slave code
slave code, in U.S. history, any of the set of rules based on the concept that enslaved persons were property, not persons. Inherent in the institution of slavery were certain social controls, which enslavers amplified with laws to protect not only the property but also the property owner from the danger of slave violence. The slave codes were forerunners of the Black codes of the mid-19th century.
Slave rebellions were not unknown, and the possibility of uprisings was a constant source of anxiety in the American colonies—and, later, in the U.S. states—with large slave populations. (In Virginia during 1780–1864, some 1,418 slaves were convicted of crimes; 91 of the convictions were for insurrection and 346 for murder.) Enslaved persons also ran away. In the British possessions in the New World, the settlers were free to promulgate any regulations they saw fit to govern their labour supply. As early as the 17th century, a set of rules was in effect in Virginia and elsewhere; but the slave codes were constantly being altered to adapt to new needs, and they varied from one colony—and, later, one state—to another.
All the slave codes, however, had certain provisions in common. In all of them the colour line was firmly drawn, and any amount of African heritage established the race of a person as Black, with little regard as to whether the person was slave or free. The status of the offspring followed that of the mother, so that the child of a free father and an enslaved mother was a slave. This provision is reflected in a Virginia slave code from December 1662:
Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly, that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother...
Slaves had few legal rights: in court their testimony was inadmissible in any litigation involving whites; they could make no contract, nor could they own property; even if attacked, they could not strike a white person. There were numerous restrictions to enforce social control: slaves could not be away from their owner’s premises without permission; they could not assemble unless a white person was present; they could not own firearms; they could not be taught to read or write, nor could they transmit or possess “inflammatory” literature; they were not permitted to marry.
Obedience to the slave codes was exacted in a variety of ways. Such punishments as whipping, branding, and imprisonment were commonly used. Some enslaved persons, especially those who committed violence against whites, were killed, although slaves’ value to their owners as labour discouraged the practice. A Virginia slave code from October 1669 addressed the killing of slaves this way:
Whereas the only law in force for the punishment of refractory servants resisting their master, mistress, or overseer cannot be inflicted upon Negroes, nor the obstinacy of many of them be suppressed by other than violent means, be it enacted and declared by this Grand Assembly if any slave resists his master (or other by his master’s order correcting him) and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be accounted a felony, but the master (or that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquitted from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that premeditated malice (which alone makes murder a felony) should induce any man to destroy his own estate.
Slave codes were not always strictly enforced, but, whenever any signs of unrest were detected, the appropriate machinery of the state would be alerted and the laws more strictly enforced.
