Maryland

REVIEWS OF BOOKS:
ABEL'S _The Slaveholding Indians. Volume I: As Slaveholder and
Secessionist_;
GEORGE'S _The Political History of Slavery in the United States_;
CLARK'S _The Constitutional Doctrines of Justice Harlan_;
THOMPSON'S _Reconstruction in Georgia, Economic, Social, Political,
1865--1872_

NOTES

THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF NEGRO LIFE AND HISTORY, INCORPORATED

41 North Queen Street, Lancaster, PA.
2223 Twelfth Street, Washington, D. C.

25 Cents A Copy $1.00 A Year

Copyright, 1916

COLORED FREEMEN AS SLAVE OWNERS IN VIRGINIA[1]

Among the quaint old seventeenth century statutes of Virginia may be found
the following significant enactment:

No negro or Indian though baptized and enjoyned their own freedome shall be
capable of any purchase of Christians _but yet not debarred from buying any
of their owne nation._[2]

"Christians" in this act means persons of the white race. Indented
servitude was the condition and status of no small part of the white
population of Virginia when this law was enacted. While it is not a part of
our purpose in this article to show that white servants were ever bound in
servitude to colored masters, the inference from this prohibition upon the
property rights of the free Negroes is that colored freemen had at least
attempted to acquire white or "Christian" servants. In a revision of the
law seventy-eight years later it was deemed necessary to retain the
prohibition and to annex the provision that if any free Negro or mulatto
"shall nevertheless presume to purchase a Christian white servant, such
servant shall immediately become free."[3]

If we see in these laws nothing more than precautionary measures against a
possible reversal of the usual order of white master and black servant to
that of black master and white servant, they are nevertheless significant
as commentaries on the extent of the remaining unimpaired property rights
of black freemen. Only in the light of these prohibitions do we see the
full significance of the last clause of the act which reads: "but yet not
debarred from buying any of their owne nation."

With no evidence beyond this explicit admission in the written law of the
right of free Negroes to own servants and slaves of their own race it could
scarcely be doubted that there were in the colony colored men known to the
framers of this law who held to service persons of their