for some meritorious services, to be adjudged and allowed by the governor and council, for the time being, and a licence thereupon first had and obtained.

For those who were freed, they could be sold back into slavery if enough people complained about them. Initially, "meritorious service" meant that authorities would be alerted if there were plans of rebellion. Later, it was construed to mean that faithfulness or exemplary character.

In the first two decades after the American Revolutionary War, inspired by the Revolution and evangelical preachers, numerous slaveholders in the Chesapeake region manumitted some or all of their slaves, during their lifetimes or by will. In 1782, it was made easier to manumit enslaved blacks, but if they were more than 45 years of age, the former slaveholder may have been responsible for providing them an income if they were unable to work. In 1806, freed slaves were to leave the state after six months of freedom.

From 1,800 persons in 1782, the total population of free blacks in Virginia increased to 12,766 (4.3 percent of blacks) in 1790, and to 30,570 in 1810. The percentage change was from free blacks comprising less than one percent of the total black population in Virginia, to 7.2 percent by 1810, even as the overall population increased. One planter, Robert Carter III, freed more than 450 slaves in his lifetime, more than any other planter. George Washington freed all of his slaves at his death.

Life after attaining freedom

Settlement

Most free people of color lived in the American South, but there were freed people who lived throughout the United States. According to the US census of 1860, 250,787 of them lived in the South and 225,961 lived in other parts of the country. Large populations of free blacks lived in Philadelphia, Virginia, and Maryland. Many freed people and runaways lived in the Great Dismal Swamp maroons of Virginia and North Carolina. Others escaped to the frontier, sometimes forming alliances with remnants of Native American tribes, while others joined their neighbors in migrating to the western frontier of the state and then gradually into North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, where white people on the frontier were more culturally tolerant than those of Tidewater societies.

White mothers and servitude

In Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia (1995-2005), Paul Heinegg traced heads of households of free people of color (also recorded as mulatto or free blacks in some cases) in the censuses of 1790 to 1810. He found that 80% could be traced to free families originating as unions between white women (indentured or free) and African men (indentured, free, or slave) in colonial Virginia. Because their mixed-race children were born to free mothers, they had free status. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the working classes of indentured servants and later slaves lived and worked closely together. They naturally developed unions or formal marriages, as the caste lines of slavery had not hardened at that point. Although born free, such mixed-race children were often required to serve long indentures as servants to the mother's master, especially if the child was illegitimate. But these free people of color formed the basis of most of the free black families in colonial Virginia.

Religion

The African Methodist Episcopal Church, which grew out of the white church, was founded by free blacks in Philadelphia. It was central to communities of free African American, branching out to Charleston, South Carolina and other areas in the South. There were laws that prevented Blacks from preaching. Members of the church were arrested and the church experienced vicious treatment by whites.

Inequities

At the time of the American Revolutionary War, what Southerners later called the "peculiar institution" of slavery was an unresolved issue among the 13 colonies. The country's founding fathers established principles of equality in both the Declaration of Independence and the new U.S. Constitution. At the time these were interpreted as applying only to white men. When the constitution was ratified, free blacks could vote in five of the thirteen states, indicating their acceptance as citizens. In some cases, as in North Carolina, free blacks were later restricted from voting after the Nat Turner rebellion.

Anthony Johnson was an African who was freed soon after 1635; he settled on land on the Eastern Shore following the end of indenture, later buying African indentured servants as laborers. Although Anthony Johnson was a free man, on his death in 1670, his plantation was given to a white colonist, not to Johnson's children. A judge had ruled that he was "not a citizen of the colony" because he was black.

Civil War

Main article: American Civil War

In 1861, the Union general in command of Fort Monroe proclaimed that the slaves who had made their way there were "contraband", and thus did not need to be returned to their owners.

The Revolutionary war of 1776 and the Constitution of 1787, left open the issues of whether aristocrats or other groups of people should reign over others. Americans were proud to say that America was "the land of liberty, a beacon of freedom to the oppressed of other lands" in the early 1800s. However, the United States had become the largest slaveholding country in the world by around the 1850s. Yet, from 1789 to 1861, slaveholders made up 66% of the presidents, nearly 60% of Supreme Court justices, and 66% of the Speakers of the House of the Senate. There was growing tension between the southern plantation society based upon slave labor and "diversified, industrializing, free-labor capitalist society" in the north. Richmond, Virginia was the site of the Confederate capital.

