Before 1655 there were no legal slaves in the American colonies, but
indentured servants were common. All Servant owners or masters were required to
free their servants after their time was up which was typically a period of 4
to 7 years ; you may recall we touched upon this subject with a “Post” titled Indentured Servants or Redemptioners in December of 2011.
It was long believed that indentured servant
John Casor was the first individual to be declared a slave in what would later
become the United States, and Anthony Johnson a black man; would then be the
first known slaveholder in America. Historical court records prove that only
part of that statement is true.
The Story of John Casor and his relationship with Anthony Johnson,
go’s something like this: Johnson was a man from modern-day Angola that’s located
in Southern Africa; in 1619 he was transported to the Virginia Colony to work for
a tobacco farmer. When Johnson’s indenture term was up, he was released and recognized
as a “free man”. He must have been the
industrious sort because by 1651 he owned a successful farm himself, consisting
of 250 acres which he ran with the help of 5 black indentured servants. In 1654, it was time for Johnson to release
John Casor, one of his indentured servants. Instead Johnson told Casor he was extending
his indenture time. Casor was apparently sure Johnson couldn’t legally take
such a position or enforce it because he left the Johnson place in search of
employment elsewhere. A white man named Robert Parker must have thought the
same thing, because he provided Casor employment.
In all likelihood after several threats (no-one among the living today knows), Anthony
Johnson brought suit against Robert Parker in the Court of Northampton late
that same year. In 1655, the court ruled for unknown reasons that Anthony
Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely as his indentured Servant. With this action, the Northampton Colonial
Virginia Court inadvertently performed two seemingly benign deeds: The first gave
judicial sanction for free blacks to own slaves of their own race and second, John
Casor became the second lifetime slave held in the English Colonies; in this way,
historical court records shown the first black
slave owner in Colonial Virginia was Anthony Johnson.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 1670 that a law was passed permitting
folks to legally hold a black servant for an indefinite period of time as a slave.
You see, in that year, the Colonial Assembly passed legislation granting free
whites, blacks, and Native Americans the right to own blacks as slaves.
Within less than 30 years (1699), the large
number of free blacks prompted fears of a “slave uprising.” So the Province of
Virginia ordered the expulsion of freed blacks, which in other words, provided
a one way ticket to Africa. Surprisingly records show that many blacks sold
themselves to whites so they wouldn’t be required to go to Africa. This was the
first attempt to “gently” repatriate (send back) free blacks to the region
commonly perceived to be the black man’s homeland; in fact the modern nations
of Sierra Leone and Liberia originated as colonies of deported x-black slaves.
Common sense suggests that further “cultivation” of the slave
business was anything but wise, nevertheless, America’s slave owners (black and
white) continued to thrive; this was especially so in the South. By 1830 there were 3,775 black families
living in the South who owned black slaves. 30 years latter (1860) there were approximately
3,000 black slaves owned by black families just within the city of New Orleans.
In many instances, black slave owners had
similar views regarding slavery with their white counterparts. Slave owners of
both races occasionally freed a trusted servant but were just as apt to sell a
less fortunate slave the very next day. The act of freeing one or several
slaves while others remained in bondage did not establish a firm commitment
against slavery, but promoted the personal view that some actions by slaves,
such as hard work or the display of loyalty, occasionally warranted them their freedom,
while others were clearly meant to be slaves until their demise.
As mentioned earlier, John Casor was once thought to be the first
documented slave in America when in actuality it was John Punch. He was bound
as an indentured servant for life in 1640 (a full 15 years before Casor) after
trying to escape from his indenture, or his “master”.
His story is as follows: John Punch was an
indentured servant of a Virginia planter known as Hugh Gwyn; he escaped to
Maryland in the company of two other servants, one was a Dutchman, the other a
Scot. All three men were caught and
sentenced to whippings; in addition the two European men were sentenced to have
their terms of indenture extended by four years each. On the other hand the punishment for John
Punch was much more severe than that given to two white indentured servants, which
has led historians to call Punch the first African documented to be legally
sanctioned as a slave for life in Virginia.
Anthony Johnson remains the first Black man to own a slave for life in
America and the second slave owner.
There is only one “rewarding” turn of events that could possibly be
associated with the first full-fledged slave (John Punch): In July of 2012, Ancestry.com issued a paper verifying that with the combination of historic
research and Y-DNA analysis, the evidence that’s key to proving ancestral links or kinship,
concluding that Punch was an eleventh-generation maternal grandfather of
President Barack Obama.
Sources:
http://blackinformant.wordpress.com/2005/02/28/more-buried-history-black-slave-owners-in-the-us/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Punch_%28slave%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Casor http://cofcc.org/2012/03/americas-first-slave-owner-was-a-black-man/ http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/emancipation.html
