Part II.
SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES.[119]
CHAPTER XII.
THE COLONY OF VIRGINIA.
1619-1775.
Introduction of the First Slaves.—"The Treasurer" and the Dutch Man-of-War.—The Correct Date.—The Number of Slaves.—Were there Twenty, or Fourteen?—Litigation about the Possession of the Slaves.—Character of the Slaves imported, and the Character of the Colonists.—Race Prejudices.—Legal Establishment of Slavery. Who are Slaves for Life.—Duties on Imported Slaves.—Political and Military Prohibitions against Negroes.—Personal Rights.—Criminal Laws against Slaves. Emancipation.—How brought about.—Free Negroes.—Their Rights.—Moral and Religious Training.—Population.—Slavery firmly established.
VIRGINIA was the mother of slavery as well as "the mother of Presidents." Unfortunate for her, unfortunate for the other colonies, and thrice unfortunate for the poor Colored people, who from 1619 to 1863 yielded their liberty, their toil,—unrequited,—their bodies and intellects to an institution that ground them to powder. No event in the history of North America has carried with it to its last analysis such terrible forces. It touched the brightest features of social life, and they faded under the contact of its poisonous breath. It affected legislation, local and national; it made and destroyed statesmen; it prostrated and bullied honest public sentiment; it strangled the voice of the press, and awed the pulpit into silent acquiescence; it organized the judiciary of States, and wrote decisions for judges; it gave States their political being, and afterwards dragged them by the fore-hair through the stormy sea of civil war; laid the parricidal fingers of Treason against the fair throat of Liberty,—and through all time to come no event will be more sincerely deplored than the introduction of slavery into the colony of Virginia during the last days of the month of August in the year 1619!