In June 1861, enslaved people traveled with their families to Union camps, including Fort Monroe, where they thought that they would be free. They ended up, however, working very hard in difficult, unsanitary conditions. They didn't have an enslaver to deal with, but they were treated similarly by the military.

Picket station of Colored troops near Dutch Gap Canal, Virginia, November 1864

During the war, 200,000 African Americans (United States Colored Troops) fought for the Union army and a growing number of white soldiers began to see the need to end slavery and to be a united country. One soldier stated, after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, that "the contest is now between Slavery & freedom, & every honest man knows that he is fighting for".

During the Civil War, food was in short supply. The slaves' diet remained much as before, but plantation owners could no longer obtain fancy foods such as ginger-cakes, that Booker swore would be one of the first things he would eat if he were ever freed. In areas that saw military action, such as the Shenandoah Valley, stored crops and farm animals were often taken and eaten by Union and Confederate troops, who sometimes destroyed farm buildings and houses, as well as those animals they could not eat or take with them. The able-bodied enslaved abandoned their owners' plantations by the thousands, moving behind Union lines so as to be protected; these were called contrabands. (The protection was only as secure as the Union lines; when the Confederates retook Harpers Ferry in 1862, thousands of contrabands were forcibly returned to slavery.) Food for them was often in very short supply; it was no one's responsibility to take care of them, although Northern charities eventually emerged to help. They had no money and nothing to sell; some did chores for the soldiers, such as cooking or caring for horses, in exchange for what food the soldiers could spare.

The end of slavery in Virginia

The first concrete, successful step towards ending slavery in Virginia was President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863. However, it only applied to those areas controlled by the Union Army; Charlottesville commemorated the arrival of Union troops on March 3, 1865, bringing with them freedom for everyone enslaved, with its new Liberation and Freedom Day holiday. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, effective December 18, 1865, made slavery illegal everywhere in the country.

Historic reckoning

Further information: The 1619 Project

Education about the history of slavery tends to focus on people being brought to the American colonies, without telling the stories of the "horrifying voyage" and the horrendous treatment that Africans were subject to as enslaved people.

In 2007, the Virginia General Assembly approved a formal statement of "profound regret" and acknowledgement of the "egregious wrongs" committed against African Americans. Part of the statement is:

The General Assembly hereby expresses its profound regret for the Commonwealth's role in sanctioning the immoral institution of human slavery, in the historic wrongs visited upon native peoples, and in all other forms of discrimination and injustice that have been rooted in racial and cultural bias and misunderstanding...

— Virginia General Assembly

President Barack Obama makes Fort Monroe a National monument in 2011.

The statement was made in May 1607 to coincide with the 400 year anniversary of the first Virginian settlers arriving at Jamestown.

The place where the First Africans landed is now the site of Fort Monroe. In 2011, President Barack Obama read a proclamation: "The first enslaved Africans in England’s colonies in America were brought to this peninsula on a ship flying the Dutch flag in 1619, beginning a long ignoble period of slavery in the colonies and, later, this Nation." The fort was made a National monument.

See also

• Atlantic Creole
• Bristol slave trade
• Coastwise slave trade
• Colonial South and the Chesapeake
• First Africans in Virginia
• Great Dismal Swamp maroons
• Human trafficking in Virginia
• Indentured servitude in Virginia
• Liberation and Freedom Day
• List of plantations in Virginia
• Memorial to Enslaved Laborers
• Scramble (slave auction)
• Seasoning (slavery)
• Slavery in the colonial history of the United States
• Tobacco colonies
• Virginia in the American Civil War

Further reading

• Ball, Edward. "Retracing Slavery's Trail of Tears". Smithsonian Magazine.
• Kristalyn Marie Shefveland, Anglo-Native Virginia: Conversion, and Indian Slavery in the Old Dominion, 1646-1722. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2016.
• Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2013.