History of slavery in Virginia

Native Americans , Native American Indian, "Unus Americanus ex Virginia", sketch, 1645 After the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619, slavery and other forms of bondage were found in all the English colonies; some Native Americans were enslaved by the English, with a few slaveholders having both African and Native American slaves, who worked in their tobacco fields. Laws regarding enslavement of Native Americans vacillated between encouraging and discouraging slavery. The number of enslaved native people reached a peak at the end of the seventeenth century. The colony of Virginia formally ended Indian slavery in 1705. The practice had already declined because Native Americans could escape into familiar territory, and also suffered from new infectious diseases introduced by the colonists, among whom these were endemic. The Atlantic slave trade began to provide numerous African captives to replace them as laborers. The enslavement of indigenous people continued into the end of the eighteenth century; by the nineteenth century, they were either incorporated within African-American communities or were free. Indigenous people were generally taken in the greatest numbers during battles between the English and Native Americans. To prevent escape, the English sent captured Native Americans to British colonies in the West Indies to work as slaves. First Africans in 1619 In late August 1619, twenty or more Africans were brought to Point Comfort on the James River in Virginia. They were sold first in exchange for food and then sold in Jamestown as indentured servants. Angela, an enslaved woman from Ndonggo, was one of the first enslaved Africans to be officially recorded in the colony of Virginia in 1619. By 1620, there were 32 Africans and four Native Americans in the "Others not Christians in the Service of the English" category of the muster who arrived in Virginia, but that number was reduced by 1624, perhaps due to the Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–1632) or illness. William Tucker, born in 1624, was the first person of African descent born in the Thirteen Colonies. There were 906 Europeans and 21 Africans in the 1624 muster. By 1625, the Africans lived on plantations; The Atlantic slave trade had been in existence among Europeans before Africans landed in Virginia and according to custom, slavery was legal. Unlike white indentured servants, blacks could not negotiate a labor contract, nor could African Americans effectively defend their rights without paperwork. By the mid-1600s, seven legal suits had been filed by African Americans asserting their claim to a limited period of service. In six of the cases, their enslavers claimed that they were bound for life. Since 1990, after over 30 years of scholarly debate, the dominant consensus is that "the vast majority" of Africans were treated like slaves by their slaveholders. It was very rare for blacks to have a legal indenture, but there were some people who attained freedom in a number of different ways. Mary and Anthony Johnson were among the few African Americans who were able to gain their freedom, herd livestock, and establish a prosperous farm. In 1640, a black indentured servant, John Punch, ran away and was sentenced by the Virginia courts to slavery for the rest of his life. Two white indentured servants who ran away with Punch had four more years added on to their servitude. Unpaid servants Household and farm work was performed by indentured servants and enslaved people, including children. Indentured servants, generally brought from England, worked without pay for a specific length of time. In the seventeenth century, the tobacco fields of Virginia were mostly worked by white indentured servants. By 1705, the economy was based upon slave labor imported from Africa. Enslaved people were generally held for their lifetimes. Children of enslaved women were enslaved from birth per the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem. Some commentators hold that since the muster and other records used the term "servant" that it meant that blacks who landed in Virginia were indentured servants. Unlike indentured servants, slaves were taken against their will. When slaves were first sold in exchange for food, it was clear that they were considered property. The term "indentured servitude" was often a euphemism for slavery when referring to white people. Enslaved blacks were treated much more harshly than white servants. Whipping of blacks, for instance, was common. Domestic work, another duty, included preparing and serving food, cleaning, and caretaking of white children; others were trained to be blacksmiths, carpenters, and coopers. Domestic work was not as onerous as field work and provided opportunities to overhear gossip and news. Life was more difficult for children who worked in the fields, particularly on large plantations, but it was most difficult when family members were sold away from the farm or plantation. Some planters cruelly mistreated those in their charge. Offenses against slaves '', July 4, 1863, of Gordon, a slave who escaped to Union lines during the American Civil War, displaying scars from severe whippings Enslavers had complete control of the people that they enslaved. They could favor some, make life miserable for others, tease them with hollow promises of emancipation, brutally rape, and severely punish slaves. They could also control what happened to their children, which was a very powerful tactic. Slaves could not testify against their masters in a court case, making their situation more difficult. In 1829, the North Carolina v. Mann case was brought before the North Carolina Supreme Court, which ruled that slaveholders had the