Slavery In The American Colonies

Tobacco was a profitable crop, but its profits did not come close to those of the sugarcane. Tobacco, like sugar required a large amount of labour. As a result, ample numbers of immigrants traveled to the Chesapeake eager to work. Plunging tobacco market from the mid-1680s to 1715 forced farmers to diversify their crops, shifting to grain, hemp and flax and raising greater numbers of domestic animals. Virginia, for example, experienced a drastic growth in slave population as enslaved Africans replaced indentured servants. .
             Whipping, branding and other inhumane treatment was not uncommon. One Virginian slave, named Emanuel, was convicted of trying to escape in July, 1640, and was condemned to thirty stripes, with the letter "R" for "runaway" branded on his cheek and "work in a shackle one year or more as his master shall see cause." This was an abject slave, subject to the court's definition of him as merchantable and movable property, and to his master's virtual whim. Indeed, the general assembly of Virginia in 1662 passed an act, which directly and consciously invoked Justinian Code whereby a child born of a slave mother was also held to be a slave, regardless of its father's legal status. .
             The status of blacks in America quickly changed. By the 1660s, court decisions made it nearly impossible for blacks to be viewed as anything other than property and the institution of slavery took root in the new colonies. As economic conditions in European countries improved during the seventeenth century, white indentured servitude gradually disappeared from the colonial landscape. As a result, planters, who needed dependable labour, gradually began to restrict the activities of African servants. .
             Although documents existed, stating obvious discrimination against races, the people of Chesapeake sold blacks as servants that would one day become free as opposed to slaves. Throughout the next 20 years, much evidence pointed towards the fact that many blacks were being treated as slaves and their children were being inherited like property.