Clutching Esau’s Heel

 

The Historical Genesis of Racism and African-American Slavery

 

Two nations are in your womb;

And two peoples shall be separated from your body.

And one people shall be stronger than the other.

And the older shall serve the younger.

                                   

Now the first came forth red, all over like a hairy garment; and they named him Esau. And afterward his brother came forth clutching Esau’s heel

 

                                    -Genesis 25: 22,25

 

 

            The historical relationship between African American slavery and racism in the United States is undeniable.  Equally axiomatic is the fact that this relationship has been symbiotic, each having consistently presented itself as the conjoined twin of the other, and incapable of survival without its malignant sibling.  This seemingly congruent relationship has presented historians with a dual problem concerning origin: to what extent did one evil twin give rise to the other; and to what extent, if any, did one chronologically precede the other.   Historians have vigorously debated this issue, with various scholars theorizing various answers.  At least one historian, Winthrop Jordan, has attempted to claim the middle ground by postulating that slavery and racism developed simultaneously, and that it is accordingly impossible to determine their order of appearance.[1] His theory has been frequently attacked if not completely discounted by other historians who theorize that one gave rise to the other, although they likely evolved closely in time.

            Those historians who have argued that slavery preceded racism confine themselves, with rare exception, to race relations in Colonial America. They point out that blacks and whites often worked side by side and frequently shared social, even sexual relationships. They further theorize that only when white supremacy appeared threatened by the rapidly increasing number of black slaves in this country (colonial South Carolina bore the dubious distinction of a black majority) did white Americans take steps to maintain the subservient role of Negro slaves.  It was in reaction to and on the strength of this perceived threat that attitudes of racial superiority developed.  This argument becomes suspect, if not fallacious, when one considers the history of black/white encounters in the greater Atlantic world, particularly in the period prior to English colonization.  When the typical late medieval/early modern Weltanschauung of Western Europe is considered, the historical record strongly suggests that black Africans were considered inferior largely because of physiological and religious distinctions, both of which lent themselves to a predilection of Anglo-Saxon superiority over those who were non-white, and/or non-Protestant.  The first English settlers in North America brought with them this miasma of racial superiority which found in the western hemisphere a fertile environment.  Were it not for the existence of this perceived racial superiority, it is doubtful that chattel slavery would have erupted full blown.

I

 

It is clear, then that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.

-Aristotle: Politics

 

 

The word “slave” is derived from the Latin sclavus, indicating persons from Eastern Europe who were frequently bought and sold as slaves.[2]  From this, the term”Slav,” denoting an ethnic group from Eastern Europe, derived.  The designation quickly devolved into an inferior status reserved only for certain persons with undesirable attributes.  As early as the reign of Charlemagne, it was considered improper for Christians to enslave other Christians.  This was a concept apparently borrowed from Islam, in which the enslavement of “believers” was sinful.  Non-Christians were fair game for enslavement, however, and for five hundred years, beginning c. 1000 B.C.E., both Italians and the Vikings frequently enslaved Slavs, who were considered pagan; and therefore inferior; in fact, the eastern Adriatic became known as Europe’s Slave Coast. Slaves were often given names with pejorative connotations, such as “thickard,” or “noisy.”[3]  A sixteenth century, example of this appears in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which Prospero refers to Ariel as his “servant,” and demonstrates a certain degree of civility to him; yet he refers to Caliban, who is repulsive both in appearance and attitude, as his ‘slave.”[4]  The Spanish conquistadores considered slavery the proper status for Indians because they were “‘naturally lazy and vicious’ idolatrous and libidinous, a soulless species intermediate between man and beast.”[5]  In colonial America, a Virginia edict of 1618 provided that any man who missed church should “lye neck and heels…the night following and be a Slave the week following.”[6] Also, an indentured servant, one Thomas Best, distinguished his status as above that of slavery by complaining that “my master hath sold me for £150 sterling like a damned slave.”[7]

