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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 ...
The colonial law was in contrast to English common law of the time that prevailed in England. [i] Slavery created a racial caste associated with African descent regardless of a child's paternal ancestry. The principle became incorporated into state law when Virginia gained independence from Great Britain. [38]
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 ...
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] In 1667, the Virginia House of Burgesses enacted a law which did not recognize the conversion of African Americans to Christianity despite a baptism.
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.
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 ]
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 ...
The code, among other things, created a rather authoritarian system of government for the Colony of Virginia. [3] It established a "single ruling group" that "held tight control of the colony." The word "martial", contained in Dale's Code, refers to the duties of soldiers, while the terms "divine" and "morall" relate to crime and punishment.