Slavery in Virginia

Freedman's Village developed on the grounds of Arlington Plantation in the 1860's
Source: Harper's Weekly (May 7, 1864)

NOTE: Please do not assume that the values of today have been accepted as the "normal" values in all societies in all times; "presentism" obscures the context of "facts." Please do not assume that people in the past who did not behave according to modern values are automatically clueless/stupid/sinful in some way. Please make your judgments after considering the circumstances.

In future centuries, everyone may know that burning petroleum as a fuel was a terrible waste of an extraordinarily-valuable chemical compound, and condemn those who used gasoline to drive to work. In future centuries, everyone may know that the Earth's capacity for human population was only 4 billion people, and condemn those who had more than one child after 1975. But right now, most humans behave as if some use of gasoline for energy, and having children, are socially acceptable.

Filtering one's understanding of the past by the standards of today is known as "presentism." Before reading about slavery in Virginia, recognize that personal judgements today on the behavior of the past cloud our understanding. Discussions in the 21^st Century on slavery in the 19^th Century can trigger emotional eruptions regarding the moral character of Southern slaveowners and Northern capitalists. If you do not examine unspoken assumptions that slavery is evil, so everyone must have always known that emancipation was the only solution, then you may mis-understand how societies and places change over time.

Douglas Deal addressed the question of the good/moral slaveowner in a posting on the VA-HIST listserver in June, 2007:¹

...we always define or judge our own values and beliefs with reference to "benchmarks" in the past. There is, after all, nothing else to use as a standard than that which has already happened.

So, using the past to arrive at judgments about ourselves is perfectly appropriate. But reversing the procedure - judging the past by the standards of the present - is not. It is rather like trying to speak to the past from the present: we won't be heard and nothing will change.

enslaved people were bought and sold as commodities, like firewood and bricks
Source: Virginia Chronicle Alexandria Gazette, Commercial and Political (December 15, 1814)

Slavery, as an institution, changed in Virginia between 1619 and the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution after the Civil War. The "peculiar institution" evolved and metamorphosed under both internal and external pressures, economic and social. Before the Civil War, Virginia had slaves for nearly 250 years. The 250th anniversary of the end of slavery in Virginia is still a century away. Creating a culture of slavery took time, but by 1700 Virginia had established a clear distinction between white vs. black residents, how their labor would be valued, and how their lives would be controlled:

By the end of the seventeenth century, Virginia was changing from a society that used bound labor to a slave society based on black labor and perceived inferiority.

slave quarters in Williamsburg, near Governor's Palace

Before 1660, most slaves lived on plantations with 1-3 others, and most slaves were male. Interactions with whites were common and restrictions based exclusively on race were not rigid. By the 1680's, however, the status of "slave" was clearer and interactions with whites were restricted. By 1710 the average slaveholder owned 8 slaves, and there was a higher percentage of women in Virginia's slave population, so there was a greater possibility of some form of family life despite the greater restrictions.³

Source: Virginia Humanities, Mapping Virginia's Slave Dwellings: Preserving Black History with Street View

in 1860, the lowest percentage of Virginia's population held in slavery was west of the Blue Ridge
Source: University of Virginia, Historical Census Browser

in 1860, the Eastern Shore and Tidewater Virginia had the highest ration of free blacks to the total population
Source: University of Virginia, Historical Census Browser

the Virginia gentry, including George Washington, relied upon slaves to do basic chores and free up the time for reading and political debate
Source: New York Public Library, Le general Washington (1778)

George Washington relied upon slaves to raise crops, catch fish, and maintain his personal wealth and lifestyle
Source: Library of Congress, Life of George Washington--The farmer (painted by Junius Brutus Stearns c.1853)

slaveowners hired out their "property," as well as required enslaved people to work directly for them
Source: Encyclopedia Virginia, Hiring Out of the Enslaved

overseers were both black and white, and had the power to whip enslaved people brutally
Source: Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, Whipping a Slave, Virginia, 19th cent.

