page_title: History of slavery in Virginia
section_title: In the 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: History of slavery in Virginia / In the 19th century
caption_attribution_description: Cartoon of Fort Monroe Virginia depicting slaves rushing to the Union held fort for escape during the American Civil War
context_page_description: Slavery in Virginia dates to 1619, soon after the founding of Virginia as an English colony by the London Virginia Company. The company established a headright system to encourage colonists to transport indentured servants to the colony for labor; they received a certain amount of land for people whose passage they paid to Virginia.
  In 1619 slave traders forced Africans to get on a slave ship, the White Lion, and took them to Virginia. The approximately 20 Africans on that ship, originally from the present-day Angola, had been seized by the British crew from a Portuguese slave ship, the "São João Bautista".
  In 1661, Virginia passed its first law allowing any free person the right to own slaves. In previous years, Africans were legally deemed to be indentured servants, including one, John Casor, who was declared "indentured for life" in 1655. Additional laws regarding slavery of Africans were passed in the seventeenth century and codified into Virginia's first slave code in 1705. Among laws affecting slaves was one of 1662, which said that children born in the colony would take the social status of their mothers, regardless of who their fathers were.
context_section_description: In the first two decades after the Revolution, inspired by the Revolution and evangelical preachers, numerous slaveholders in the Chesapeake region manumitted some or all of their slaves, during their lifetimes or by will. From 1,800 persons in 1782, the total population of free blacks in Virginia increased to 12,766 (4.3 percent of blacks) in 1790, and to 30,570 in 1810. The percentage change was from free blacks' comprising less than one percent of the total black population in Virginia, to 7.2 percent by 1810, even as the overall population increased. One planter, Robert Carter III, freed more than 450 slaves in his lifetime, more than any other planter. George Washington freed all of his slaves at his death.
  During the 19th century, there were two major attempted slave revolts in Virginia: Gabriel's Rebellion in 1800 and Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831. "The [latter] insurrection prompted the first and last concerted effort by a Slave State to abolish slavery within its borders. Charles Faulkner, from western Virginia, and Thomas Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, led the losing struggle. Their Bill would free all children born of slave parents after July 4, 1840. [Thomas R.] Dew opposed it; his book, Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature, was influential in assuring its defeat." As a result, the Virginia legislature ended the ability of slaveholders to independently free their slaves and required each manumission to be approved by an act of the legislature. In addition, it passed laws that restricted rights of free people of color, prohibiting them from bearing arms and reducing gathering in groups.
  Slaves from Virginia escaped via waterways and overland to free states in the North, with some aided by people along the Underground Railroad, maintained by both whites and blacks. In 1849, slave Henry "Box" Brown escaped from slavery in Virginia when he arranged to be shipped by express mail in a crate to Philadelphia, arriving in little more than 24 hours.
  By 1860, Virginia had a black population that numbered about 550,000; only 58,042 or 11% were free people of color. In Cuba by contrast, there were 213,167 free people of color, or 39% of its black population of 550,000. Cuba had not developed a plantation system in its early years, and its economy supported the Spanish empire from urbanized settlements. With a shortage of white labor, blacks had become deeply involved in urban trades and businesses. In this setting, slaves were able to buy their way out of slavery.
caption: In 1861, the Union general in command of Fort Monroe proclaimed that the slaves who had made their way there were "contraband", and thus did not need to be returned to their owners
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