System of oppression · 1640–1865
The Making of Slave Law
American slavery was not inevitable — it was built, law by law, out of a fluid colonial servitude into something lifelong, hereditary, and racial.
In the early 1600s, the line between an indentured servant and an enslaved person was blurry; some Africans served terms and went free, owned land, and sued in court. Over the next century, colonial legislatures deliberately hardened that fluid status into permanent, inheritable, race-based slavery.
The milestones are specific and traceable: the 1640 John Punch ruling (lifetime servitude for one man), Virginia's 1662 law making slavery pass through the mother (partus sequitur ventrem), Maryland's 1664 "durante vita" statute, Virginia's 1691 and 1705 codes, and South Carolina's 1740 Negro Act after the Stono Rebellion. Each closed a door that had briefly been open.
Following the law is the clearest way to see that race itself was, in part, a legal invention — written to divide poor laborers and protect a system of profit.
On the timeline
- July 9, 1640John Punch sentenced to lifetime servitude
A Virginia court sentences John Punch to servitude for life — an early legal step toward race-based slavery.
- December 10, 1641Massachusetts legalizes slavery
The Massachusetts Body of Liberties makes it the first English colony to give slavery legal sanction.
- 1656Elizabeth Key wins her freedom
An enslaved woman sues for her freedom — and wins — arguing she was the baptized daughter of a free Englishman, in one of the earliest freedom suits in the colonies.
- December 1662Virginia makes slavery hereditary
Virginia law declares that a child's status follows the mother, making slavery inheritable and permanent.
- September 20, 1664Maryland makes slavery hereditary
Maryland decrees lifelong, inheritable slavery and penalizes interracial marriage.
- October 1669Virginia's "casual killing of slaves" act
Virginia declares that an enslaver who kills an enslaved person during "correction" commits no felony — codifying total power over Black life.
- June 1680Virginia restricts the enslaved
A new law bars enslaved people from carrying weapons, leaving plantations without a pass, or gathering — the machinery of control.
- April 16, 1691Virginia hardens the racial caste
Virginia bars manumission and interracial marriage, sharpening the line between white and Black.
- October 1705Virginia Slave Codes of 1705
Colonial Virginia consolidates slavery into a sweeping legal code defining the enslaved as property.
- May 10, 1740South Carolina's Negro Act of 1740
After the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina passes a sweeping slave code restricting movement, assembly, earning, learning to read — even drumming.
- 1751Georgia legalizes slavery
Under pressure from planters, Georgia reverses its ban and opens the colony to slavery.
- February 12, 1793The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
The first federal law authorizing the capture of escapees in free states.
- April 1849Roberts v. City of Boston
A Black father sues over school segregation and loses — the case coins "separate but equal," a century before Plessy is overturned.
- March 6, 1857Dred Scott v. Sandford
The Supreme Court rules that Black people are not citizens and have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
Resources
The court ruling sentencing John Punch to lifetime servitude.
The law making a child's enslaved status follow the mother's.
The codified 1705 Virginia slave law.
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.
- caused (incoming)·EventBacon's Rebellion
After poor whites and enslaved Blacks united in 1676, Virginia's elite wrote race into law to keep them divided.
- caused (incoming)·EventNat Turner's Rebellion
The 1831 revolt triggered a wave of harsher Southern laws restricting Black movement, assembly, and literacy.
- caused (incoming)·ThreadGreed — The Root
Slave codes were written to define and protect human beings as profitable "property."