Creating a Race-based Society
When we left Virginia, times were good for tobacco farmers as white and black indentured
servants and black slaves worked in their fields and they had driven Indians west so that they
could plant more tobacco. By 1670 the population had reached 40,000 (2,000 were slaves). But
in the 1670s conditions changed. Overproduction of tobacco caused depressed prices then in
1675 an epidemic reduced the colony’s cattle by half and a drought cut deeply into the
harvest. Meanwhile white colonists pressed farther and farther west encroaching on Indian land
despite a treaty that “protected” that land. Skirmishes between colonists and Indians resulted, but
by 1670 Indians had suffered for decades from European diseases and their numbers now gave
them little power. Whites saw their chance to seize more land and so Virginians and Marylanders
(the colony was founded in 1634) organized a militia of 1000 men in 1675 and attacked the
Susquehannock people of the upper Potomac River and executed their chiefs. Although the
militiamen had violated a treaty, killed innocent people, and the colonial governor condemned
their actions, few were tried and those convicted received light sentences. You read about these
incidents in the textbook and how they led to Bacon’s Rebellion.
Bacon's Rebellion and a Race-based Society
You read about Bacon's Rebellion in the Digital History textbook. In 1676 it exposed
conflict between the frontier areas (the edge of English settlement) and the older
and more established coastal settlements. Yes, the rebellion pitted the frontier against
the settled region, but it also signaled a race-based society for in its aftermath skin color
determined freedom. In 1661 the Virginia assembly passed a law basing a child's slave
or free status on whether the mother was slave or free. Consequently the children of
white masters and black slave mothers were slaves, but the children of free blacks
(indentured servants who fulfilled their contract or slaves who bought their freedom)
were free. During Bacon's Rebellion any Indian, even those at peace with the colonists,
became a target for the frontiersmen who sought a scapegoat for the lack of land, low
prices, bad harvest, and epidemic.
Elites in the Virginia Colony feared the frontier rabble that Bacon and his followers
represented. Others among the discontented included indentured servants, slaves, and landless
freemen, both white and black. Bacon's Rebellion exposed the raw edge of class divisions and in
its aftermath large landowners sought to solidify their power by dividing the lower classes by
race.
After the rebellion, the Virginia legislature (whose members were elected by landowners) in
1682 declared that all non-Christian servants were slaves. Who were the non-Christians? Indians
and Africans. In 1691 a Virginia law forbade intermarriage, especially that between white
women and black men, and another law allowed masters to free their slaves only if they paid for
their transport out of the colony.
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Choosing Slavery
Bacon's Rebellion marked the rapid transition in Virginia from white to black labor and
the choice of slavery. Improving conditions in England made the prospect of indentured
servitude in the "New World" less attractive. By the 1680s and 1690s, people found jobs
in England and no longer felt compelled to risk the harsh life in Virginia. Chesapeake
planters sought another labor source.
Remember that earlier in the 17th century, the high mortality rate in Virginia Colony
made slaves too expensive for planters to invest in. But just as conditions improved in
England for working people, life improved in the Chesapeake as improved nutrition
meant fewer died of disease.
Longer lifespans and contraction of the indentured servant labor pool hastened the
transition to slave labor. The Chesapeake and the lower South saw a sharp rise in the
mid 1670s in slaves as a percentage of the population. You read above that the 2,000
slaves composed 5 percent of Virginia's population in 1670. By 1700 they were 13,000
in number and nearly 20 percent of the population. Blacks, mixed race people, and
Indians already free managed to stay in the colony and remain free, but they were
denied the right to vote, to hold office, or to testify in court. These restrictions effectively
separated people of color from whites, however poor. Slavery in Virginia and in the
British colonies in general was race based. Institution of slave codes in the southern
states ensured perpetuation of the system.
If you are interested in how slavery was gradually established in colonial Virginia and
the role of Bacon's Rebellion in that transition, read Edmund Morgan's American
Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W.W. Norton,
1975).
© Susan Vetter 2008, rev. 2011
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Painting of slaves working on a Virginia tobacco plantation in 1670 by an unknown artist.
[Painting is in the public domain.]
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