The Practise of Slavery


The following selections use selected excerpts from wills, deeds, and the recorded minutes of the Virginia Assembly and Council to illustrate the treatment of African slaves and Native American servants and slaves in Virginia during the seventeenth century. The documents also reveal that relations between English and Africans had a degree of fluidity during the seventeenth century as Virginia developed into a society where race, instead of status, determined one's place in the social hierarchy.



©Crandall Shifflett
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1998