“Until 1641, no colony turned state had legalized slavery.”
Am I the only one seeing a problem with the facts right there?
I noticed that, too.
Well, this is the American “Non” Thinker, after all. Used to be a very decent publication...used to be.
Something about 1776 or 1789 I’m sure.
Take Georgia for example, when founded slavery was illegal.
The colony of the Province of Georgia under James Oglethorpe banned slavery in 1735, the only one of the thirteen colonies to have done so. However, it was legalized by royal decree in 1751.
My relatives and ancestors come from south coastal Georgia.
We dour Scots opposed slavery.
In 1739 eighteen of the most prominent members of the Darien colony signed the first petition against the introduction of slavery into Georgia, in response to pleas to Oglethorpe and the trustees by inhabitants of Savannah to lift the prohibition of slavery.[11] The Highlanders’ petition was successful, but slavery was introduced ten years later in 1749 because the proprietors could not attract enough laborers to make the colony profitable
In 1775 while the new state constitution and government was being formed during the revolution. Once again the town of Darien opposed slavery, using a moral argument that stands the test of time.
In January 1775, the city passed a resolution condemning slavery, saying:
To show the world that we are not influenced by any contracted or interested motives, but a general philanthropy for all mankind, of whatever climate, language, or complexion, we hereby declare our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of Slavery in America, (however the uncultivated state of our country, or other specious arguments may plead for it,) a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties, (as well as our lives,) debasing part of our fellow-creatures below men, and corrupting the virtue and morals of the rest; and is laying the basis of that liberty we contend for (and which we pray the Almighty to continue to the latest posterity) upon a very wrong foundation. We therefore resolve, at all times to use our utmost endevours for the manumission of Slaves...
— Darien Committee, Darien Resolutions, January 12, 1775[12]
I guarantee that most history books do not cover the fact that the small south georgia farmers opposed slavery when the rich English established the plantation system in North America. Of course the greatest horrors of slavery occurred in Mexico, Brazil, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. But lets not forget Africa, China, India, Egypt, and any other empire up to and including the slavery of communism and the use of slave labor by Nazi Germany.
Getting off my Calvinist soap box now.
I think the author was phrasing this to exclude French and Spanish colonies that also allowed slavery but weren't a part of the American Independency movement.
-PJ
No one ever confronts these people with the facts!
An abbreviated history ...
Black slave owners have not been studied as a part of American history, rather as a datum to American history, and yet slavery as a perpetual institution is legalized based on a case brought before the House of Burgess by an African, who had been indentured in Jamestown, Virginia 1621 and was known as Antonio the Negro according to the earliest records.
Anthony Johnson was a Black man, one of the original 20 brought to Jamestown in 1619. By 1623, he had achieved his freedom and by 1651 was prosperous enough to import five “servants” of his own, for which he was granted 250 acres as “headrights”.
Johnson was captured in his native Angola by an enemy tribe and sold to Arab slave traders. He was eventually sold as an indentured servant to a merchant working for the Virginia Company.
He arrived in Virginia in 1621 aboard the James.
Johnson was sold to a white planter named Bennet as an indentured servant to work on his Virginia tobacco farm.
He was the first black indentured servant, the first free black, and the first to establish the first black community, first black landowner, first black slave owner, and the first person based on his court case to establish slavery legally in North America.
One could argue that he was the founder of slavery in Virginia.
In 1651 Anthony Johnson was given 250 acres as “head rights” for purchasing five incoming white redemptioners.
By July 1651 Johnson had five indentured servants of his own.
(four white and one black)
In 1654, he brought a case before Virginia courts in which he contested a suit launched by one of his indentured servants, a Negro who adopted the name of John Casor.
Johnson won the suit and retained Casor as his servant for life, who thus became the first official and true slave in America.
This officially made Johnson the first legal slave owner in the British colonies that would eventually become the United States.
Virginia made this practice legal for everyone in 1661, by making it state law for any free white, black, or Indian, to be able to own slaves, along with indentured servants.
While Johnson is generally considered by most historians to be the first legal slave owner in the British colonies that would become the United States, there was one person who preceded him in 1640 who owned a slave in all but name.
The virtual slave was John Punch, ordered to be an indentured servant for life, though by law was still considered an indentured servant with all the rights that went with that.
In Punch’s case, he was made a lifelong indentured servant owing to the fact that he tried to leave before his contract was up. When he was captured and brought back, the judge in the matter decided a suitable punishment was to have Punch’s contract continue for the rest of his life.
In 1652 John Johnson, Anthony Johnson’s eldest son, purchased eleven incoming white males and females, and received 550 acres adjacent to his father.
There were a number of additional Virginia land patents representing grants to free blacks of from fifty to 550 acres for purchasing white redemptioners.
Like many wealthy landowners of the pre-Civil War South, Sherrod Bryant owned slaves. They probably worked much of Bryant’s 700 acres in Middle Tennessee, an area larger than that of Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage plantation.
The slaves under Bryant helped raise hogs for their owner, who had a large family and was always looking to buy more property. Unlike many slave owners, however, Sherrod Bryant was black.
Most indentured servants in the British colonies in America were actually Irish, English, German, and Scottish, rather than African.
I don’t have any links for the above.
This is from some of my saved college notes from years ago when I studied African American history.
Too: According to economic historian Stanley Engerman, In Charleston, South Carolina about 42 percent of free blacks owned slaves in 1850, and about 64 percent of these slaveholders were women.
You aren’t. Maybe we see different flaws, but this article is really sloppily written.
When the article says “no colony turned state”, ok, well then when the colony was doing slavery stuff, go complain to Britain about how bad it was.
That’s not reflective of the United States.
Different country.