A designation of inferior status was applied to any ethnic group with marked physical or cultural differences, particularly if color were a factor. Black Africans were first described in derogatory terms by Muslim Arabs and later by Europeans, both of whom frequently equated the color of black Africans with moral deviance, and described them as physically grotesque. The Arabs considered their own skin color as superior to others; Europeans were “half-burnt,” (hence “undone,”) and Africans “burnt.” Al-Dimasqî an Arabic writer in 1327 wrote that “the equatorial region is inhabited by communities of Blacks who are to be numbered and beasts.  Their complexions and hair are burnt and they are physically and morally deviant. . . . The human being who dwells there is a crude fellow, with a very black complexion, burnt hair, unruly, with stinking sweat, and an abnormal constitution most closely resembling in his moral qualities, a savage, or animals.”[8]  The Arabs were forbidden by the Qur’an from enslaving believers, but had no qualms about enslaving black Africans, after which they were forced to work in sugar fields as well as in salt and copper mines. Blackness to the Arabs became synonymous with slave, designated by the same Arabic word, ‘abd. [9]

            The English also described Africans in derogatory terms. They saw Africans as “black,” implying evil, immoral, and dirty, and themselves as “white,” with the more positive connotation of pure, virtuous, and godly.[10]  The first recorded exposure of Englishmen to blacks occurred in 1554, when five West Africans were carried to London. In a strange irony of history, the English had been introduced to anthropoid apes (that is baboons and monkeys) at about the same time, and quickly concluded that they were the result of the mating of black Africans and wild beasts.  A widely accepted rumor of the time was that apes and blacks frequently mated; that apes preferred black women to their own females; and frequently attacked black women.[11] One Richard Ligon, writing in 1647, described black women by saying their breasts “hang down below their Navels, so that when they stoop at their common work of weeding, they hang almost to the ground, that at a distance you would think they had six legs.”[12]   The Travels of Sir John Mandeville describing the lax morals of the people “in Ethiopia and in many other countries [in Africa]” stated “the folk all lie naked…and the women have no shame of the men….they wed there no wives, for all the woman there be common…and when [women] have children, they may give them to what man they will that hath companied with them.”[13]  In the mid 1550’s, Richard Eden reported that those people “which we now call Moores, Moorens, or Negroes [are] a people of beastly lyvynge, without a god, law, religion, or common wealth.”[14]   Another writer, expressing disgust at the nakedness of Africans suggested they were less than human when he wrote: “the men and women go so alike, that one cannot know a man from a woman but by their breasts, which in the most part be very foule and long, hanging down low like the udder of a goate.”[15]

            Alden and Virginia Vaughan,  from their study of early English writers, have concluded  that representations of black Africans in Elizabethan literature emphasize the difference between Africans and Europeans as evidence of the inferiority of the former.[16] They argue: “English contempt for dark-skinned people had a long pedigree. . . . The sub-Saharan African’s black skin—the physical characteristic most obvious to the European eye—was the visual antithesis of the whiteness prized by Elizabeth and her ladies.[17] Literature of the time often described sub-Saharan Africans as “wilde man,” “blacke beaste,” “blacke burnt men,” and “fiends more fierce than those in hell.”[18]  Shakespeare, in Titus Andronicus, bears out the perceived relationship between blackness and evil:

                        Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace,

                        Aaron will have his soul black like his face.[19]

           

Aside from Africans, the English were quick to view all persons other than themselves in an unfavorable light.  The Irish were considered “wild, degraded, and of questionable Christianity, ‘more uncivil, more uncleanly, more barbarous, and more brutish in their demeanures than in any other part of the world that is known.’”[20]  The chief offense of the Irish, of course, was their Roman Catholicism. Blacks, without any semblance of Christianity and with marked physical differences, were thereby considered even more inferior. David Hume, in his essay, “Of Natural Character,” wrote: “I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the White. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than White. Nor, even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.” [21] Given the myriad differences between Europeans and Blacks, it was a small reach for the latter to be considered by the former as untermention, whose proper role in society was as a slave. 

 

II

 

“It is as much in the order of nature that men should enslave each other as that other animals should prey upon each other.

