man-of-war landed twenty slaves and sold them to the colonists. These slaves and the Pilgrims in the Mayflower landed in America the same year-the slaves in Virginia and the Pilgrims in Massachusetts. As early as 1626 the West India Company imported negro slaves among the quiet burghers of New Amsterdam. The city itself owned shares in a slave ship, advanced the money for its outfit, and participated in the profits. The slaves were sold at public auction to the highest bidder, and the average price was less than $140. Stuyvesant was instructed to use every exertion to promote the sale of negroes.'

"That New York is not a slave State like South Carolina," said the great historian of the United States, "is due to climate and not to the superior humanity of the founders."2 In 1637, negro slaves were imported into New England from Providence Isle. The year after New Jersey was divided from New York-that is, in 1665—a bounty of 75 acres of land was offered by the proprietors for the importation of each able-bodied slave.1

Not even did the Quakers of Pennsylvania entirely eschew the holding of negro slaves. William Penn was a slaveholder. In his last will he directed his own slaves to be emancipated, but this direction was disregarded by his heir.5

Four of the proprietors of Carolina, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Earl Craven, Sir George Carteret, and Sir John Colleton, with Ralph Marshall and John Portman, who came out with Governor Sayle, were all members of the Royal African Company, of which James, Duke of York, was chief, and which was chartered and given the sole trade in slaves on the African coast. Negro slavery being thus a recognized institution in all the colonies, it was assumed that it would exist also in Carolina; and so we find the philosopher Locke and his friend Shaftes

Cobb on Slavery, p. cxlix.

* Bancroft (ed. 1883), Vol. I, p. 513.

3 Ibid. (ed. 1883), Vol. I, p. 293. The edition of the News Letter, published in Boston, for the week from May 22 to May 29, 1710, contains but one advertisement, which is this:

“Advertisement.-Two negro women, one aged about 25 and the other abut 50 years old, to be sold by Mr. Wm. Clark, junior, merchant, to be seen at his house, Common street, Boston." (The Newspaper Press, William L. King, p. 12.)

Cobb on Slavery, supra.

5 Bancroft (ed. 1883), Vol. I, p. 572.

bury, in their proposed fundamental constitutions of 1669, two years before the first negro was brought to the colony, providing that "every freeman of Carolina shall hare absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever."

The significance of this provision was not in the recognition of slavery as an institution in the province-that was assumed-nor yet in the absolute power it proposed to give to the freeman over his slave, great as that was, but in the last words, wherein it was intended to provide against the effect of the possible conversion and baptism of the negroes. A doubt had arisen and prevailed extensively upon this point. The idea was that as the enslavement of negroes was mostly justified on the ground that they were heathen, upon their becoming Christians they would be enfranchised. It is curious to observe the effect of this scruple, which appears to have been an honest one. Some Christian masters, rather than offend their conscience by holding fellow Christians in slavery, withheld the gospel from their people, lest they might hear and believe and be converted and become as one of them. We shall see directly how church and state agreed in dispelling this idea.

With the slaves which Sir John Yeamans and others brought over from Barbados and the other West India Islands they brought with them the slave code of those islands, especially that of Barbados, from which place most of the customs and institutions of the province of South Carolina were derived. The first statutory provision in South Carolina in regard to slaves was that of the act of 1686, already mentioned, inhibiting trading with them and declaring that it should not be lawful for a negro or other slave to travel or go abroad from the owner's house between sunsetting and sunrising without a note from the master, mistress, or overseer, and authorizing any person to apprehend any such and reasonably to chastise and correct such slave and cause him to be sent home.

On the 29th of April, 1668, an act was passed in Barbados declaring negro slaves real estate, and not chattels, and enacting that they should descend to the heir and widow of any person dying intestate, according to the manner and custom of lands of inheritance held in fee simple. This provision was

The Laws of Barbados.

followed to a modified extent in South Carolina in this curious clause of the act of 1690, viz:

And it is further enacted, That all slaves shall have convenient clothes once every year, and that no slave shall be free by becoming a christian, but as to payment of debts shall be deemed and taken as all other goods and chattels, and when other goods and chattels are not sufficient to satisfy the said debts, then so many slaves only as are necessary, as well proportionately out of the slaves assigned for dowry, as those that belong to the heirs and executors, shall be sold for payment of debt, and all negroes and slaves shall be accounted as freehold in all other cases whatsoever and descend accordingly.

2

And so it was that President Middleton declared to the Spanish ambassador, in 1725, that negroes were real property, such as houses and lands, in Carolina. They were nevertheless always returned as personal property in the inventories of intestates, as the records of the ordinary's or probate office in Charleston abundantly show. This condition continued until 1740, when it was declared that negroes and Indian slaves should be reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors and their executors, administrators, and assigns."

