Slave codes
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Slave codes were laws passed in colonial North America to regulate slavery.
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Legal definitions of slavery
Virginia, 1639
“Act X. All persons except Negroes are to be provided with arms and ammunitions or be fined at the pleasure of the governor and council.”
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 [sic] 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 trafficing 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.”
See also
- African slave trade
- Barbados Slave Code
- Conscription
- Coolie
- Debt bondage
- Forced labor
- History of slavery in the United States
- 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
- Trafficking in human beings
- Unfree labour
- Wage slavery