First, a couple of observations regarding religion and the manumission
of slaves:
a) the terms used as labels for "servants" (including slaves) in the
decades before the 1670s-80s in Virginia were "Christian" (meaning
English or white), "negro" (African descent or black; usually
non-Christian), "mulatto" (of mixed white and black parentage), and
"Indian." The term Christian would not have been used to designate white
servants unless most "negro" servants were non-Christian. Interestingly,
"Christian" gives way to "white" in the 1670s-80s.
b) one can infer a likely connection between manumission and prior
conversion to Christianity from the practices of those blacks who became
free in the colony: e.g., the leaving of wills with religious language;
the practice of godparenthood.
c) the connection can also be inferred from the 1667 Virginia statute
declaring that baptism did not change the status of the person, whether
bond or free; other passages in the statute suggest that the reason for
passing it was 1) many masters assumed (or suspected) that baptism
should confer freedom on a slave; and 2) they refrained, as a result
from attempting to convert their slaves to Christianity, and this was
deemed an unfortunate trend that needed to be reversed.
d) there is an occasional document making the connection more explicit;
for instance, in 1648 Eastern Shore of Virginia master Stephen Charlton
assigned a three-year-old Negro girl to Richard Vaughan to serve him
until she reached the age of thirty, the said Vaughan promising to
"bringe the said child up in the feare of god..." (Northampton County
Deeds, Wills, 1645-51, p.152). Another example is given in Warren
Billings' collection of documents, The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth
Century (p.169). In Lower Norfolk County in 1667, "Fernando a Negro"
sued Captain John Warner for his freedom "pretending hee was a Christian
and had been severallmyeares in England and therefore ought to serve noe
longer than any other servant that came out of England...."
f) if one uses the statutes as a principal source, one would conclude
that there were only two issues creating any significant amount of doubt
as to the slave status of people of African descent: religious standing
(1667 statute) and mixed parentage (white/free father, black/slave
mother: 1662 statute). As noted above, the wished for result of the 1667
religious ruling was an increase in the number of masters who would feel
free to convert their slaves to Christianity; the wished for result of
the 1662 statute was a decrease in the frequency of miscegenation.
A final point about VA/NC differences re manumission policies and
practices. It may have been more difficult for NC owners to free their
slaves than it was for VA owners (in the decades after the Revolution),
but there were roughly the same numbers of free blacks (proportionally)
in these two states in 1790 and 1810. The census figures presented by
Ira Berlin in Many Thousands Gone (p.372) indicate that 5% of all NC
blacks were free in 1790 and 6% in 1810, while the comparable VA
percentages were 4% in 1790 and 7% in 1810. In absolute terms, the
number of NC free blacks had increased in that 20-year period by a
factor of a little more than 2, while VA free blacks had increased by a
factor of around 2.5. The difference is of some significance, of course,
but is not quite as extreme as suggested by Paul Heinegg in his posting.
Doug Deal
History/SUNY Oswego
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