Colonizing Back to Africa

Fredericksburg Slave Block

Gravesites of Enslaved People in Virginia

Emancipation in Virginia

Indentured Servants in Colonial Virginia

Living Quarters for the Enslaved

The Origins of Slavery in Virginia

Slave Rebellions in Virginia

Slave Trade in Virginia

Tobacco and Colonial Population

The Virginia Debate: Why Slavery Was Not Abolished in Virginia

Nat Turner

Underground Railroad in Virginia

the percentage of slaves in the total population varied substantially among the different counties of Virginia in 1860, and west of the Allegheny Front slavery was most prevalent in Kanawha County due to the salt industry
Source: Library of Congress, Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860

during the Civil War, slaves and free blacks were sources of behind-the-Confederate-lines intelligence for Union forces
Source: Illustrated London News, The Civil War in America: Reconnaissance Made by General Stoneman, Accompanied by the Comte de Paris and the Duc de Chartres, to Cedar Run (April 19, 1862)

after the Union Army occupied the Peninsula, freed slaves were placed on farms
Source: National Archives, Manuscript Map Showing the Position of Government Farms, 1st District Negro Affairs, Department of Virginia and North Carolina

reuniting a family was defined as theft in 1814, when a child was defined as property
Source: Virginia Chronicle Alexandria Gazette, Commercial and Political (December 15, 1814)

in 1860, there were fewer enslaved people in western Virginia, North Carolina, and Texas, and also in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee
Source: Library of Congress, The new naval and military map of the United States (by John Calvin Smith, 1862)

laws passed in 1793 and 1803 required county clerks to document every "free negro" or "mulatto" in a register
Source: Library of Virginia, Abrams, Richard (M, 40): Free Negro Register

Links

• Antebellum Slavery in West Virginia
• AtlasObscura
• Abandoned National Slavery Museum
• British Broadcasting System (BBC) - The Story of Africa
• Slavery
• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 (at the Library of Congress)
• chronology of slavery
• City Paper (Washington, DC)
  • Mall and Chains: Visit Celebrate Virginia, your summer playground for golf, shopping, and slavery! (January 11-17, 2002)
• Classics on American Slavery
• Bruce, Philip A. Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Material Condition of the People, Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records. New York: Macmillan, 1896. Chapter IX: "System of Labor: The Slave"
• Common-place, The Interactive Journal of Early American Life
  • Special Issue on American Slavery
• DAACS: Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
• Documenting the American South
• North American Slave Narratives (from University of North Carolina)
• From Slave Cabin to the Pulpit. The Autobiography of Rev. Peter Randolph: the Southern Question Illustrated and Sketches of Slave Life
• John Jasper: The Unmatched Negro Philosopher and Preacher
• Life, Including His Escape and Struggle for Liberty of Charles A. Garlick, Born a Slave in Old Virginia, Who Secured His Freedom by Running Away from His Master's Farm in 1843
• Lott Cary, The Colonizing Missionary
• Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery, Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide. Written from a Statement of Facts Made by Himself. With Remarks Upon the Remedy for Slavery. By Charles Stearns
• Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself
• Remarks on the Subject of the Ownership of Slaves, Delivered by R. R. Collier of Petersburg, in the Senate of Virginia, October 12, 1863
• Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky; or, Fifty Years of Slavery in the Southern States of America
• Slavery Era Insurance Registry; A Database of Slaveholders in the States of AL, AR, GA, KY, LA, MO, MS, NC, SC, VA, and Washington DC, Who Insured Slaves As Property, With Insurance Companies Licensed to do Business in California During the Slave Era (useful for "reparations" research)
• Social Life in Old Virginia before the War
• The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va.
• The Life of Rev. John Jasper, Pastor of Sixth Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Richmond, Va., from His Birth to the Present Time, with His Theory on the Rotation of the Sun
• Enslaved: People of the Historical Slave Trade
• Encyclopedia Virginia
• A Voice Out of Slavery
• Another Man's Property
• The Flight of Henry Box Brown
• One of the Twenty (Angela, one of the first twenty Africans to arrive at Jamestown in 1619)
• Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware (by Paul Heinegg)
• Freedmen and Southern Society Project
  • Testimony by the Superintendent of Contrabands at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, before the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, May 9, 1863
  • AN ACT to increase the military force of the Confederate States, allowing enlistment of black soldiers into the Confederate Army - dated March 23, 1865...
• Freedom on the Move - A database of fugitives from North American slavery
• George Mason University: Lincoln Mullen
• The Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790-1860
• Geographies of Family and Market: Virginia's Domestic Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century
  • Mapping Virginia's Slave Migration, 1790-1863
  • James Madison and Slavery
• Gilder Lehrman Instiute of Anmerican History
• Inside the Vault: George Washington and Slavery
• Google Street View
• Bringing slave dwellings out of the shadows with Google Street View
• The Historic New Orleans Collection
• Mapping the Coastal Slave Trade
• H-Net
• Slavery discussion list
• book review:book review of The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White (by Henry Wiencek) on
• HumanKind
• The Freed People
• Liberated Africans Project
• Library of Congress
• An African Republic: Black and White Virginians in the Making of Liberia
• Library of Virginia
• To Be Sold: The American Slave Trade from Virginia to New Orleans symposium (March 21, 2015)
• Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative
• Nat Turner Project
• Public Broadcasting System
• Africans in America
• From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery
• Defense of Slavery in Virginia
• Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
• Saving Slave Houses
• Slave Voyages
• Slavery in America
• Geography of Slavery
• Virginia Slave Law Summary and Record
• Register of Free Blacks, Augusta County, 1803-65 (part of the Valley of the Shadow project)
• Slavery on Long Island (New Amsterdam/New York)
• Southern Spaces
• Scales Intimate and Sprawling: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Geography of Marriage in Virginia (July 19, 2011)
• Teaching Slaves to Read
  • The case of Mrs. Margaret Douglass (1853)
• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
• University of Richmond
• 1853 Richmond and its Slave Market
• Mapping Richmond's Slave Market
• Virginia Center for Digital History
• Geography of Slavery in Virginia
• Virginia Immigrants to Liberia Project
• Virginia Commonwealth University
• Virginia Black History Archives
• Virginia Historical Society
• Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names
• Virginia Emigrants to Liberia
• Virginia Humanities
• Mapping Virginia's Slave Dwellings
• Voyages, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
• With Good Reason
• Invisible Founders
• Slaves Waiting for Sale (June 25, 2016)
• Writing About Slavery / Teaching About Slavery
• Yale University
• Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

