Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

by Ira Berlin

Indeed, because white northerners excluded black corpses from their burial grounds, the graveyard became the first truly African-American institution in the northern colonies, and perhaps in mainland North America.

A Virginia master manumitted his slaves because to keep them was "contrary to the command of Christ to keep fellow creatures in bondage." Often revolutionary ideology and Christian ideals were so entwined that a slaveholder blurted them out in the same breath.