On the 8th of August, 1688, "an act for the governing of negroes" was adopted in Barbados,' which served as the basis and model of all the legislation in South Carolina upon the subject. The first attempt in providing a slave code for this province was made under Sothell in 1690. It followed generally the Barbadian act of 1688; but was superseded by the more elaborate act of 1712 under the administration of Governor Charles Craven. Hildreth, commenting upon enactments of 1712 in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts imposing prohibitory duties upon the importation of Indian and negro slaves, observes: Contemporaneously with these prohibitory acts of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the first extant slave law of South Carolina was enacted, the basis of the existing slave code of that State." He writes:

"Whereas," says the preamble of this remarkable statute, "the plantations and estates of this province can not be well and sufficiently managed

17 Statutes, pp. 343, 344.

Hewatt, Vol. I, p. 314.

37 Statutes, p. 397.

The Laws of Barbados, act No. 82.

57 Statutes, p. 343.

Ibid, p. 352.

7 Hildreth's History of the United States (1840), Vol. II, p. 271.

and brought into use without the labor and service of negro and other slaves; and forasmuch as the said negroes and other slaves brought unto the people of this province are of barbarous, wild, savage natures and such as render them wholly unqualified to be governed by the laws, customs, and practices of this province, but that it is absolutely necessary that such other constitutions, laws, and orders should in this province be made and enacted for the good regulation and ordering of them as may distrain the disorders, rapine, and inhumanity to which they are naturally prone and inclined, and may also tend to the safety and security of the people of this province and their estates," it therefore enacts, etc. And then follows an analysis of the act in which the objectionable features are set forth. "South Carolina, it thus appears," continues the historian, "assumed at the beginning the same bad preeminence on the subject of slave legislation which she still maintains."

The fact is that this preamble, as well as many of the provi sions of the act thus criticised, were taken verbatim from the Barbadian statute of 1688, and were not original declarations and measures entitling Carolina to a preeminence, either for good or evil, over other slaveholding communities. The act of 1712, as has appeared, was not "the first extant slave law" of the province, as the historian alleges; nor was it by any means the last. Had he turned but a page of the volume, from which he extracted the provisions of the law he so condemned, he would have found the following enactment of two years after, 1714, in the same direction as those of the two northern provinces to which he alludes:1

IX. And whereas the number of negroes do extremely increase in this province, and through the afflicting providence of God the white persons do not proportionably multiply, by reason whereof the safety of the said province is greatly endangered; for the prevention of which for the future: Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that all negro slaves from twelve years old and upwards imported into this part of the province from any part of Africa shall pay such additional duties as is hereafter named; that is to say, that every merchant or other person whatsoever who shall six months after the ratification of this act import any negro slave as aforesaid shall for every such slave pay unto the public receiver for the time being (within thirty days after such importation) the sum of two pounds current money of this Province.

It has already been seen that provisions were made in 1716 to require each planter to have one white servant for every ten negro slaves, and that a bounty of £25 was offered for every white servant, and £5 more for such as were imported in two years. In the same year by another act a duty of £30 per head was laid upon all negroes imported from any of the

17 Statutes, S. C., p. 367.

colonies. In 1719 a duty was exacted of £10 per head on all negroes imported from Africa directly and £30 on all imported from the plantations.2 In 1722 the same duty was laid on negroes imported from Africa, £10, and that on negroes from the other colonies still further increased to £50. The reason given for this discrimination is that the negroes imported from the colonies were either transported thence by courts of justice or sent off by private persons for their ill behavior.3

The slave code was again thoroughly revised under Governor Nicholson's provisionary government in 1722. The preamble taken from the Barbadian act was still preserved and the principal features of it reenacted, following, indeed, its very phraseology in many instances.4

All negroes, mulattoes, mustizoes, or Indians that had theretofore been sold and were then held for slaves were declared to be slaves, excepting such as had been or thereafter should for any peculiar merit be declared free by the governor and council under any law of the province.

No master, mistress, or overseer was allowed to give their negroes or other slaves leave on Sundays, fast days, holy days, or any other time to go out of their plantations without a letter or ticket, unless such negro or slave wore a livery; and any person seeing a negro or slave out of his master's plantations without a ticket or in company with a white person was empowered to correct such servant by whipping, not exceeding twenty lashes. An overseer who found a strange negro on his master's plantation without leave, and did not apprehend and whip him, forfeited 20 shillings.

Justices of the peace had power at all times to search for guns, pistols, swords, and other "offensive weapons" in negro houses, and to take them, unless the negro or slave having them had a ticket or license in writing from his master allowing him to hunt, to be renewed once every month, or unless when in company with a white person hunting. No master or mistress should allow more than one negro on one plantation the privilege. If any slave so intrusted killed another man's cattle, sheep, or hogs, or did any damage with it, the master was liable in double the value.

12 Statutes, S. C., p. 651.
23 Statutes, S. C., p. 57.

3 Ibid., p. 195.

47 Statutes, S. C., p. 371.