right to treat enslaved people in any way that they chose, including killing them, in order to better the "submission" of the enslaved to their masters. After 1808, when Congress made the Atlantic slave trade illegal, prohibiting importation of slaves from the West Indies or Africa, the domestic slave trade increased. The slave trade grew in the country through breeding enslaved women so that their children could be sold for profit. Progeny From the 1600s until 1860, it was common for white planters, overseers, or other white men to rape enslaved women. Because of the disparity of power between enslaved women and the men who fathered their children, and the fact that the men had unlimited access to such forced sex, "all of the sex that took place between enslaved women and white men constituted some form of sexual assault." Since children followed their mother's status, the children of enslaved women increased a slaveholder's work force. It met the economic needs of the colony, which suffered perpetual labor shortages because conditions were difficult, mortality was high, and the government had difficulty attracting sufficient numbers of English indentured servants after economic conditions improved in England. This was in contrast to English common law of the time. Formalized slavery A law making race-based slavery legal was passed in Virginia in 1661. Additional laws regarding slavery were passed in the seventeenth century and in 1705 were codified into Virginia's first slave code, An act concerning Servants and Slaves. The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 stated that people who were not Christians, or were black, mixed-race, or Native Americans would be classified as slaves (i.e., treated like personal property or chattel), and it was made illegal for white people to marry people of color. Virginia had a longer list of offenses that a black person could commit than any other southern colony. Blacks did not benefit from legal procedures that would allow them to properly plead their case and prove their innocence, nor did they have the right to appeal decisions. Plantations and farms Sketch book, III, 33, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, image of enslaved women working swiddens, common when rotating crops. It came from The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record, Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr., Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia, 2006. Virginia planters developed the commodity crop of tobacco as their chief export. It was a labor-intensive crop, and demand for it in England and Europe led to an increase in the importation of African slaves in the colony. Large plantations became more prevalent, changing the culture of colonial Virginia that relied on them for its economic prosperity. The plantation "served as an institution in itself, characterized by social and political inequality, racial conflict, and domination by the planter class." Tobacco farming in eastern Virginia so depleted the fertility of its soil that by 1800, farmers began to look to the west for good land to raise crops. John Randolph said in 1830 that the land was "worn out." Corn and wheat were grown in the Piedmont plateau and the Shenandoah Valley. The number of slaves in the Shenandoah Valley were never as high as in eastern Virginia. The area was settled by German and Scotch-Irish people, who had little need for or interest in slavery, and the absence of competition with unpaid slave labor prevented the development of class divisions like those in the east. mostly from eastern Virginia, because their risk of death was high enough that purchasing enslaved people was not cost effective. Poor white people also worked in these industries. The slaves that were no longer needed or marketable within Virginia were hired out or sold to work in the cotton fields of the Deep South. The slave population increased in the counties now encompassing West Virginia in the years 1790 to 1850, but saw a decrease from 1850 to 1860, by which year four percent (18,451) of western Virginia's total population were slaves, while slaves in eastern Virginia were about thirty percent (490,308) of the total population. With a shortage of white labor, blacks had become deeply involved in urban trades and businesses. In this setting, slaves were able to buy their way out of slavery. Eastern Virginia's interests were very different from those of the northwestern border counties. The state of West Virginia was formed from the northwestern counties of Virginia as well as counties from the southwest and the Valley. Federal statehood was granted in 1863. West Virginia was a divided state during the Civil War, half of the counties had voted for the Confederacy in 1861 and half its soldiers were Confederate. It entered the Union as a slave state. Culture African Americans developed cultural traditions that helped them cope with being enslaved, supported family members and friends, and promoted their human dignity. Music, folklore, cuisine, and religious practices by blacks influenced the broader American culture. The first Africans carried from Angola may have brought some Christian practices that they learned from the Portuguese Catholic missionaries and Jesuit priests in Africa. Enslaved African Americans fostered racial pride, groomed their children, and taught life lessons by the telling of stories from African folklore, as well as African parables and proverbs. The animal characters in these stories represent human traits—for example, tortoises represent tricksters, while other animal figures employ guile and intelligence to get the better of powerful enemies. , Williamsburg, Virginia Some enslaved persons were able to attend church and others