he other colonies,
and thrice unfortunate for the poor Colored people, who from 1619 to
1863 yielded their liberty, their toil,--unrequited,--their bodies and
intellects to an institution that ground them to powder. No event in
the history of North America has carried with it to its last analysis
such terrible forces. It touched the brightest features of social
life, and they faded under the contact of its poisonous breath. It
affected legislation, local and national; it made and destroyed
statesmen; it prostrated and bullied honest public sentiment; it
strangled the voice of the press, and awed the pulpit into silent
acquiescence; it organized the judiciary of States, and wrote
decisions for judges; it gave States their political being, and
afterwards dragged them by the fore-hair through the stormy sea of
civil war; laid the parricidal fingers of Treason against the fair
throat of Liberty,--and through all time to come no event will be more
sincerely deplored than the introduction of slavery into the colony of
Virginia during the last days of the month of August in the year 1619!

The majority of writers on American history, as well as most histories
on Virginia, from Beverley to Howison, have made a mistake in fixing
the date of the introduction of the first slaves. Mr. Beverley, whose
history of Virginia was printed in London in 1772, is responsible for
the error, in that nearly all subsequent writers--excepting the
laborious and scholarly Bancroft and the erudite Campbell--have
repeated his mistake. Mr. Beverley, speaking of the burgesses having
"met the Governor and Council at James Town in May 1620," adds in a
subsequent paragraph, "In August following a Dutch Man of War landed
twenty Negroes for sale; which were the first of that kind that were
carried into the country."[120] By "August following," we infer that
Beverley would have his readers understand that this was in 1620. But
Burk, Smith, Campbell, and Neill gave 1619 as the date.[121] But we
are persuaded to believe that the first slaves were landed at a still
earlier date. In Capt. John Smith's history, printed in London in
1629, is a mere incidental reference to the introduction of slaves
into Virginia. He mentions, under date of June 25, that the "governor
and councell caused Burgesses to be chosen in all places,"[122] which
is one month later than the occurrence of this event as fixed by
Beverley. Smith speaks of a vessel named "George" as having been