Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
The colonial American legislatures were bicameral, with England’s monarch and parliament serving as the upper house and colonial assemblies as the lower houses, and the legislatures were required to adhere to English law. The English Civil War of 1642 impacted the kingdom, and it tested colonial America’s governance, as the 13 colonial American assemblies took advantage of the war across the Atlantic to enact colonial slave codes and Negro laws without securing the permission of England’s King Charles I or Parliament.
Under English law, these colonial laws were void ab initio since colonial American assemblies overreached their legislative authority, violating colonial charters and English law by discarding English legal traditions. The royalists on the side of the king and the parliamentarians fought for nine long years, clashing in bloody battles across the English countryside. Families were divided, friends fought on opposite sides, and the land was devastated. It was not just a war over territory or power, but a war of ideas: the divine right of kings versus the voice of the people, absolute monarchy versus parliamentary rule.
At the heart of the English Civil War was King Charles’ fierce belief in his divine right to rule. He saw himself as anointed by God, accountable to no one but heaven. He dissolved parliament whenever they challenged him, raised taxes without consent, and jailed those who dared to speak against him. To Charles, his power was absolute, unquestionable, and his alone. In the end, the parliamentarians triumphed. King Charles I was captured and put on trial for treason. And in 1649, he was executed, marking the first time in history that a king was tried and executed by his own people.
With the fall of the king, the monarchy was abolished, and England became a republic governed by the parliamentarians. England then entered a period of radical change led by Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth. But later, Parliament reestablished the monarchy in 1660 under King James II. Two years later, in 1662, Virginia’s colonial assembly passed a statute changing the British inheritance and kinship law. Enslaved black women in the colony gave birth to enslaveable children, even if the fathers were white (partus sequitur ventrem). Ownership of these children belonged to the owner of the enslaved mother. Although void ab initio, the other 12 colonial assemblies passed similar laws, and the British Imperial government did not veto these slave codes and Negro laws.
The Glorious Revolution, also known as the Bloodless Revolution in 1688, led to the overthrow of England’s King James II and the ascension of William and Mary II to the English throne. It was called glorious because it resulted in a significant transfer of power without the widespread bloodshed typically associated with revolutions, and it established critical precedents for a constitutional monarchy, Parliamentary Sovereignty, and England’s Bill of Rights of 1689. By reinforcing the concept of a constitutional monarchy and ensuring parliamentary supremacy and governance, it created parliamentary sovereignty over legislation throughout the kingdom, laid the groundwork for more democratic governance, and codified habeas corpus rights for English subjects.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is one of the most critical events that occurred during colonial times, as the British Parliament was conferred parliamentary sovereignty over the kingdom. The English Bill of Rights rendered colonial America’s practice of enslaving black children born on English soil unconstitutional, and it made colonial America’s adherence to slave codes and Negro laws an open defiance to, and a challenge to Parliament’s supreme legislative authority.
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