Miami-Dade County Public Schools



SLAVERY IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA

Lucinda Evans, Topeka Public Schools

evanslucinda@

Essential Question: Did slavery cause racism or did racism cause slavery?

Activity: Students will participate in a small group QAR activity (question/answer/response) and examine the laws that created the institution of Slavery. This activity will culminate in the students creating a “Cause and Effect” chart showing how the Black Laws of Virginia institutionalized slavery.

Instructions: After putting the students into groups of 2 or 3 have the students read the Laws of 1662, 1667, and 1669 and answer the questions that follow each law.

LAW OF 1662: “Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.”

What year was the law enacted in colonial Virginia? (‘right there’)

What people will this law effect? (‘think and search’)

Explain what the law is saying in your own words. (author and me)

What circumstances of colonial life would have caused this law to be passed? (‘on my own’)

LAW OF 1667: “Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and pity of their owners may partake of the Blessed Sacrament of Baptism, should by virtue of their Baptism be made free it is enacted that Baptism does not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom, masters freed from this doubt may more carefully propagate Christianity by permitting slaves to be admitted to that Sacrament.”

Note: Passages of this law may need to be explained to the students

What year was the law enacted in colonial Virginia? (‘right there’)

What people will this law effect? (‘think and search’)

Explain what the law is saying in your own words. (author and me)

What circumstances of colonial life would have caused this law to be passed? (‘on my own’)

LAW OF 1669: “If a slave resist his master and by the extremity of the correction chance to die, his death shall not be a felony, since it cannot be presumed that malice (which alone makes murder a felony) would induce a man to destroy his own estate (property).”

What year was the law enacted in colonial Virginia? (‘right there’)

What people will this law effect? (‘think and search’)

Explain what the law is saying in your own words. (author and me)

What circumstances of colonial life would have caused this law to be passed? (‘on my own’)

INSTITUTIONALIZING SLAVERY

CAUSE AND EFFECT CHART

CAUSE EFFECT

Laws 1662,1667 S In Your Own

1669 L Words

A

V

E

R

Y

Slavery in North America differed significantly from slavery in the rest of the Americas. In the first place, far fewer slaves were brought into what became the United States, only around 500,000 compared to perhaps 12 to 13 million imported into the Caribbean and South and Central America. Most of these imports to North America ended by 1770, moreover, except for a burst of activity by a few southern states after the American Revolution. Secondly, the fact that the English people had little experience with slavery in comparison to the Spanish and Portuguese meant that little historical reference existed for them to draw upon in the early years. Initially, the first slaves in the Virginia colony were looked upon as workers rather than as property, and some of them were treated much like white indentured servants. The enslaved Africans often worked alongside the indentured European laborers in the tobacco fields of the Chesapeake region. Nor were the Africans especially valued. It was cheaper in the early years to bring in white laborers from England as indentured servants than to pay for slaves. And most whites looked upon Africans as morally and intellectually inferior, in any case.

For complex reasons, the value and presence of enslaved workers from Africa began to grow after 1676 in the Virginia colony. For one thing, white indentured servants could easily run away. They also demanded to be treated like Englishmen, especially in terms of their rations of grog and time-off from labor. Importantly too, the supply of white indentured servants began to decline as more working-class whites found employment back home in British industries, commerce, and shipping. And the increase in the life span of indentured servants in the new world meant that many of them began to live long enough to claim the share of lands promised to those who had labored the full terms of their indenture-usually six years. Enslaved Africans, on the other hand, could not easily blend into the surrounding white population by escaping-and Native Americans were often employed as slave-catchers. Nor could they make demands upon their masters for humane treatment, justice, or land.

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