Quickly the landed gentry realized that their plantations would not be profitable if they paid their workforce. Thus Mattie’s African ancestors were not turned free or given the means to farm for themselves, but held in perpetual bondage after the Virginia Assembly passed a law in 1705 clarifying once and for all the status of Africans in the colony. It declared “all servants imported and brought into the Country . . . who were not Christians in their native Country . . . shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto, and Indian slaves within this dominion . . . shall be held to be real
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