Virginia’s Act XII: Negro Women’s Children to Serve according to the Condition of the Mother

Context

Virginians in 1662 lived in a world that for several decades had been fraught with change. The colony had grown from a ragtag frontier outpost established in 1607 to a cornerstone of England’s imperial holdings. Virginia was established and initially owned by the Virginia Company of London, also known as the London Company, but reverted to royal ownership after the company’s bankruptcy in 1624. From 1641 to 1660, the inhabitants of the British Empire endured considerable political turmoil and civil unrest. A civil war erupted in England, resulting in the deposal of Charles I and his beheading in 1649 as well as the establishment of the Puritan-led Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. To fill the vacuum of power brought on by Cromwell’s death in 1658, Parliament invited Charles II to take the throne in 1660; the monarchy was thus reinstated, and the period known as the Restoration began. For settlers in Virginia and other English colonies, that meant an adjustment to the return of imperial oversight after nearly two decades of neglect.

Some of the changes Virginia settlers experienced in the mid-seventeenth century were for the better. After five decades of high mortality rates among new immigrants, Virginia’s population had finally stabilized. This occurred for a variety of reasons, including better and more plentiful food, the relocation of settlements farther away from malaria-ridden riverfronts and high-water tables, and better timing of the arrival of new settlers. In the eighteen-year period between 1644 and 1662, the population more than tripled, from approximately eight thousand to twenty-five thousand six hundred. While most of this increase resulted from immigration, greater longevity and increasing birth rates also contributed to the colony’s growth.

Politically, the governmental structures and laws of Virginia loosely resembled those of the mother country. The House of Burgesses, established in 1619, was based on the English parliament. It was a bicameral body comprising the lower house, the Assembly, elected at the county level by members of the county court, and the Governor’s Council, constituted of members of the elite. The county courts functioned much like the English quarter sessions, which were similar to common pleas courts presided over by the local justice of the peace and meeting four times a year. The difference lay in the percentage of the people who had the right to participate in the court; land ownership was common among free adult white males in Virginia, whereas in England land ownership was concentrated in the hands of a relative few. English common law had been the starting point for Virginia’s lawmakers. In some respects, however, Virginia’s laws strayed considerably from the English model. This was particularly true during the Commonwealth period, when direction from across the Atlantic was limited. As a consequence, Virginians created their own rules to fit their unique situation. The statutes concerning local defense and the use of unfree labor deviated the most from English common law because Virginians dealt with conditions that did not exist in England.

In economic terms, tobacco was the king of Virginia crops. Introduced in the 1610s by John Rolfe, the English husband of the Indian Pocahontas, tobacco provided Virginia with a viable cash crop that was grown nearly to the exclusion of anything else. The harvest of 1663 yielded seven million pounds shipped to London alone. This had a negative effect, however, for as supply increased, prices declined. Broad attempts at crop diversification continued to fail, though Virginians had begun to grow some of their own food. For most planters, large and small, the only way to increase their profits was to put more land into cultivation, which in turn required more labor. Since free males in Virginia usually owned property, labor by definition had to be performed by those who could not hold property in their own right: women, children, and the unfree.

During most of the first half century of the colony’s existence, unfree labor had been integral to its economy. Throughout the 1610s, traditional indentured servants met that need. In August 1619 the colonists’ regular source of bound labor from the British Isles was supplemented by the arrival of captive Africans aboard a Dutch privateer (warship) commanded by an English captain. John Rolfe identified this event in a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys in 1619/1620. This was the first documented sale of African slaves in Virginia; however, a census taken in May 1619 had already identified thirty-two Virginians of African origin.

Through the 1620s, the labor demands of the colony accelerated because of the expansion of the cash crop, tobacco. The demand far exceeded the supply of indentured labor from the British Isles. To alleviate that stress, the House of Burgesses began to regulate more closely the laws controlling the behavior and contract terms of indentured servants. In addition to using indentured labor, Virginians also looked at the possibilities of exploiting people from cultures unlike their own, namely, Native Americans and Africans. Models of servitude developed by the Spanish and Portuguese in the West Indies and South America had introduced Virginians to such possibilities as well as to the institution of perpetual slavery. By the 1640s, some colonists had experimented with the enslavement of individuals not of their own race. In the case of the local indigenous peoples, that had proved to be unfeasible because of their familiarity with the countryside and the hostilities generated with their native tribes. To forestall additional trouble, the House of Burgesses passed legislation prohibiting the enslavement of local Native Americans, with a loophole that permitted the enslavement of those who had already been brought into the colony. Imported Africans proved easier to entrap into permanent servitude. They lacked local defenders and were markedly different in their physical characteristics and religious orientations. Additionally, English colonists could draw upon examples of African slavery from the Caribbean.

Throughout the Commonwealth period, when parliamentary oversight was limited, Virginians began to craft laws that altered the systems of servitude employed in the colony. They gradually lengthened terms of service for all unfree laborers and made provisions for the perpetual enslavement of Africans. In the era after 1660, conditions provided further impetus to continue down that path. The supply of English indentured servants stagnated and then declined as political and economic conditions in England stabilized with the restoration of Charles II. As mortality rates among new arrivals dropped, the financial advantages of holding a laborer for life began to outweigh the higher cost of a slave in comparison with an indentured servant, whose labor was bound for an average of five to seven years. This was also a period when English merchants seriously investigated the possibilities of engaging in the slave trade themselves.