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.[1] 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.[2] 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."[3] A white woman who
became the mother of a child by a Negro or mulatto was to be fined L15
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-gran