174

NEW ENGLAND AND THE SLAVE-TRADE.

V.

CHAP. the latter a member of the church of Boston, first brought upon the colonies the guilt of participating in the traffic in African slaves. They sailed "for Guinea to trade for negroes;" but throughout Massachusetts the cry of justice was raised against them as malefactors and murderers; Richard Saltonstall, a worthy assistant, felt himself moved by his duty as a magistrate, to denounce the act of stealing negroes as "expressly contrary to the law of God and the law of the country;" the guilty men were committed for the offence; and, after advice with the elders, the repre1646. sentatives of the people, bearing "witness against the heinous crime of man-stealing," ordered the negroes to be restored, at the public charge, " to their native country, with a letter expressing the indignation of the general court" at their wrongs.*

1671.

3

When George Fox visited Barbadoes in 1671, he enjoined it upon the planters, that they should" deal mildly and gently with their negroes; and that, after certain years of servitude, they should make them free." The idea of George Fox had been anticipated by the 1652. fellow-citizens of Gorton and Roger Williams. Nearly May 18. twenty years had then elapsed, since the representa

tives of Providence and Warwick, perceiving the disposition of people in the colony "to buy negroes," and hold them "as slaves forever," had enacted that "no black mankind" should, "by covenant, bond, or otherwise," be held to perpetual service; the master," at the end of ten years, shall set them free, as the manner is with English servants; and that man that will not let" his slave "go free, or shall sell him away, to the end that he may be enslaved to others for a longer time, shall for

1 Winthrop, ii. 243, 244, 245.
2 Ibid. ii. 379, 380.

3 Colony Records, iii. 45.
4 Colony Laws, c. xii.

ENGLISH, SCOTCH, AND IRISH, SOLD AS SERVANTS.

175

feit to the colony forty pounds." Now, forty pounds CHAP was nearly twice the value of a negro slave. The law was not enforced; but the principle lived among the people.

Conditional servitude, under indentures or covenants, had from the first existed in Virginia. The servant stood to his master in the relation of a debtor, bound to discharge the costs of emigration by the entire employment of his powers for the benefit of his creditor. Oppression early ensued: men who had been transported into Virginia at an expense of eight or ten pounds, were sometimes sold for forty, fifty, or even threescore pounds. The supply of white servants became a regular business; and a class of men, nicknamed spirits, used to delude young persons, servants and idlers, into embarking for America, as to a land of spontaneous plenty. White servants came to be a usual article of traffic. They were sold in England to be transported, and in Virginia were resold to the highest bidder; like negroes, they were to be purchased on shipboard, as men buy horses at a fair. In 1672, the average price in the colonies, where five years of service were due, was about ten pounds; while a negro was worth twenty or twenty-five pounds. So usual was this manner of dealing in Englishmen, that not the Scots only, who were taken in the field of Dunbar, were sent into involuntary servitude in New England, but the royalist prisoners of the battle of Wor cester; and the leaders in the insurrection of Penrud

7

1 George Fox's Journal, An. 1671. The law of Rhode Island I copied from the records in Providence. 2 Smith, i. 105.

3 Bullock's Virginia, 1649, p. 14. 4 Sad State of Virginia, 1657, p. 4, 5. Hammond's Leah and Rachel, 7.

5

5 Blome's Jamaica, 84 and 16.
6 Cromwell and Cotton, in Hutch-
inson's Coll. 233–235.

7 Suffolk County Records, i. 5
and 6. The names of two hundred
and seventy are recorded. The la-
ding of the John and Sarah was

176

V.

NEGRO SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA.

CHAP. doc,' in spite of the remonstrance of Haselrig and Henry Vane, were shipped to America. At the corresponding period, in Ireland, the crowded exportation of Irish Catholics was a frequent event, and was attended by aggravations hardly inferior to the usual atrocities of the African slave-trade. In 1685, when nearly a thousand of the prisoners, condemned for participating in the insurrection of Monmouth, were sentenced to transportation, men of influence at court, with rival importunity, scrambled for the convicted insurgents as a merchantable commodity.3