                                                                                      - Thomas Dew

 

A perception of religious superiority on the part of Muslims and Christians was often a substantial factor leading to the designation of blacks as inferior, and thereby appropriate for enslavement.  Chief among the arguments condemning them to slavery was the curse of Noah upon his second son, Ham.  The Bible states that, having left the Ark, Noah built a vineyard, made wine from the grapes, and soon entered a drunken sleep while he was naked. Ham apparently saw his father in this condition, and “saw the nakedness of his father,” an obvious euphemism to improper conduct on Ham’s part.  Ham related the incident to his two brothers, Shem and Japheth, who covered their father and did not dishonor him.  When Noah awoke and discovered Ham’s misconduct, he cursed Ham’s descendants, represented by Ham’s son, Canaan:

                        Cursed be Canaan, a Servant of Servants he shall be to his brothers.

                        Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.

                        May God enlarge Japheth; and let him dwell in the tents of Shem.

                        And let Canaan be his servant.[22]

            Medieval Biblical thinking was that the three races of man were descended from the three sons of Noah, with Shem settling Asia, Ham Africa, and Japheth Europe.[23]  The descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham were the Canaanites, the definition of which was stretched to include “Kushite,” the inhabitants of the ancient African civilization of Kush.[24]

St Augustine, in reliance on this passage, wrote in The City of God, “The condition of slavery is justly imposed on the sinner.  That is why we do not hear of a slave anywhere in the scriptures until Noah, the just man, punished his son’s sin with this word.”[25]  The story of Noah’s curse was often used in Europe to justify any form of menial servitude, as well as an explanation of the blackness of the peoples of central Africa. Muslims frequently relied upon it to enslave Africans.[26]        

An additional Biblical argument, although not as pervasive as Noah’s curse, is that the curse of Cain for killing his brother Abel was blackness. Although not used to justify slavery, it has been argued as an indication of black inferiority.[27]

Noah’s imprecation against the descendants of Ham, or God’s curse upon Cain were only partial religious justification for enslavement of blacks.  A more pertinent argument used by both Arab Muslims and Christians was that the Africans were “unbelievers.”   A similar rationale existed among the Portuguese and Spanish, who enslaved all non-Christians, including Gypsies, Jews and “Moors.”  The latter were considered especially suitable for slavery as they were “incapable of redemption.”[28]  In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued a bull entitled Dum Diversas, which empowered Portuguese King Alfonso V to reduce to “perpetual slavery” all “Saracens and pagans and other enemies of Christ” in West Africa.[29] A subsequent Bull, Romanus Pontifex, issued in 1454, empowered Portuguese authorities to enslave all people of sub-Saharan Africa.[30]  Although the Bull applied only to the Portuguese, it was an unmistakable statement of purpose by the church: The inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa were by nature suitable only for servitude, and no sin was committed by anyone who enslaved them.  Prince Henry the Navigator, a devoutly religious man, relied upon this Papal authority when he commissioned expeditions to obtain black slaves at the same time that they sought gold and the legendary Priester John in sub-Saharan Africa.  Prior to Papal authorization, Europeans refused to explore the area south of the cape of Africa for fear that they would “infallibly be changed into a black, and would carry to his end this mark of God’s vengeance upon his insolent prying.”[31]   

Aside from their perceived naturally inferior, animalistic nature, differences in religion, or an assumed lack of religion, were used as a further justification for the enslavement of blacks. It is important to note that these perceptions were in place prior to the institution of black slavery in the West.

