The Problem of Slavery in Christian America: An Ethical-Judicial History of American Slavery and Racism

by Joel McDurmon

The same 1691 statute included the first prohibition against increasing the number of free blacks in the colony. If any master manumitted a black or “mulatto” slave, the law now required him at his own cost to deport that newly freed slave out of the colony. This decree had two major implications: first, it created a financial incentive to maintain all blacks as slaves. Only masters with significant capital could afford to free any of their slaves, and even these would now be discouraged from doing so. Poorer planters who owned a few slaves would have little if any choice. Second, it revealed overt racism: “[B]lacks had only one function in Virginian society and that was to labor perpetually for the benefit of their owners.” Otherwise, “Free blacks were viewed as undesirable elements in the population.”30