With this law in place, White enslavers could now reap financial reward from relations “upon a negro woman.” But they wanted to prevent the limited number of White women from engaging in similar interracial relations (as their biracial babies would become free). In 1664, Maryland legislators declared it a “disgrace to our Nation” when “English women… intermarry with Negro slaves.” By the end of the century, Maryland and Virginia legislators had enacted severe penalties for White women in relationships with non-White men.
