Note (return) — Chapter II

If the Indian was destined to be a vanishing factor, the mulatto and the free Negro most certainly were not. In spite of all the laws to prevent it, the intermixture of the races increased, and manumission somehow also increased. Sometimes a master in his will provided that several of his slaves should be given their freedom. Occasionally a slave became free by reason of what was regarded as an act of service to the commonwealth, as in the case of one Will, slave belonging to Robert Ruffin, of the county of Surry in Virginia, who in 1710 divulged a conspiracy.29 There is, moreover, on record a case of an indentured Negro servant, John Geaween, who by his unusual thrift in the matter of some hogs which he raised on the share system with his master, was able as early as 1641 to purchase his own son from another master, to the perfect satisfaction of all concerned.30 Of special importance for some years were those persons who were descendants of Negro fathers and indentured white mothers, and who at first were of course legally free. By 1691 the problem had become acute in Virginia. In this year "for prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious issue, which hereafter may increase in this dominion, as well by Negroes, mulattoes and Indians intermarrying with English or other white women, as by their unlawful accompanying with one another," it was enacted that "for the time to come whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free shall intermarry with a Negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman, bond or free, shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever, and that the justices of each respective county within this dominion make it their particular care that this act be put in effectual execution."31 A white woman who became the mother of a child by a Negro or mulatto was to be fined £15 sterling, in default of payment was to be sold for five years, while the child was to be bound in servitude to the church wardens until thirty years of age. It was further provided that if any Negro or mulatto was set free, he was to be transported from the country within six months of his manumission (which enactment is typical of those that it was difficult to enforce and that after a while were only irregularly observed). In 1705 it was enacted that no "Negro, mulatto, or Indian shall from and after the publication of this act bear any office ecclesiastical, civil or military, or be in any place of public trust or power, within this her majesty's colony and dominion of Virginia"; and to clear any doubt that might arise as to who should be accounted a mulatto, it was provided that "the child of an Indian, and the child, grandchild, or great-grandchild of a Negro shall be deemed, accounted, held, and taken to be a mulatto." It will be observed that while the act of 1670 said that "none but freeholders and housekeepers" could vote, this act of 1705 did not specifically legislate against voting by a mulatto or a free Negro, and that some such privilege was exercised for a while appears from the definite provision in 1723 that "no free Negro, mulatto, or Indian, whatsoever, shall hereafter have any vote at the election of burgesses, or any other election whatsoever." In the same year it was provided that free Negroes and mulattoes might be employed as drummers or trumpeters in servile labor, but that they were not to bear arms; and all free Negroes above sixteen years of age were declared tithable. In 1769, however, all free Negro and mulatto women were exempted from levies as tithables, such levies having proved to be burdensome and "derogatory to the rights of freeborn subjects."