  

            III

This is the best land in the world for Negroes

                                                                                                -Alonso de Zuazo, January 22, 1518

 

Slavery as an institution remained an element of English law but slowly dissolved in Western Europe with the advent of the medieval age, although some degree of class distinction remained. Serfdom replaced slavery, with personal obligations and rents due the landowner. The only reference to slavery in England at this time was a 1547 law that provided that beggars who avoided or fled from forced service were to be branded with an “S” indicating “slave.”[32]   For the Portuguese, however, black slavery became an institution. With the sugar revolution, traffic in human cargo became a lucrative business.  Forced migration of blacks to Europe began in 1442, and as early as 1517, fully one hundred years before the introduction of black slaves in Jamestown, a Portuguese official received authority to bring 4,000 black slaves to America. Shortly thereafter, the French, Dutch, Spanish, British, Danish, and even Brandenburg Prussians engaged in slave trading purely as a commercial venture.[33]  Net return on the slave trade was estimated at 30%, an attractive rate which led any number of British citizens to invest in slave trading ventures.[34]  Additionally, industries secondary to shipbuilding profited from the slave trade, including carpenters, sail makers, coopers, and painters.[35]  The demand for involuntary labor which European slave traders willingly supplied is illustrated by Dorothy Schneider:

The explorations of the 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th centuries were opening up huge new parts of the world.  To European and later American ears, these areas cried out for labor to develop and exploit their riches.  Africa itself discouraged development: Its fragmentation into tiny tribes made it difficult to conquer; its terrain and climate were hazardous, a “graveyard for white men”; and it already produced in plenty what Europeans wanted—gold, ivory, and spices.  But the Caribbean Islands and the vast continents of South and North America could be developed only with thousands, millions, of laborers.[36]

It is noteworthy that the vast majority of slave traffic was sent to sugar plantations in the Caribbean or other commercial interests in Latin America.  There was no concerted effort to import slaves into British America; rather Indentured Servants were brought in to perform agricultural labor.  Indentured servitude served the dual purpose of supplying needed labor for the American colonies and reducing the number of persons on poor relief in England, who were already the subject of contempt by those more fortunate. Those on relief in that country were required to wear a prominent “P” on the right shoulder, and were considered “nauseous to the beholder.”[37]   Once in America, the terms of one’s indenture was considered a proprietary interest of the master, and servants were treated accordingly. Unexpired terms of service were considered assets which were subject to levy in lawsuits. No amount of mistreatment or overwork by one’s master could shorten one’s term, in fact misconduct or an attempt at escape by a servant might lead to an extension of his term.  An extreme example of this policy is illustrated in the case of Richard Cornish, a homosexual, who sexually attacked a male servant.  Cornish was executed for the offense; but rather than free the servant, the court which convicted his master decreed that he should choose another master who would in turn compensate the colonial government for the costs of prosecution.[38]

Edmund Morgan has argued that the treatment of indentured servants illustrates “not only the fleeting ugliness of private enterprise…not only greed magnified by opportunity, producing fortunes for a few and misery for many…[but] also …Virginians beginning to move toward a source of labor that treated men as things.”[39]  Given the contempt displayed towards lower classes and members of different ethnicity, colonial America offered fertile soil in which racism might easily flourish.

The arrival of blacks in British America began “not with a bang, but a whimper.”[40] In a report to company officials in London, John Rolfe briefly noted the arrival in August, 1619 of “20, and odd negars” from a Dutch ship, apparently low on provisions. The seeming unimportance of the event is illustrated by the fact that no mention is made of it elsewhere.  However, Virginia’s black population grew quickly, primarily as a result of the reduction in the number of indentured servants transported from England.  By 1659, the number had reached three hundred, and by the time of Bacon’s Rebellion, over two thousand blacks were present, primarily imported from Barbados and Dutch New Netherland.[41] 

The reduced number of persons under indenture and consequent increase of slaves can be largely attributed to improved economic conditions in England. With the restoration of Charles II to the throne and the return of political stability, the English economy improved. Wages and employment increased and agricultural production improved at a time when population growth slowed. The result was a fewer number of hard-core poor for whom indenture in America was attractive. In America, the price received for tobacco fell markedly, which also made the importation of servants less attractive.  At the same time, The Royal African Company, established in 1672, received the royal Asiento to supply slaves.  Although most slaves were sent to the sugar islands of the Caribbean, the availability of black slaves made their purchase attractive.  The ratio of slave prices to servant prices, when adjusted for inflation, fell from 2.88 in 1674 to 1.83 in 1691. Additionally, Virginia legislation provided that the issue of female slaves were themselves slaves. Inasmuch as slaves were bound to lifetime service rather than a term of years, and since the issue of female slaves were themselves slaves for life, black slaves became an increasingly attractive investment.[42]