met secretly in the woods to worship. Either way, religious practices—such as music, call-and-response forms of worship, and funeral customs—helped blacks preserve their African traditions and manage "the dehumanizing effects of slavery and segregation". , cleaned, uncut, ready for cooking Enslaved Africans augmented their rations with cooked greens (collards, beets, dandelion, kale, and purslane) and sweet potatoes. Excavations of slave quarters found that their diet included squirrel, duck, rabbit, opossum, fish, berries and nuts. Vegetables and grain included okra, turnips, beans, rice, and peas. , like those Booker T. Washington searched for scraps of boiled corn left by the pigs Similarly to the ways in which early Virginians shared knowledge and traditions of their heritage with one another, enslaved people prepared meals based upon European, indigenous, and African cuisines, devising their own cookery from the limited rations given to them by their masters. They prepared gumbo, fricassee, fried foods, He remembers as a young boy being awakened to eat a chicken acquired by his mother, likely taken from the plantation, and cooked in the middle of the night. ==Slave trade==

Transatlantic slave trade , "Slaves aboard a slave ship being shackled before being put in the hold", a wooden engraving The Atlantic slave trade started in the sixteenth century when Portuguese and Spanish ships transported enslaved people to South America, and then to the West Indies. Virginia became part of the Atlantic slave trade when the first Africans were brought to the colony in 1619. The slaves were sold for tobacco and hemp that was sent to Europe. In 1772, prominent Virginians submitted a petition to the Crown, requesting that the slave trade to Virginia be abolished; it was rejected. The United States Congress enacted an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves that was effective as of 1808. This increased the domestic slave trade business. and ranked first in slave breeding. Enslaved women and girls were raped by their enslavers and enslaved men to reproduce and birth more slaves for the slave market and more slaves for slaveholders. According to historian Wilma King writing in The Journal of African American History, "...[T]here is evidence that some enslaved men were coerced into sexual relations with enslaved women by slave owners leading to rape, or that bondmen sexually abused black girls and women over whom they exercised authority." She cites the case of an enslaved female teenager who was forced to lie with a male slave, but whose voyeuristic enslaver was more interested in watching them have sex at his command than in increasing his stock of enslaved persons. Sale Richmond was a hub and the largest seller of enslaved people in Virginia. It was common for people to be separated from their spouses and children, perhaps for the rest of their lives. == Controls and resistance ==

Slaveholders had ongoing concerns that bondspeople might run away or revolt against them, and employed a number of controls. One tactic was to prevent African Americans from learning how to read and write. They limited opportunities for groups of people to meet and prevented them from leaving the plantation. Slaves who attempted to escape their bondage and were caught were punished publicly; punishments included execution and physical disfigurement. White Virginians who helped black people violate the codes were also punished. Other control tactics were incentives, religion, the legal system, and intimidation. John Whitt and his companion took advantage of their environment and contacts to make good their escape, disappearing quietly along the James River and into the crowds of the busy dockyards of the Virginian coastline. Throngs of merchant and navy ships, each with the potential to offer safe passage to freedom, would come and go daily. A constant lack of skilled sailors might have made it easier to persuade a captain to enlist them in his crew. Whitt was a skilled glazier, tinker and he played the violin! There were also crew members and captains prepared to help those seeking freedom, as well as a few instances of whole ships being stolen for the purpose of escape, such as the Pearl incident. Whitt's companion, a coachman for Cole Digges, may well have used the Digges family's maritime connections to help them board a ship. The Digges family owned a boat that brought slaves into Yorktown, Virginia. In the early 18th century, Yorktown was the primary port of disembarkation for most Africans taken to Virginia. As a result, many of the town's inhabitants profited from the slave trade... Cole Digges' coachman is likely to have lived and worked at the Digges family home Whitt's enslaver, Philip Reynolds, remains elusive, though ancestry records tell us that he was the son of Thomas Reynolds of St Peters parish, Hanover County. He had three sons William, John and Philip Jr with his wife Mary Susanna and died aged 77 in 1776 . A William Reynolds, perhaps the same or related, is recorded as owner of the slave ship Ruby that sailed from London to the Gold Coast and on to Jamaica in 1765 The advert confirms that Reynolds had received some intelligence that the two men had sailed to England. Travelling roughly 32500 nautical miles at a cruising speed of around 3 Knots, it would have taken them around 45 days to arrive In London. == Revolts ==

