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The enactment of the Slave Codes is considered to be the consolidation of slavery in Virginia, and served as the foundation of Virginia's slave legislation. [1] All servants from non-Christian lands became slaves. [2] There were forty one parts of this code each defining a different part and law surrounding the slavery in Virginia.
The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (both free and freedmen).In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free colored persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact ...
The South Carolina slave-code served as the model for many other colonies in North America. [14] In 1755, the colony of Georgia adopted the South Carolina slave code. [15] Virginia's slave codes were made in parallel to those in Barbados, with individual laws starting in 1667 and a comprehensive slave-code passed in 1705. [16]
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 increasingly more of the rights of and opportunities for enslaved people, and supported the interests of slaveholders.
In 1833, Alabama enacted a law that fined anyone who undertook a slave's education between $250 and $550; the law also prohibited any assembly of African Americans—slave or free—unless five slave owners were present or an African-American preacher had previously been licensed by an approved denomination.
In other cases, some slaves were reclassified as indentured servants, effectively preserving the institution of slavery through another name. [119] Often citing Revolutionary ideals, some slaveholders freed their slaves in the first two decades after independence, either outright or through their wills.
The history of the United States has been marked by a continuous struggle for civil rights. The institution of slavery, established during the colonial era, persisted until the American Civil War, when the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment abolished it.
The 1804 law required black and mulatto residents to have a certificate from the Clerk of the Court that they were free. Employers who violated were fined $10 to $50 split between informer and state. Under the 1807 law, black and mulatto residents required a $500 bond for good behavior and against becoming a township charge.