The difficulty of controlling incorrigible servants also made black slaves preferable to indentured servants. Both were prone to run away; however servants were more likely to blend into society and be difficult to locate.  Illustrative of this fact is a notice posted in the Pennsylvania Journal September 26, 1751 for a runaway servant:

“…an Irish Servant man, Named Christopher Cooney, of Short Stature, pale Complexion, short brown Hair”;…”[he] has a Scarr on his left Cheek, near his Nose, has lost one of his underfore Teeth, has had his Right Leg broke, and walks with his Toes turning Outwards.”[43]

            Runaway slaves need not be described with such particularity.  All blacks were presumed to be slaves unless they could prove otherwise; making apprehension considerably easier. This limited opportunity for successful escape provided an insidious though facile motivation to replace indentured servants with black slaves.[44]    

IV

 

Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and in the event of war, they also join themselves to those who hate us, and depart from the land.

                                                                                -Exodus 1:10

 

 

Despite the English proclivity to despise all things not English, Black-White relations in the Western Hemisphere at first demonstrated a surprising degree of parity.  Although the lack of bellicosity might seem to indicate the absence or racist ideas, closer examination reveals that the camaraderie was based more on a common enemy, or at least a common master, rather than an amelioration of old notions.

Cooperation between the races first appeared with the attack of Sir Francis Drake upon the Spanish settlement at Panama in 1578.  In his attack, he was allied with a substantial group of escaped African slaves known as Cimarrons, estimated to be as many as 3,000.[45] The alliance is remarkable in that Drake had himself engaged in the slave trade, and had expressed annoyance when the Spanish and Portuguese tried to bar him from doing so.[46]  This unlikely alliance led Edmund Morgan to comment:

In spite of the fact that Drake had engaged in the slave trade, in spite of the fact that the English in Ireland were at that very moment subjecting the natives to a treatment not much different from what the Indians of Hispaniola received from Columbus, the English in Panama had cast themselves as liberators and had allied with blacks against whites. They had taught the Cimarrons their own religious view and engaged them in piracy and pillage flavored with righteousness and revolution.  The alliance seems to have been untroubled by racial prejudice. To be sure, the English were scarcely in a position to assume airs of superiority, but the accounts suggest a camaraderie that went beyond the mutual benefits of the alliance.[47]

            Drake’s alliance was lauded by Richard Hakluyt the younger in The Principal Navigations of the English Nation, (c.1579) who concluded that the Cimarrons would become willing and happy subjects of the British crown, “when as by good provision, he shall find himselfe plentifully fed, warmly clothed, and well lodged and by our nation made free from the tyrannous Spaniard, and quietly and courteously governed by our nation.”[48] At the same time, Hakluyt suggested that an English settlement in America would be appropriate “for condemned Englise men and women, in whom there may be founde hope of amendement.”[49]

Morgan sees in Drake’s cooperation with the Cimarrons and Hakluyt’s comments “no sign of racial prejudice, unless in this assignment of English criminals to a place alongside the Cimarrons.”[50]  The qualification belies his earlier position.  Hakluyt’s remarks are reminiscent of the old Russian prayer to bless and keep the Czar …far away from us.  Hakluyt obviously considers the area ideal for those whom he (and one must assume most other Englishmen) would much prefer to removed a comfortable distance. The presence of the Spanish, coupled with English hatred of the Catholicism which the former embraced, appears to have been the sine qua non of this relationship.