, woodcut, 1831, from the book, Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical Scene Which Was Witnessed in Southampton County, Library of Congress During the nineteenth century, there were three major attempted slave revolts in Virginia: Gabriel's Rebellion in 1800, Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831, and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, organized by a white radical abolitionist, John Brown. After Nat Turner's rebellion, thousands of Virginians sent the legislature over forty petitions calling for an end to slavery, and Richmond's newspapers argued fiercely for abolition. was influential in its defeat.{{cite book|author=Christopher Michael Curtis|title=Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion ==Freedom==

There were many enslaved people who attained freedom before the American Civil War. Some were freed, or voluntarily emancipated by their slaveholder through manumission. Regulation of manumission began in 1692, when Virginia established that to manumit a slave, a person must pay the cost for them to be transported out of the colony. A 1723 law stated that slaves may not "be set free upon any pretence whatsoever, except for some meritorious services to be adjudged and allowed by the governor and council". The new government of Virginia repealed the laws in 1782 and declared freedom for slaves who had fought for the colonies during the American Revolutionary War of 1775–1783. The 1782 laws also permitted masters to free their slaves of their own accord; previously, a manumission had required obtaining consent from the state legislature, which was arduous and rarely granted. Rarely after 1800, some people were able to purchase their own freedom. Indentured servitude Indentured servitude was a contractual arrangement between English persons and their masters that specified the number of years to be worked in exchange for their passage to Virginia and their upkeep. One of the restrictions of their contracts was that they could not marry while in service. The first servants who came to Virginia received a percentage of the profits of the Virginia Company of London. After ten years, in an attempt to attract more workers, English indentured servants were to receive land upon the completion of their contract. Servants and their masters could take one another to court if the terms of the contract were not being met or to address wrongs, such as physical abuse of the servant. From the start, Africans were not treated the same as English indentured servants. Records survive in Virginia of seven cases brought by Africans or African Americans asserting that they had served finite terms of servitude and had earned freedom, as if indentured, but their masters claimed they were bound to service for life. Six of these suits failed, indicating that the Virginia courts regarded Africans and African Americans as enslaved for life rather than bound to specific terms of indenture. One of the first Africans to come to Virginia and subsequently be freed was Anthony Johnson, who then held a contract with John Casor as an indentured servant. Casor fulfilled their agreed-upon arrangement, and worked another seven years. They went to court, and the judge determined that Casor was to be his slave for the rest of his lifetime. Philip Cowen had worked the agreed upon number of years as a servant and expected to be freed. Like other blacks, he was forced to sign a document that extended his service. Charles Lucas "with threats and a high hand and by confederacy with some other persons" forced him to sign an indenture document. He filed a lawsuit with the court in 1675 and after winning the case was given a new suit of clothes and three barrels of corn, as he had been promised while in service. In an unusual court case, John Graweere, an indentured servant, filed a petition to purchase his son. The boy was born to an enslaved woman. Graweere wanted to raise him as a Christian. The court ruled in 1641 in his favor and he was able to free his son. Run away . Special Collections, University of Virginia Another way to attain one's freedom was to run away, which made that person a fugitive slave. Slaves from Virginia escaped via waterways and overland to free states in the North, some being aided by people who lived along the Underground Railroad, which was maintained by both whites and blacks. arriving in little more than 24 hours. There were at least 4,260 notices of runaway slaves published in Virginia from 1736 to 1803. Those persons who helped apprehend runaways were given the stipulated cash award; advertisements were also often placed in newspapers when the fugitives were captured. If slaves ran away a number of times and were returned to the slaveholders, they might be branded, shackled, or have their hair cut in an identifiable way. An act concerning Servants and Slaves of 1705 allowed for severe punishment of slaves, to the point of killing them. There were no consequences for excessive punishment or for killing slaves after this law was passed. If a former slave wanted to purchase the freedom of his wife and children, he had to persuade the slaveholder to allow the purchase of family members, which could take years. If terms were agreed upon, a price was set. The arrangement could be broken if the slaveholder died before the wife or children were freed. Joseph and his brother-in-law Jesse Scott purchased the freedom of Edith and their children. Also from Monticello, Israel Jefferson purchased his freedom with his wife's assistance. Peter Hemmings was purchased by a family member and then was freed. Mary Colbert's freedom was obtained by family members. Freedom suit In 1658, Elizabeth Key was the first woman of African descent to bring a freedom suit in the Virginia colony. She sought recognition as a free woman of color, rather than being classified as a Negro (African) and slave. Her natural father was an Englishman (and member of the House of Burgesses). He acknowledged her, had her baptized as a Christian in the Church of England, and arranged for her guardianship under an indenture before his