The condition of apprenticed servants in Virginia differed from that of slaves chiefly in the duration of their bondage; and the laws of the colony favored their early enfranchisement. But this state of labor easily adınitted the introduction of perpetual servitude. The commerce of Virginia had been at first monopolized by the company; but as its management for the benefit of the corporation led to frequent dissensions, 1620. it was in 1620 laid open to free competition. In the month of August of that year, just fourteen months after the first representative assembly of Virginia, four months before the Plymouth colony landed in America, and less than a year before the concession of a written constitution, more than a century after the last vestiges of hereditary slavery had disappeared from English society and the English constitution, and six years after the commons of France had petitioned for the emancipation of every serf in every fief, a Dutch manof-war entered James River, and landed twenty

"ironwork, household stuff, and
other provisions for planters and
Scotch prisoners." Recorded May
14, 1652.

1 Burton's Diary, iv. 262. 271.
Godwin's Commonwealth, iv. 172.

2 Lingard, xi. 131, 132.

3 Dalrymple. Mackintosh, Hist. of the Revolution of 1688. 4 Hening, i. 257. 5 Stith, 171.

NEGRO SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA.

negroes for sale.1 This is, indeed, the sad epoch of
the introduction of negro slavery in the English colo-
nies; but the traffic would have been checked in its
infancy, had its profits remained with the Dutch.
Thirty years after this first importation of Africans,
the increase had been so inconsiderable, that to one
black, Virginia contained fifty whites; and, at a later
period, after seventy years of its colonial existence,
the number of its negro slaves was proportionably
much less than in several of the free states at the time
of the war of independence. It is the duty of faithful
history to trace events, not only to their causes, but
to their authors; and we shall hereafter inquire what
influence was ultimately extended to counteract the
voice of justice, the cry of humanity, and the remon-
strances of colonial legislation. Had no other form of
servitude been known in Virginia, than such as had
been tolerated in Europe, every difficulty would have
been promptly obviated by the benevolent spirit of
colonial legislation. But a new problem in the history
of man, was now to be solved. For the first time, the
Æthiopian and Caucasian races were to meet together
in nearly equal numbers beneath a temperate zone.
Who could foretell the issue? The negro race, from
the first, was regarded with disgust, and its union with
the whites forbidden under ignominious penalties.3
For many years, the Dutch were principally concerned
in the slave-trade in the market of Virginia; the im-
mediate demand for laborers may, in part, have blinded
the
eyes of the planters to the ultimate evils of slavery,*

1 Beverley's Virginia, 35. Stith, 182; Chalmers, 49; Burk, i. 211; and Hening, i. 146, all rely on Beverley.

2 New Description of Virginia. 23

VOL. I.

3 Hening, i. 146.

4 This may be inferred from a paper on Virginia, in Thurloe, v. 81, or Hazard, i. 601.

177

CHAP.

V.

178

WYATT'S ADMINISTRATION.

V

CHAP. though the laws of the colony, at a very early period, discouraged its increase by a special tax upon female slaves.1

1621.

1621.

Nov. and

Dec.

If Wyatt, on his arrival in Virginia, found the evil of negro slavery engrafted on the social system, he brought with him the memorable ordinance, on which the fabric of colonial liberty was to rest, and which was interpreted by his instructions in a manner favorable to the independent rights of the colonists. Justice was established on the basis of the laws of England, and an amnesty of ancient feuds proclaimed. As Puritanism had appeared in Virginia, "needless novelties" in the forms of worship were now prohibited. The order to search for minerals betrays the continuance of lingering hopes of finding gold; while the injunction to promote certain kinds of manufactures was ineffectual, because labor could otherwise be more profitably employed.

The business which occupied the first session under the written constitution, related chiefly to the encouragement of domestic industry; and the culture of silk particularly engaged the attention of the assembly.3 But legislation, though it can favor industry, cannot create it. When soil, men, and circumstances, combine to render a manufacture desirable, legislation can protect the infancy of enterprise against the unequal competition with established skill. The culture of silk, long, earnestly, and frequently recommended to the attention of Virginia, is successfully pursued, only when a superfluity of labor exists in a redundant population. In America, the first wants of life left no

1 Hening, ii. 84, Act liv. March, 1662. The statute implies, that the rule already existed.

2 Ibid. i. 114-118. Stith, p.

194-196. Burk, v. i. p. 224—227. 3 Hening, i. 119.

4 Virgo Triumphans, 35.