slave-labor.
| Slavery legislation in the Southern colonies. |
The conditions above mentioned were undoubtedly the chief causes of the more rapid and pronounced development of negro slavery in the Southern colonies. And that more rapid and pronounced development directs us rather to the legislation of the Southern colonies than to that of the Northern, in following the legalization of the relation.
| Partus sequitur ventrem. |
Virginia naturally took the lead, and furnished the precedents for the others. The first question, both as to time and importance, which required legislative treatment, was the question of the status of the children of slaves. Where legalized marriage does not exist, the only certainty in respect to parentage is attained by regarding the mother. Rights and status in such a condition of society are, therefore, transmitted through the female line. Partus sequitur ventrem is the rule not only of the civil law, but of every system of law regulating the accidents of descent among people where the mingling of the sexes is not controlled by civilized marriage. Insuperable obstacles present themselves in the attempt to apply any other rule. It was no unusual or arbitrary enactment of the Virginia legislature which, in 1662, prescribed the rule that the status of the slave mother should determine that of her offspring. This rule was followed in all the colonies, and many of them enacted it into statute law.
| Definitions of the slave class. |
So long as the slaves were few in number and were not Christians the necessity for legislation defining the slave class was not felt; but so soon as the slave-trade became more active, and slaves began to receive Christian baptism, the old customary test in regard to this matter, that of infidelity or heathenism, would no longer suffice. The colonists of that day were too conscientious to cut the knot of this difficulty by denying Christian baptism to any one seeking it. They considered it their prime duty to lead the heathen to the knowledge of Christ. It is evident that their consciences were greatly troubled over the question of the effect of Christian baptism upon the slave status. The colonial legislatures, the Home Government, and the Bishop of London were appealed to for counsel in the dilemma. The answers received from all of these were to the effect that the status of the slave was not changed by Christian baptism or conversion.
| The test of the slave status as fixed by the Virginia statute. |
The test of the slave status was then necessarily fixed by legislation. The Virginia statute declared all servants brought into the country by land or sea, who were not Christians in their native country at the time when they were purchased or procured, nor free in England or some other Christian country, to be slaves. Exception was made of Turks and Moors in amity with the King. This statute, taken together with the rule partus sequitur ventrem, which rule was re-enacted, became the test of the slave class. At the same time heavy penalties were attached to the marriage or cohabitation of white women with slaves.
| The legal position of the slave. |
Of course it very soon became necessary that the legal position of the slave should be definitely fixed. The legislature of Virginia again set the precedents. Concisely stated, this legislation provided that a slave could have no standing in the ordinary courts, either as party or witness; that a slave could own no property; that a slave owed obedience to the master, who might force the slave to labor, and chastise the slave even to the extreme of so injuring the slave that the slave might die in consequence thereof, without incurring the penalties of felony; that the slave could be sold or inherited as personal property; and that the offspring of the female slave belonged to the master owning her at the time of its birth.
| Tendency toward serfage in the Code of 1705. |
The wilful killing of a slave by anyone, even the master, was accounted murder, and extraordinary tribunals, without a jury, were constituted for the protection of his person. The Code of 1705 even contained regulations which indicated that the trend of thought and of legislation, at that juncture, was toward attaching the slave to the soil, which would have been a step upward in a course, which, if consistently followed, would have made the slave a serf. But the still prevailing rules, which allowed the slave to be seized and sold for the debts of the master, and regulated the inheritance of slaves according to the law governing the descent of personal property, seem to have completely neutralized that tendency before the middle of the century had been reached.
| Public relations of the slave system. |
Naturally the private law accidents of the relation were first developed and fixed, but very soon the rights and powers of the community in regard to the institution began to claim attention. The public peace and welfare must be safeguarded against the possible conduct of the slave, on the one hand, and of the master, on the other.
The legislation of Virginia set the example in these respects also. That legislation provided that no slave should have, or carry arms, or go outside of the plantation of his master without a pass from his master, or lift his hand against a Christian; that a sheriff should arrest a runaway slave on the warrant of two justices, and might lawfully kill any slave who resisted arrest; and that no slave should be emancipated without the consent of the Governor and Council.
On the other hand, it provided that the master should be responsible for all damage done by his slave at any place where there was no Christian overseer, and required that any master giving freedom to his slave should pay the cost of his transportation out of the colony.
| The general object of the laws in respect to slaves. |
Such was substantially the law of negro slavery in all of the colonies at the beginning of the decade before the Revolution. It was perhaps more severe than this in South Carolina, and it was certainly less so in Massachusetts.
The objects which it had in view were to secure the master's property in the slave, to enable the master to hold the slave in obedience and force him, if necessary, to labor, and to protect the public peace and welfare against the abuse of the relation by the master, and against the vicious nature of the slave.
It does certainly appear that the century of law-making upon the subject had not ameliorated the condition of the slave. We must remember, however, that the first stages in the legalization of any relation sometimes make the situation appear worse than what obtained before the movement began, although it may not be worse in fact.
| Slavery and the Revolutionary ideas of the rights of man. |
But the period of the Revolution brought with it a great change of view in regard to the morality of slavery, and this change of idea produced great modifications in the law of slavery, all of which tended not only toward an improvement of the condition of the slave, but also toward the ultimate extinction of slavery.
When we regard the Revolution of the colonies against the motherland from the point of view of the present, we can easily see that its purpose was very different from that of the French Revolution. What it really sought and accomplished was national independence against foreign rule. Those, however, who formulated the creed of the Revolution sought its justification in the doctrine of human rights rather than in that of national rights. The philosophy of the eighteenth century was a humanitarian outburst. Politically and legally