similar covenants. The Assembly were perhaps anxious to lessen the disproportion, and the law referred to was well calculated to produce the condition desired; such a law might easily have been considered advisable even if the institution of slavery had not obtained a foothold in the Colony. That no discrimination against the African was intended is disclosed in the fact that all Indian female slaves, whether employed indoors or in the fields, were also deemed to be tithables. Doubtless also the negroes, without regard to sex, more especially those who had not been born in Virginia, were in the beginning thought to be unfit for domestic service, being awkward in person and untrained in manners. White women who had been brought from England were numerous, and they were obviously better fitted for household work than the raw female slaves, and but poorly adapted to the heavy tasks of the fields, in which a greater strength and a higher power of endurance gave the negress a marked superiority. In the latter part of the century, however, African domestics became extremely common, there being an increasing number of slaves who had been born in Virginia, from among whom each master could select those who seemed most capable of being trained for household duties. The amiability and docility which they displayed in the fields made them agreeable and attractive also as household servants, and in this character they grew more popular with the progress of each decade. Colonel William Byrd mentions incidentally in his correspondence in 1684, that his wife had often urged him to send their youthful daughter to England, as it was impossible for her to learn anything in a great family of negroes.[1] The households of many other planters of wealth must have been largely constituted of slaves. The wills of this period show that young
- ↑ Letters of William Byrd, March 31, 1684.
