Join Jordyn and Spencer as they set the table for their discussion of the Moravians of Wachovia and the modern-day city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Review Timeline
1619
The first African slaves were brought to America.
1680
Initially, enslavement is [officially] defined not by skin color but by religion.
The Virginia General Assembly declared that "All servants imported and brought into this country who were not Christian in their native land shall be counted and be slaves.”
1705
Virginia ratifies the first comprehensive Slave-Codes, consolidating individual laws started as early as 1667 in parallel with those in Barbados.
In 1667, the Virginia House of Burgesses enacted a law that didn't recognize the conversion of African Americans to Christianity despite a baptism.
Peter Oliver’s Virginia context.
1715
The North Carolina Slave Code of 1715 was ratified.
Required enslaved people to carry a ticket from their enslaver whenever they left the plantation. The ticket stated where they were traveling and the reason for their travel.
Peter Oliver’s North Carolina context.
Prevented enslaved people from gathering in groups for any reason, including religious worship, and required white people to help capture escaped freedom-seeking enslaved people.
St. Philips Church context.
Study Tools
1705
William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, (Philadelphia: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 2:260; Chapter XLIX: An Act Concerning Slaves and Servants,” 447–463.
Jack P. Greene, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, by Edmund S. Morgan, Political Science Quarterly, Volume 91, Issue 4, Winter 1976, Pages 742–743, https://doi.org/10.2307/2148833
Browne-Marshall, Gloria J. (2020-09-01). "The Africans of 1619: Making Black Lives Matter in the Virginia Colony". The Journal of African American History. 105 (4): 655–662.
1715
“The Growth of Slavery in North Carolina.” Anchor, Slavery in North Carolina, www.ncpedia.org/anchor/growth-slavery-north#:~:text=Records%20do%20exist%20detailing%20the,whenever%20they%20left%20the%20plantation. Accessed 17 Jan. 2024.
