Slave codes

Slave codes were laws each US state had defining the status of slaves and the rights of masters; the code gave slave owners near-absolute power over the right of their human property.

Provisions

Definition of "slaves"

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.”

*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 (see Slave Codes of 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. [http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/track.html]

The District of Columbia Slave Codes

Slaves were a common sight in the nation's capital. Harsh regulation of these urban slaves, most of whom were servants for the government elite, was in effect until the 1850s. Following the Compromise of 1850 the sale of slaves was outlawed within Washington D.C.

ee also

* African slave trade
* Barbados Slave Code
* French Code Noir
* 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
* 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

ee 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