A substantial degree of camaraderie was also evident in early colonial Virginia between white indentured servants and black slaves.  At a time when indentured servants substantially outnumbered black slaves, the two groups often worked side by side, and, according to Philip Morgan, “ate, caroused, smoked, ran away, stole, and made love together.”[51] Morgan describes a particular occasion which bears repeating:

One Friday in August, Thomas Cocke’s “”servants” were in their master’s orchard cutting down weeds.  The gang included at least two white men who were in their mid-twenties and presumably either servants or tenants, and at least three slaves.  After work, this mixed complement began drinking; they offered cider to other white visitors, one of whom “dranke cupp for cupp’ with the “Negroes.”  One of the white carousers, Katherine Watkins, the wife of a Quaker later alleged that John Long, a mulatto belonging to Cocke, had “put his yard into her and ravished” her; but other witnesses testified that she was inebriated and made sexual advances to the slaves.  She had, for instance, raised the tail of Dirke’s shirt saying “he would have a good pricke,” put her hand on mulatto Jack’s codpiece, saying she “loved him for his Fathers sake for his Father was a very handsome young man,” and embraced Mingo “about the Necke,” flung him on the bed, “Kissed him and putt her hand into his Codpiece.”[52]

Again, racial prejudice is not apparent; yet it must be remembered that the parties involved shared a common master.

            Any tolerance of black/white camaraderie dissipated as the number of slaves increased and the number of indentured servants decreased.  The number of black slaves imported into the Chesapeake area in the years 1700-1710 was double the number imported during the entire seventeenth century.[53]  The Royal African Company lost its monopoly in 1698, and increased participation in the slave trade led to increased numbers of salt water slaves in America. The lucrative nature of the trade caused an explosion in supply.[54]  As the slave population increased, the danger of slave revolts accordingly increased. “Every colonist knew that when he purchased a man or woman in chains, he had bought a potential insurrectionist. The larger the specter of black revolt, the greater the effort of white society to neutralize it by further restricting the rights and activities of slaves.”[55] By 1720, blacks outnumbered whites in colonial South Carolina by two to one. South Carolina planters, who often lived away from their plantations, instituted a series of increasingly severe control on slaves, to counter the danger of revolt; but these restrictions only increased black tension, which finally erupted in the Stono Rebellion of 1739.[56]  In the eyes of white planters, this plethora of slaves and the possibility of armed resistance mandated a de jure system of racial discrimination to reinforce the de facto system already existing on the ground.[57]   

The perceived need to exercise authority over blacks was exacerbated by the predilection of the English settlers that they were culturally and racially superior to all other peoples. There was within the settlers a vaguely racial notion of English “genius,” not shared with outsiders.[58] T.H. Breen argues: “To accept massive numbers of people so profoundly alien to English traditions risked permanent disjunctions within the social order.”[59]  They could either incorporate them into English society, or maintain them in a state of perpetual bondage. They chose the latter. The English decision to maintain blacks as slaves rather than as potential members of society was made more acceptable to white sensibilities by the rationalization that black slaves were somewhat less than human. Said one Englishman: “The planters do not want to be told that their negroes are human creatures.  If they believe them to be of human kind, they cannot regard them…as no better than dogs or horses.”[60]

            The first use of racial prejudice as a system of control in the colonies was racial hatred directed at Indians rather than blacks.  Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 was in reality a racial war directed at the Indians on the Virginia frontier; Bacon made no attempt to hide the fact that he hated all Indians. It is noteworthy that Bacon accepted white servants and blacks into his entourage; [61]indeed, the last group captured (they refused to surrender, even after the death of Bacon) consisted of eighty slaves and twenty indentured servants.[62]

            Bacon’s intentions were to enslave those Indians he did not kill, as the Virginia Burgesses had decreed that any Indian caught in rebellion would be enslaved for life.[63]  Edmund Morgan has argued that racial hatred was the basis for this enslavement of Indians which soon evolved into black slavery: “If the natives of Virginia were insufficient in number, substitute natives from other regions could be brought in, whether from other parts of America or from Africa.  They were both, after all, basically uncivil, unchristian, and above all, unwhite.”[64]

 

V

 

If that’s the law, then the law’s a ass, a idiot.

