By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the comparatively broad rights enjoyed by slaves under Dutch rule—to hold property, to carry a weapon, to serve in the militia, to sue in court, to obtain half-freedom—had all been whittled down or stripped away. New York’s first comprehensive slave code, adopted in 1702, underscored the association of slavery with black skin by banning the enslavement of Indians and defining indentured servitude as a condition for whites only.
