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Slavery is as basic a part of Virginia history as George Washington, who was accompanied at Valley Forge and Yorktown by his slave William Lee, and Thomas Jefferson, who directed his slaves to cut 30 feet off a mountaintop for the site of Monticello. Slavery in the Old Dominion began in 1619, when a Spanish frigate was captured and its cargo of Negroes brought to Jamestown. Virginia Negroes experienced slavery as field laborers, as skilled craftsmen, as house servants. In 1935, the Virginia Writers' Project began collecting data for a history of Negroes in the Old Dominion through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Depression. Published in 1940 as "The Negro in Virginia", it was regarded as a "classic of its kind." Modern readers will be surprised at how relevant it remains today. -- From publisher's description.
"This narrative nonfiction book contains stories of people of African origin who were never enslaved, born free, or who obtained liberty through court proceedings in the U.S. They lived in a society that sought to systematically deprive them of liberty and other human rights. This history of Free Blacks in Virginia reveals the human ability to persevere against adverse odds arising from the color of their skin, or their gender, or both. It interweaves legal history with stories of what happened to those African Americans who were free before the Civil War and lived their lives in the shadows of a complicated world"--
This book presents a historical overview of the free Negro in Virginia, from the mid-eighteenth century through the Civil War, along with the physical and historical background of Amherst County. The original edition preserved a wealth of information on n
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...A 6812. "Ibid.. 1840, A6821. "Code (1849), P. 754; Code (1860), p. 816. 45 Acts, 1839, p. 24. "See a petition to the legislature which represents that both free negroes and dogs kill sheep as they prowl through the neighborhood (MS. Petitions, Chesterfield County, 1854, A4321). "Acts, 1847-1848; House Journal, 1847-1848, p. 436. "Acts, 1857-1858, p. 152. out the State passed the House of Delegates in 1848, hut failed to receive the approval of the Senate.52 The laws of Virginia extended their protection not only, as we have already seen, to the property of the free negro, but, as we shall now see, to his life and liberty. In any case in which the freedom' of a negro was disputed the burden of proof was upon the negro to show that he was free. Unlike the recognized principle of English law which demands that every man be regarded as innocent till his guilt is established by evidence, a free negro taken up and deprived of his liberty as being a slave had, in order to procure his release, to produce evidence that he was not a slave. In 1806 George Wythe, chancellor of the State of Virginia, gave as grounds for decreeing the freedom of three persons claimed as slaves that freedom is the birthright of every human being. He laid it down as a general proposition that whenever one person claims to hold another in slavery, the onus probandi lies on the claimant. This application of the Declaration of Independence was completely repudiated by the supreme court of appeals when the case came'up for final review.58 Judge Tucker, who spoke for a unanimous court, asserted that the burden of proof is not upoA the claimant, but upon the negro to show that he is free; whereas with a white man or an Indian held in slavery the burden...
This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.
It is one of the least commonly known facts about the Civil War: there were many, many free negroes living in slaveholding states before the Emancipation Proclamation. This monograph on that surprising reality, originally published in 1913, draws on such firsthand documents as court records, contemporary literature and newspaper accounts, and other sources to create the first such portrait of this nearly forgotten chapter of African-American history. From the various origins of the "free negro" classes to their legal and social statuses-regarding everything from their right of travel to their relationship with their enslaved fellows-this "should supply some of the facts upon which the history of the negro race in the United States must be based," wrote author JOHN HENDERSON RUSSELL (b. 1884) in his preface.
During the earliest decades of Virginia history, some men and women who arrived in the New World as slaves achieved freedom and formed a stable community on the Eastern shore. Holding their own with white neighbors for much of the 17th century, these free blacks purchased freedom for family members, amassed property, established plantations, and acquired laborers. T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes reconstruct a community in which ownership of property was as significant as skin color in structuring social relations. Why this model of social interaction in race relations did not survive makes this a critical and urgent work of history.