slaves were imported directly from Gambia and sold at Alexandria in 1762
Source: Maryland State Archives, Maryland Gazette (September 16, 1762)

slaves were imported directly from the west coast of Africa and sold at Frederickburg in 1762
Source: Maryland State Archives, Maryland Gazette (September 9, 1762)

sale of slaves, to be shipped south for agricultural labor, was a major industry in Alexandria and Richmond
Source: New York Public Library, Dealers Inspecting a Negro at a Slave Auction in Virginia (Illustrated London News, February 16, 1861)

Virginia's most valuable export in the years prior to the Civil War may have been slaves, rather than tobacco
Source: Illustrated London News, A Slave Auction in Virginia (February 16, 1861)

former slaves sought to reunite with their families after the Civil War through notices published in the Southwestern Christian Advocate
Source: The Historic New Orleans Collection, Lost Friends

enslaved people flocked to Fort Monroe in 1861, taking control of their destiny to escape slavery
Source: Smithsonian Institution, Stampede Among the Negroes in Virginia (Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1861)

free blacks carried official papers when away from home, to prove their status
Source: Smithsonian Institution, Tin box handmade and carried by Joseph Trammell to hold freedom papers (1852)

References

the English caricature of escaping slaves over-emphasized the shapes of lips, but captured the drive to seek protection from Federal forces
Source: Illustrated London News, The Civil War in America: "Contraband of War" (July 27, 1861)

the National Park Service recreates life of the enslaved at the Booker T. Washington National Memorial
Source: National Park Service, Volunteer Tressa Moore demonstrates open hearth cooking

Dred Scott was born into slavery in Southampton County
Source: Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, Dred Scott, ca. 1857

the western counties of Virginia had a much lower percentage of enslaved people in the 1860 Census
Source: Library of Congress, Map of Virginia Showing the Distribution of its Slave Population from the Census of 1860 (by Henry S. Graham, 1861)

in urban areas, free and enslaved blacks could socialize together in back yards
Source: New York Historical Society, Negro Life at the South (by Eastman Johnson, 1859)

whites in Virginia had the power to beat and to kiss enslaved people without their consent - and take far more liberties
Source: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Virginian Luxuries