SLAVE CODES

'Slave codes' were laws passed in colonial North America to regulate any state of subjection to a force, and were abolished after the U.S. Civil War. Slave codes authorized, indemnified or even required
the use of violence and were long criticized by abolitionists for their brutality.

Contents
Provisions
Definition of 'slave'
Violence against slaves
Reading by slaves illegal
See also
External links
See also

Provisions


Definition of 'slave'

There have been a number of legal definitions in the U.S regarding slaves:

★ 'Virginia, 1650' - “Act XI. All persons except Negroes are to be provided with arms and ammunitions or be fined at the pleasure of the governor and council.”

★ 'Virginia, 1662' - “Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishmen upon a Negro shall be slave or Free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand assembly, that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only According to the condition of the mother."

★ 'Maryland, 1664' - “That whatsoever free-born [English] woman shall intermarry with any slave [...] shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband; and that all the issue of such free-born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers were.”

★ 'Virginia, 1705' - “All servants imported and brought into the Country [...] who were not Christians in their native Country [...] shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion [...] shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resist his master [...] correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction [...] the master shall be free of all punishment [...] as if such accident never happened.”

★ 'Virginia, 1667' - “Act III. Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth [...] should by virtue of their baptism be made free, it is enacted that baptism does not alter the condition to 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.”

★ 'Virginia, 1682' - “Act I. It is enacted that all servants [...] which shall be imported into this country either by sea or by land, whether Negroes, Moors [Muslim North Africans], mulattoes or Indians who and whose parentage and native countries are not Christian at the time of their first purchase by some Christian [...] and all Indians, which shall be sold by our neighboring Indians, or any other trafficking with us for slaves, are hereby adjudged, deemed and taken to be slaves to all intents and purposes any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.”

★ 'Virginia, 1705' -- "All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate."
Violence against slaves


★ 'Virginia, 1705' -- "If any slave resist his master...correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of all punishment...as if such accident never happened."
Reading by slaves illegal

These slavery Codes/laws also made reading by black children illegal. [1]
(see also )
In 1750, slaves codes were lessened.

See also



African slave trade

Barbados Slave Code

Conscription

Coolie

Debt bondage

Forced labor

History of slavery in the United States


Origins of the American Civil War


North Carolina v. Mann

Indentured servants

International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition

Magdalen Asylums

Sexual slavery

Slave narrative

Slave rebellion

Slave soldiers

Slave trade


janissaries


Mamluks


Saqaliba

Trafficking in human beings

Unfree labour

Wage slavery

Rape

External links



★ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p268.html

★ http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/stpres02.html Slave codes of District of Columbia

★ http://academic.udayton.edu/race/02rights/slavelaw.htm Slave codes of State of Georgia

See also



★ Goodell, William (1853). The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice: Its Distinctive Features Shown by Its Statutes, Judicial Decisions, and Illustrative Face. On line available at http://www.dinsdoc.com/goodell-1-0a.htm

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