the country, as they were lacking in the means to support themselves.[1] It is also significant to note that the additional reason was advanced that the free negroes were receivers of goods stolen either by the slaves or the white servants from their masters.[2] Under the provisions of this measure, which was really designed to discourage emancipation, the planter who liberated a negro and failed to send him out of the Colony was liable to a levy on his property to the extent of ten pounds sterling, to be employed in paying the expenses incurred in the freedman’s transportation. If a surplus remained after these expenses had been met, it was to be used by the church wardens of the parish in which his former owner resided, for the benefit of the poor. If the slave had been manumitted by will, the heirs of the testator were exposed to the same penalty for a failure to comply with the requirements of the statute .[3]
We have already given a brief account of the Indian as a servant. He also played a part of considerable importance in the Colony as a slave. He did not, however, appear in this character until 1676, when it was decided by the Assembly, which at that time was under the control of Bacon, to make legal the enslavement of all the aborigines captured in war, under the definition of service for life. In 1661, it had been expressly declared that no Indian who had fallen into the hands of the whites should be disposed of absolutely and permanently, and this provision, in conformity with all of the same kind previously
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. III, p. 87.
- ↑ See, in illustration of this fact, an instance preserved in the Records of Northampton County, original vol. 1689-1698, p. 463.
- ↑ In 1698, Richard Trotter of York County, by the terms of his will, emancipated two of his slaves, to whom he bequeathed fifteen pounds sterling apiece, to meet the expense of their removal from the Colony. Vol. 1694-1702, pp. 194, 195, Va. State Library.
