A History of the American People

made no difference. Early laws laid down that baptism did not change a person's free or unfree
status. Such laws spread north. Thus in 1692 a Maryland statute insisted that baptism did nothing
to change a black's servile status.
Carolina was the first slave state, properly speaking. From the start it imported black slaves,
even before it acquired rice as an agricultural staple. A Carolina promotion pamphlet of 1682
stated flatly: without [negro slaves] a planter can never do any great matter.' The same year, a settler told a friend:Negroes are more desirable than white servants. This was because a white
indentured servant cost £2-£4 a year in capital investment. A slave cost £18-£30 outright, plus
the likelihood of breeding. Young, healthy female slaves were particularly valuable for this
reason. In Maryland, slavery grew only slowly. Until the late 1680s, an estate was more likely to
be run by indentured labor. Early probates from the years 1658-70 show that only 15 out of 150
estates had slaves. But the treatment and legal status of slaves, especially black ones, declined as
the 17th century wore on. A statute of 1663 recognized black service as perpetual, writing of
Negroes and other Slaves who are incapable of making Satisfaction by Addition of Tyme.' A black had to prove he was under limited contract by producing documents, otherwise the law assumed he (and his children) was a chattel slave. Much legislation of these years strengthened the hands of the planters against slaves. In Carolina, slavery was an early source of corruption in politics. Slavers were heard to boast that they couldwith a bowl of punch get who they would Chosen of the parliament and afterwards
who they would Chosen of the Grand Council. The Barbadians in Carolina also enslaved
numbers of Indians. This was strictly against the law. The policy of Charles II's government was
to get and continue the friendship and assistance of the Indians and make them useful without force or injury.' It laid down (1672) that enslavement of Indians was forbiddenupon any
occasion or pretence whatsoever. But the Barbadian planters induced Indian tribes-who did not
need much persuasion-to make war on others to produce Indian slaves. An early anti-slaver in
Charleston, John Stewart, wrote angry letters home to England, protesting about the behavior of
the Barbadians, or Goose Creek Men' as he called them (this was their densest area of settlement). He said that one of their leaders, Maurice Matthews, an important man because he was the official surveyor as well as a planter and slaver, wasHell itself for Malice, a Jesuit for
Design politick.' Stewart eventually got Matthews sacked for slaving. His predecessor, Florence
O'sullivan, was as bad: `a very siddencious, troublesome Man, an ill-natured buggerer of
children,' as other settlers complained.
All the same American slavery was on a small scale, Carolina being the only exception.
Large-scale slavery was an 18th-century phenomenon. Even by 1714 there were fewer than
60,000 slaves in the whole of the English colonies on mainland America. Thereafter the numbers
grew steadily-78,000 by 1727, 263,000 by 1754, and 697,000 at the first census in 1790. So in
Dr Johnson's day the existence of huge, black, servile multitudes in America was a recent
development, growing daily-one reason he was so outraged by it. In early settler times, by
contrast, over most of the colonies, slavery was very marginal, blacks were almost invisible, and
servile work was seen in terms of indentured whites, who served their terms, became freemen
and soon owned land and exercised their votes. So the leading settlers, creating their assemblies,
were not struck by the paradox of free whites and blacks who had no rights at all. That came
later-when it was too late and slavery was deeply entrenched.
The early lack of interest by the English government in the American mainland colonies led,
therefore, both to a rapid growth of legislative assemblies, with wide franchises and, rather later,
to an unregulated growth of slavery. When the home country first began to take a closer interest,