death. Manumission Some enslaved people were manumitted by their enslavers. In some cases, people were freed because they were held in good esteem by their enslavers, sometimes it was because the enslaved were no longer useful. In other cases, mixed-race children of white slaveholders were freed. White residents of Virginia found freed blacks to be a "great inconvenience" and were suspicious of their ability to influence enslaved people and accused them of crimes. So laws were passed to make it more inconvenient for the blacks and their enslavers. In 1782, it was made easier to manumit enslaved blacks, but if they were more than 45 years of age, the former slaveholder may have been responsible for providing them an income if they were unable to work. From 1,800 persons in 1782, the total population of free blacks in Virginia increased to 12,766 in 1790, about four percent of the state's total number of blacks, and to 30,570 in 1810. The percentage change was from free blacks comprising less than one percent of the total black population in Virginia, to 7.2 percent by 1810, even as the overall population increased. George Washington freed all of his slaves at his death. Immigrants Free blacks came to the Southern states after the 1791 Haitian slave revolt in Saint-Domingue, in which enslaved blacks fought the French. Some of the free blacks brought their slaves with them, and many more slaves and free people of color arrived in Louisiana after the United States purchased Louisiana, and joined the generally mixed-race issue of black slaves and French and Spanish colonists. and 225,961 lived in other parts of the country. In 1860, the free black population was close to 100% in the north. The census shows that there were still 18 enslaved people living in New Jersey. Large populations of free blacks lived in Philadelphia, Virginia, and Maryland. Of those who stayed, they generally moved to cities, where work was easier to find. Those who lived in western Virginia became West Virginians in 1863. Even throughout the American Civil War, black Virginians were more likely to stay in the state. The federal government provided supplies to build schools through the Freedmen's Bureau and transported teachers to Virginia. American Missionary Association and other aid societies sent teachers, as well as books and supplies. Evidence "suggests that black education in Virginia, as elsewhere in the South, was a product of the freed people's own initiative and determination, temporarily supported by northern benevolence and federal aid." It was central to communities of free African Americans, and branched out to Charleston, South Carolina, and other areas in the South, although there were laws that prevented blacks from preaching. The church was treated brutally by whites and members were arrested en masse. Although Anthony Johnson was a free man, on his death in 1670, his plantation was given to a white colonist, not to Johnson's children. A judge had ruled that he was "not a citizen of the colony" because he was black. ==Civil War==

proclaimed that the slaves who had made their way there were "contraband", and thus did not need to be returned to their owners. The American Revolutionary War of 1776 and the Constitution of 1787, left open the issues of whether aristocrats or other groups of people should reign over others. Americans were proud to say that America was "the land of liberty, a beacon of freedom to the oppressed of other lands" in the early 1800s. However, the United States had become the largest slaveholding country in the world by the 1850s. Richmond, Virginia was the site of the Confederate capital. there was no Confederate equivalent. A growing number of white soldiers began to see the need to end slavery and for a united country. Constant Hanks, a private in the New York State Militia, wrote in a letter to his father after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863: "Thank God... the contest is now between Slavery & Freedom, & every honest man knows what he is fighting for."{{Cite journal |last=Larsen |first=David L. ==The end of slavery in Virginia==

, Man reading a newspaper with headline, "Presidential Proclamation, Slavery," referring to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, drawing and watercolor, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division Slave trading continued until the defeat of the Confederacy, but the economic uncertainty wrought by the conflict had a negative impact that was immediately visible in Richmond, according to one 1861 newspaper report: The first concrete, successful step towards ending slavery in Virginia was President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, effective December 18, 1865, made slavery illegal everywhere in the country for slaves not yet formally convicted of a crime.{{Cite web |title=Proclamation of the Secretary of State announcing the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution |url=https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=1218 ==Historic reckoning==

Education about the history of slavery in the United States tends to blur the truth of horrors that enslaved people experienced, including sexual violence, being separated from family members, as well as the physical and psychological cruelty they experienced. Schoolbooks tend to skim the surface of slavery. In 2007, the Virginia General Assembly approved a formal statement of "profound regret" and acknowledgement of the "egregious wrongs" committed against African Americans. Part of the statement is: Education about the history of slavery in Virginia has remained a contentious issue into the 2020s, with governor Glenn Youngkin opposing Critical Race Theory and accused of "watering down Black history". ==See also==