-          Charles Dickens

 

 

The establishment of a system of de jure racial discrimination ended forever the possibility of black and white equality in Colonial America.  Laws passed by the colonial legislatures were intended to enforce and lend the color of legality to a system already in place.  Many of these laws conflicted with the established law of England, and thereby deprived the slaves of the “rights of Englishmen,” a privilege which the colonists held dear.  The colonists did not consider this disparity of treatment to be unfair.  After all, to their minds, their slaves were neither “English” nor “men.”

            The issue of legal disparity had been presented to the British government in 1679 when it was asked to approve laws for Barbados presented by the Lords of Trade in which masters were authorized to inflict punishment upon slaves that would have been illegal under existing English law. A legal advisor found them acceptable, noting: “although Negroes in that Island are punishable in a different and more severe manner than other Subjects are for Offences of the like nature, yet I humbly conceive that the Laws there concerning Negroes are reasonable laws, for by reason of their numbers they become dangerous, and being a brutish sort of people and reckoned as goods and chattels in that Island, it is of necessity or at least convenient to have Laws for the Government of them different from the Laws of England, to prevent the great mischief that otherwise may happen to the Planters and Inhabitants in that Island.”[65]

            Although the justification above described rested on the “brutish” nature of blacks, they were denied protection of the most basic right, that of life itself, based on the assumption that the proprietary interests of the owner were more important than the life of the slave. In 1669, the Burgesses enacted a statute to protect a master who might, (through oversight, of course) employ more force than was necessary to discipline a slave. Such conduct towards a white servant would constitute manslaughter; if slaves were afforded similar protection, the result would be a chilling effect on the master of an incorrigible slave. It would at the same time encourage rebelliousness among the slave population.  To correct this obvious anomaly, the assembly passed An act about the casuall killing of slaves:

Whereas the only law in force for the punishment of refractory servants resisting their master, mistress or overseer cannot be inflicted upon negroes [the law typically provided for extension of the time of servitude for such an offense], nor the obstinancy of many of them by other than violent meanes supprest, Be it enacted and declared by this grand assembly, If any slave resist his master (or other by his masters order correcting him) and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be accompted Felony, but the master (or that person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquit from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice (which alone makes murther Felony) should induce any man to destroy his own estate.[66]

It is remarkable that the above statute was passed at a time when the majority of forced labor in Virginia was performed by white indentured servants.  The legislature was prepared to deal with the “casuall” killing of blacks even at a time when there were few extant.  The statute is stark indication of the typical Virginian attitude that blacks were not only property, but were also untermention.

            The treatment of offenders at law guilty of similar offenses often demonstrated disparate treatment on the basis of race. An example of this is a Virginia provision for treatment of runaway servants. Since runaway servants constituted a major issue for planters, the assembly provided that the names of runaway slaves would be announced at the church doors. If the runaway did not turn himself in after he had been so “proclaimed,” it would be “lawful for any person or person whomsoever to kill and destroy such slaves by such ways and means as he, she, or they shall think fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime for the same.”  If the runaway were captured, the owner thereof could receive court permission “to order such punishment to the said slave, either by dismembering or any other way, not touching his life, as they in their discretion shall think fit, for the reclaiming any such incorrigible slave, and terrifying others from the like practice. “[67]

            Separate treatment for slaves was not confined to the South.  In Charlestown, Massachusetts in1755, two slaves, a male named Mark and a female named Phyllis, were convicted of murdering their master, one John Codman by arsenic poisoning.  Phyllis was burned at the stake, and Mark was hanged.  His body was left hanging on the gallows for over twenty years.  His bones swaying in the breeze became something of a local landmark.[68]  It is inconceivable that a white person, even an indentured servant, would have been burned alive. Even the victims of the Salem witchcraft trials were hanged. Similarly, the desecration of the body of a white person by allowing it to remain hanging for two decades was unthinkable. Apparently, blacks were considered somewhat less than human and were treated accordingly.

