Slave codes

Significance: Slave codes were colonial and state laws dealing with slavery. In Virginia, these codes were used to make slavery an institution; in Ohio, they were used to discourage African Americans from moving to the state.

The first colonial laws recognizing and institutionalizing slavery were enacted in Virginia in the mid-seventeenth century. A similar series of Ohio laws denying civil rights to African Americans were enacted to discourage black immigration to that state in the early nineteenth century.

Virginia

In March 1661, the Virginia General Assembly declared that “all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.” Enacted to alleviate confusion about the status of children with English fathers and African mothers, this law was the first in a series of laws recognizing perpetual slavery in Virginia and equating “freedom” with “white” and “enslaved” with “black.” This law is especially indicative of the hardening of race relations in mid-seventeenth century Virginia society, as status in the patriarchal society of England traditionally was inherited from the father. By reversing this legal concept, perpetuation of enslavement for African Americans was ensured for their children, whether of black or white ancestry.

Despite the extent to which the 1661 law narrowed the options for defining Africans’ status, this act did not in itself establish slavery. Africans had two available windows through which they could obtain freedom—conversion to Christianity and manumission (formal emancipation). In 1655, Elizabeth Key brought a successful suit for her freedom, using as her main argument the fact that she had been baptized. In 1667, a slave named Fernando contended that he ought to be freed because he was a Christian and had lived in England for several years. Not only did the court deny Fernando’s appeal, but also that same year the General Assembly took another step toward more clearly defining African Americans’ status, by declaring “that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedome.” Planters felt that if baptism led to freedom, they would be without any assurance that they could retain their slave property. The 1667 law thereby built on the earlier one to define who would be a slave, and was clarified in 1670 and again in 1682, when the Assembly declared that any non-Christian brought into the colony, either by land or by sea, would be a slave for life, even if he or she later converted.

In 1691, colonial leaders provided a negative incentive to masters wishing to free their slaves by declaring that they would be required to pay the costs of transporting the freedmen out of the colony within six months. Although manumissions still occurred and some free African Americans managed to remain in the colony, the primary status for African Americans in Virginia was that of chattel.

Although who was to be a slave in Virginia had now been defined, it had yet to be determined precisely what being a slave meant on a daily basis for Africans and their descendants. Between 1661 and 1705, nearly twenty separate laws were passed limiting, defining, and prescribing the rights, status, and treatment of African Americans. In general, these laws were designed to protect planters’ slave property and to protect the order and stability of white society from an “alien and savage race.”

The piecemeal establishment of slavery in these separate laws culminated in 1705 in a comprehensive slave code in Virginia. This code reenacted and strengthened a number of earlier slave laws, added further restrictions and harsher punishments, and permanently drew the color line that placed African Americans at the bottom of Virginia society. Whites were prohibited from trading with, having sexual relations with, and marrying African Americans. African Americans were forbidden to own Christian servants “except of their own complexion,” leave their home plantation without a pass, own a gun or other weapon, or resist whites in any way.

Many of the harsher penalties for slave crimes, for example, the death penalty and maiming, were not carried out nearly as frequently as the laws suggest, because doing so would harm or destroy the master’s property. Laws prohibiting slaves from trading or hiring themselves out were disregarded almost routinely. The disadvantage for slaves of this lack of enforcement was that laws prohibiting cruel treatment or defining acceptable levels of correction often were ignored as well. Where abuse was blatant, action against white offenders was taken only reluctantly, and punishments were insignificant and rare. Generally, laws in the economic and political interest of the white planter elite were enforced and respected; laws that restrained planters’ pursuits were not.

Ohio and the Northwest Territory

The Northwest Territory was established in 1787 and ultimately became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. In 1800, what was to become the state of Ohio separated from the rest of the territory. Two years later, Ohio elected delegates to a constitutional convention in preparation for a statehood petition, which was approved in 1803.

Although the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in that territory, Ohio’s constitutional convention debated the issue during its sessions. With the slaveholding states of Virginia on Ohio’s eastern boundary and Kentucky on its southern boundary, there was considerable pressure for Ohio to recognize slavery. Many of the immigrants to Ohio came from slave states and saw nothing evil in the system. While many southern Ohioans did not object to slavery, persons in the northern part of the state were more likely to oppose it.

Delegates at the 1802 constitutional convention debated several questions that focused on African Americans. There was no strong feeling for instituting slavery in Ohio; there was, however, strong opinion in favor of limited rights for African Americans. After a major debate over allowing African Americans to vote, it was decided not to delete the word “white” from the qualifications for the franchise. Nevertheless, the African American population grew from five hundred in 1800 to nearly two thousand by 1810. In 1804, the legislature debated and passed the first of the “Black Laws,” statutes intended to discourage African Americans from moving into Ohio and to encourage those already there to leave.

A few years later, an even stronger bill to restrict African Americans was presented in the Senate. In its final version, it forbade African Americans from settling in Ohio unless they could present a five-hundred-dollar bond and an affidavit signed by two white men that attested to their good character. Fines for helping a fugitive slave were doubled. Finally, no African American could testify against a white in court.

However restrictive the original Black Laws were, the new law was far worse. African Americans were stripped of legal protection and placed at the mercy of whites. Whites did not need to fear being tried for offenses against African Americans unless there was a white witness who would testify. There is evidence of at least one African American being murdered by whites, with only African American witnesses to the crime. African American witnesses could not provide evidence against a white assailant. Even if a case went to court, it would be heard by an all-white jury before a white judge. African American victims could not testify on their own behalf, because of the restrictions against providing testimony against whites. Because they could not vote, African Americans could neither change nor protest these laws.

While the Black Codes of 1804 and 1807 were enforced only infrequently, they still were the law and were a constant reminder that African Americans in Ohio had only the barest minimum of human and civil rights—and those rights existed only at the whim of white society. The laws fell into disuse and finally were repealed in 1849, long after the abolitionist movement, with its western center located in Oberlin, Ohio, was well under way, and long after the Underground Railroad had opened several stations in Ohio.

Bibliography

Boskin, Joseph. Into Slavery: Racial Decisions in the Virginia Colony. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1976. Print.

Higginbotham, A. Leon, Jr. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process, the Colonial Period. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. Print.

Schwartz, Philip J. Twice Condemned: Slaves and the Criminal Laws of Virginia, 1705–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1988. Print.

Shaw, Robert B. A Legal History of Slavery in the United States. Potsdam: Northern, 1991. Print.

Wilson, Charles Jay. "The Negro in Early Ohio." Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly 39 (1930): 717–68. Print.