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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]
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]
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 ...
Dunmore's Proclamation is a historical document signed on November 7, 1775, by John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, royal governor of the British colony of Virginia.The proclamation declared martial law [1] and promised freedom for indentured servants, "negroes" or others (Slavery in the colonial history of the United States), who joined the British Army (see also Black Loyalists).
But from the beginning, in accordance with the custom of the Atlantic slave trade, most of this relatively small group, appear to have been treated as slaves, with "African" or "negro" becoming synonymous with "slave". [54] Virginia enacted laws concerning runaway slaves and 'negroes' in 1672. [55]
In 1662, the Virginia Colony passed a law that children in the colony were born with the social status of their mother, according to the Roman principle of partus sequitur ventrem. This meant that the children of slave women were born into slavery, even if their fathers were free, European, Christian, and white.
John Punch (c. 1605 – c. 1650) was an Angolan-born resident of the colony of Virginia who became its first legally enslaved person in British colonial America under criminal law. [2] [3] In contrast, John Casor became the first legally enslaved person of the colonies under civil law, having committed no crime.