            Another example of severe treatment accorded only to slaves is indicated in an act passed by the Virginia Assembly in May, 1723:

            II. Be it enacted…that if any number of negros, or other slaves, exceeding five, shall at any time hereafter consult, advise, or conspire to rebel or make insurrection, or shall plot or conspire the murder of any person or persons whatsoever, every such consulting, plotting, or conspiring, shall be adjudged and deemed felony; and the slave or slaves convicted thereof, in manner herein after directed, shall suffer death, and be utterly excluded the benefit of clergy, and of all laws made concerning the same…

            IV. And to the end, such Negroes, Mulattos, or Indians, not being Christians, as shall hereafter be produced as evidences on the trial of any slave for capital crimes, may be under the greater obligation to declare the truth.  Be it enacted, That where any such Negro, Mulatto, or Indian, shall upon due proof made, or pregnant circumstances appearing before any country court within this colony, be found to have given false testimony, every such offender shall, without further trial, be ordered by the said courft to have one ear nailed to the pillory, and there to stand for the space of one hour, and then the said ear to be cut off; and thereafter the other ear nailed in like manner, and cut off, at the expiration of one other hour, and moreover, to order every such offender thirty-nine lashes, well laid on, on his or her bare back, at the common whipping post.[69]

            Other examples of treatment of Negro slaves in a discriminatory manner are not as extreme, but indicate an implicit opinion of superiority on the part of English colonists. In 1630 Virginia, one Hugh Davis was “soundly whipped before an assembly of Negroes and others for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and the shame of Christians, by defiling his body in lying with a Negro.”[70]  In another instance, three servants were tried for running away in 1640 Virginia.  One was black, the other two white.  All were sentenced to thirty lashes, well laid on, and the whites sentenced to extended service on one year to their master, and an additional three years to the colony. The third, “being a Negro named John Punch, shall serve his said master or his assigns for the term of his natural life here or elsewhere.” [71]  No explanation for the disparity in sentencing other than race appear on the record; Punch received a more severe sentence for no other obvious reason than that he was black.

            The inferior level in which blacks were held (and the determination to keep them at that level) is further indicated by the attitude of master and government towards slave adoption of Christianity. One minister remarked that masters were reluctant to have their slaves baptized as “they say it often makes them proud, and not so good servants.”[72]  Inasmuch as lack of Christianity had been a justification for slavery, Virginia slave owners worried at times that the converse might be true.  To prevent slaves suing for their freedom on the basis of Christianity, the Assembly passed a statute stating that baptism did not affect the legal status of the slave.[73]  The purpose of the statute was to remove any purported legal entanglement to baptism of slaves; although masters did not hasten to encourage baptism for the reasons stated above.[74] The sentiment of English slave owners is in marked contrast to the French Code Noir, issued in March, 1685 which required that all slaves in the islands “be baptized and instructed in the Catholic Religion,” and further forbade “our subjects…to disturb or prevent our other subjects, even their slaves, from the free exercise of the Catholic religion.”[75]

 

CONCLUSION

 

            Carl N. Degler aptly argues against the position of many revisionist historians that slavery created racism rather than vice versa:

            There are two objections to this explanation for the emergence of racial discrimination in America….The first is that only black people were reduced to the position of slaves. It is true, as [revisionist historians] have pointed out, that other ethnic groups notably the irish, were also looked down upon and exploited.  But only blacks and some Indians—another colored population—were ever reduced to actual slavery, that is property.  The second reason is that outside the Chesapeake region, in areas where slaves were not and never would be important in the economy, blacks were also enslaved and free blacks discriminated against.[76]

            To conclude that racism was a device created to maintain the existing power structure is to ignore overwhelming evidence in the historical record of the presumed superiority of Western Europeans, especially English Protestants, over those who exhibited physical differences, primarily differences in gradation of color.  Although discrimination against blacks did not immediately present itself in colonial America, it reared its ugly head within a few short years of the first arrival of blacks at Jamestown, and was in essence the expansion of a preexisting predilection in Europe.  Although they appear close in time to each other, historical evidence argues strongly that racism was the first of these evil twins born from the womb of Western European thought, with black slavery born shortly thereafter, clutching its malignant sibling by the heel.