seventeenth century. Piecemeal regulations were passed that seemed useful
or necessary to the whites. By about 1680, however, the increase in the
black population seemed to Virginia’s white colonists to demand a compre-
hensive and harsh set of laws. These became the model throughout the
South for the next two centuries. Their main thrust was to deny blacks the
limited rights of white indentured servants, which included the right to take
a master to court for brutal treatment and the right to own property. The
clear intent of the law was to separate all whites from blacks, mulattoes, and
Indians, who were to have no rights at all. As much force as was required to
keep them in submission was declared legal. As the black population
increased, the regulations became more codified, more proactive, and more
harsh.
But even these harsh codes were deemed insufficient. Several colonies
tried to limit the importation of slaves. Largely for the sake of security, in
1738 the British authorities in the new colony of Georgia, which was con-
sidered dangerously close to Spanish Florida, banned slavery. After the
Stono Rebellion, South Carolina also considered banning slavery. But its
prosperity was based on rice and indigo, and, perhaps even more impor-
tant, the planters’ lifestyle depended on a servile class, so the South
Carolinians continued to import great numbers of slaves. In the most popu-
lated areas, around Charleston, only one person in five was white. To be
sure of retaining the preponderance of power, the whites passed a code
in 1740, which, among other restrictions, prevented blacks from being
taught to read. As an American judge has ironically commented, “The
reward for killing a runaway slave was far less than the fine for teaching him
to write.”
Fearing rebellion, whites in both the North and the South instituted
draconian punishments. “Raising a hand” against a white, even to ward off
a blow, was a serious criminal offense. Without reproach, the southern
apologist historian Ulrich B. Phillips noted that when, in 1755, two slaves
were convicted of poisoning their master, the woman was burned at a stake
and the man was hanged and his body left suspended in chains on the
Charleston common. This was macabre but not unique. L. Michael Kay
and Lorin Lee Cary found records of how fifty-six slaves were executed by
the authorities in North Carolina between 1748 and 1772. Of those whose
Blacks in America 181