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Additional laws regarding slavery were passed in the seventeenth century and in 1705 were codified into Virginia's first slave code, [37] An act concerning Servants and Slaves. The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 stated that people who were not Christians, or were black, mixed-race, or Native Americans would be classified as slaves (i.e., treated ...
The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 (formally entitled An act concerning Servants and Slaves), were a series of laws enacted by the Colony of Virginia's House of Burgesses in 1705 regulating the interactions between slaves and citizens of the crown colony of Virginia. The enactment of the Slave Codes is considered to be the consolidation of ...
Beginning in the Virginia royal colony in 1662, colonial governments incorporated the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem into the laws of slavery, ruling that the children born in the colonies took the place or status of their mothers; therefore, children of enslaved mothers were born into slavery as chattel, regardless of the status of ...
Punishment and killing of slaves: Slave codes regulated how slaves could be punished, usually going so far as to apply no penalty for accidentally killing a slave while punishing them. [9] Later laws began to apply restrictions on this, but slave-owners were still rarely punished for killing their slaves. [ 10 ]
However, beginning in the 1660s the Virginia legislature repeatedly passed laws that confirmed that conversion to Christianity did not change a slave's hereditary status. [6] Although slaves sought to gain freedom after converting to Christianity, slave-holders and colonial officials did not share the same opinion.
In 1667, the Virginia Assembly passed a law that barred baptism as a means of conferring freedom. Africans who had been baptised before arriving in Virginia could be granted the status of indentured servant until 1682, when another law declared them to be slaves. In the lowest stratum of Virginian society, white people and people of African ...
The Virginia Company still paid for the transportation costs of the laborers, but the laborers were no longer contracted to work exclusively for the company once they arrived. Instead, free planters in the colony would rent the new laborers from the company for a year at a fixed rate, in addition to covering their maintenance costs during that ...
There were no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history, but, in 1640, a Virginia court sentenced John Punch, an African, to life in servitude after he attempted to flee his service. [121] The two whites with whom he fled were sentenced only to an additional year of their indenture, and three years' service to the colony. [ 122 ]