was when a ship belonging to James Smith, a member of a Boston church, and another, sailed for Guinea to trade in negroes. Massachusetts cried out against these traders in human flesh as "malefactors and murderers," and the negroes were ordered to be restored at the public charge to their own country, with a letter expressing the "indignation of the general court at their wrongs." Later in the same year the penalty of death was enacted for "man-stealing." Connecticut and New Haven also made it a capital offence. Providence, in Rhode Island, and Warwick, in Virginia, early passed laws against the holding of slaves. Rhode Island, in 1652, enacted that no man, black or white, should be forced to serve more than ten years, or after the age of twenty-four. A system of indenture of white men had, indeed, existed from the first in Virginia, making the condition of the public mind there not altogether unfavorable to the idea of perpetual slavery. "The servant," Bancroft tells us, "stood to his master in the relation of a debtor, bound to discharge the costs of emigration by the entire employment of his powers for the benefit of his creditor." These men, transported at an expense of £8 or £10, were often sold for £40, £50, or even £60. This supply of white servants became a regular business, and gave rise to a class of men called "spirits," who deluded young people into going to America. Sometimes they were sold in England, and resold in Virginia to the highest bidder. At the end of the seventeenth century, a white man of whom five years' service was due, would fetch about £10, whilst a negro slave was worth about £20. Prisoners taken in war, men and women who were kidnapped, and paupers shipped by force, made the stock for this traffic. Nevertheless, Virginia had early discouraged negro slavery by a special tax upon female slaves, and the increase was at first so inconsiderable, that after seventy years the number of negro slaves in Virginia was proportionally much less than in the so-called free states at the War of Independence. Governor Bradstreet said, in 1680, that there were only about 120 African slaves in Massachusetts, and in 1720 they were said to number but 2000.
Out of the original thirteen colonies South Carolina was the only one which began as a slave State. The climate was more adapted to the negro than that of the more northern colonies. In South Carolina slaves were so rapidly imported that in a few years there were nearly twice as many blacks as whites. The Dutch planters of New York, while very desirous of holding slaves, found the climate unsuitable. In proportion to population New York imported as many Africans as Virginia; and European Amsterdam itself owned shares in a slave ship, advanced money for its outfit, and shared in its profit. Stuyvesant, governor of the New Netherlands, was instructed to use every exertion to promote the sale of negroes.
