The citizens of Virginia had never engaged in the slave trade as importers, and were merely the purchasers from others—its legislature being prohibited from interfering with the trade.
About the year 1610, trading posts were established by the Dutch within the present limits of New York, and the name of New Netherland was given to the territory claimed, including that of New York, New Jersey, or the Jersey, and some other. Actual colonization began within the present limits of New York, under the authority of the Dutch government in the year 1629, the traders located in those limits having been previously engaged only in trade with the Indians. Slavery was introduced with the first settlers and was recognized and protected by law. In the year 1664, New Netherland was conquered from its Dutch rulers, by an English expedition under the authority of the Duke of York, subsequently James II, to whom a royal grant of the territory had been made. The province of New York was then created out of New Netherland, though it came again, temporarily, under the Dutch for portions of the years 1673 and 1674.
Slavery was continued as it before existed until after the Revolution. Vessels were fitted out in the port of New York (first called New Amsterdam), for the slave trade at an early period, and the merchants of that city engaged in it without scruple; some of them continued to be so engaged until the traffic was prohibited by Congressional enactment.
The settlement next in point of time was that of Plymouth, in the year 1620, within the present limits of the State of Massachusetts. Slavery of the Indians and also of negroes existed in this province from the beginning. The settlement at Plymouth by the passengers of the May Flower, though first in point of time, was not by any means, the leading one in Massachusetts, and the Province of Plymouth played comparatively an unimportant part in the history of Massachusetts. The main settlement in that colony was made in the year 1629, by John Winthrop and his followers, Puritans emigrating directly from England, professedly for the purpose of securing to themselves, and their posterity, religious freedom. It was this settlement which gave tone and character to Massachusetts, as well as to all the other New England provinces, which were chiefly offshoots from Massachusetts.
Though professing to be seeking a home in this wilderness for the purpose of enjoying and establishing religious liberty, the settlers of Massachusetts established as proscriptive and despotic a theocracy as the world has ever seen. A celebrated humorist has aptly said that their idea of religious liberty consisted in enjoying their own opinions to the fullest extent and preventing any body else from enjoying theirs.
Under their charter a government was established by the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, which was entirely theocratic in form and substance. To be a freeman, that is a citizen and voter, it was necessary to be a member of the established church, which was the Congregational, and was supported at the public expense. The members of that church claimed to be God's elect, and they showed no mercy to any other sect and allowed of no dissent whatever; all others were heretics or heathens.
From the beginning, the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, as well as those at Plymouth, regarded the "heathen around them" and all their possessions as fit spoil for the "Saints." Accordingly they began at a very early period to help themselves. In the year 1637, in a war begun against the Piquods, that tribe of Indians was exterminated by slaughter and capture. Of several hundred prisoners taken, the adult males, constituting but a small portion of the captives, were sent to the West Indies and sold into slavery, while the women and children were distributed among the colonists as slaves also; this was done by the constituted authorities.