The History of slavery in Virginia can be traced back to the very founding of Virginia as an English colony by the London Virginia Company. The headright system tried to solve the labor shortage by providing colonists with land for each indentured servant they transported to Virginia.[1] African workers were first imported in 1619, and their slavery was codified after a 1654 lawsuit over the servant John Casor.[2]
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Nicholas Ferrar wrote a contemporaneous text Sir Thomas Smith's Misgovernment of the Virginia Company (first published by the Roxburghe Club in 1990). Here he lays charges that Smith and his son-in-law, Robert Johnson, were running a company within a company to skim off the profits from the shareholders. He also alleged that Dr. John Woodall had bought some Polish settlers as slaves, selling them on to Lord de La Warr. He claimed that Smith was trying to reduce other colonists to slavery by extending their period of indenture indefinitely beyond the seventh year.[3]
In 1650, there were only about 300 "Africans" living in Virginia, about 1% of an estimated 30,000 population. They were not slaves, any more than were the approximately 4000 white indentured servants working out their loans for passage money to Virginia. Many had earned their freedom, and they were each granted 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land when freed from their indentures, so they could raise their own tobacco or other crops. Although they were at a disadvantage in that they had to pay to have their newly acquired land surveyed in order to patent it, white indentured servants found themselves in the same predicament. Some black indentured servants, however, went on to patent and buy land. Anthony Johnson, who settled on the Eastern Shore following the end of indenture, even bought African slaves of his own. George Dillard, a white indentured servant who settled in New Kent County after his servitude ended, held at least 79 acres (320,000 m2) of his own land and was able to marry despite a dearth of women in the colonies at that time.[4]
Although slavery had long been practiced in Spanish colonies to the south, the first recorded instance of slavery in the Virginia Colony was established in 1654. In a lawsuit, Anthony Johnson of Northampton County on Virginia's Eastern Shore convinced a court that he was entitled to the lifetime services of John Casor, a black man.
Anthony Johnson was also a black man. He had been one of 20 black men brought to Jamestown in 1619 as indentured servants. By 1623, he had achieved his freedom and by 1651 was prosperous enough to import five "servants" of his own, for which he was granted 250 acres (1.0 km2) as "headrights".[5]
John Casor alleged that he had come to Virginia as an indentured servant, and attempted to transfer his obligation to a white farmer named Robert Parker. However, Anthony Johnson claimed that "hee had ye Negro for his life".
In the lawsuit of Johnson vs. Parker, the court in Northampton County ruled that "seriously consideringe and maturely weighing the premisses, doe fynde that the saide Mr. Robert Parker most unjustly keepeth the said Negro from Anthony Johnson his master....It is therefore the Judgement of the Court and ordered That the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of the said master Anthony Johnson, And that mr. Robert Parker make payment of all charges in the suit."
Casor was thus returned to Johnson. This was the first known judicial approval of life servitude in Virginia, except as punishment for a crime. Casor remained with Anthony Johnson and his wife for the rest of his life, moving with them to Maryland a short time later.
Increasingly toward the end of the 17th century, large numbers of slaves from Africa were brought by Dutch and English ships to the Virginia Colony, as well as Maryland and other southern colonies. On the large tobacco plantations, as chattel (owned property), they replaced indentured servants (who were only obligated to work for an agreed period of time) as field labor, as well as serving as household and skilled workers. As slaves, they were not working by mutual agreement, nor for a limited period of time. In time the practice of slavery became an economic factor for the labor-intensive tobacco and cotton plantations of the South.
Even the offspring of slaves also were born into a lifetime of slavery, as in 1661, Virginia passed a law that made the status of the mother determine slave or free status of the child.
Almost as soon as the practice of slavery was established in Virginia, some individual slaves began obtaining their freedom. This was usually accomplished by escape, through their own enterprise, or through benevolence of their "owners", as family-type ties grew between some of them. Escaped slaves normally traveled to non-slave Colonies (and later states) to the North, often via the Underground Railroad. However, many of the black men and women who had legally gained their freedom chose to stay in the South. Known as freedmen, they lived at various locations throughout the area.
At the time of the American Revolutionary War, what was later called the "peculiar institution" of slavery was an unresolved issue between the 13 Colonies. However, the fundamental basis for its demise was laid by the country's founding fathers in both the Declaration of Independence and the new U.S. Constitution. Slavery was to become a growing conflict between the states as the new United States grew, until the mass emancipation of all of the remaining slaves took place during the years of the American Civil War (1861–1865) and immediately thereafter.
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