Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
Today, we delve into the turbulent era of the 17th century, where the foundations of colonial American slavery were dramatically shaped by the upheavals across the Atlantic. It was 1642 when the English Civil War ignited, a period of unprecedented chaos and uncertainty that shook England’s imperial government to its core. As England grappled with internal strife, America’s colonial leaders saw opportunity that altered the course of slave history.
In this climate of disorder, colonial assemblymen and the wealthy planter class sought to consolidate their authority. They capitalized upon England’s preoccupation to pass colonial slave statutes and laws, creating an extra-legal system that would bind generations of Black individuals into servitude. Yet even this was not enough. By the late 1650s and early 1660s, Virginia’s colonial leaders, emboldened, aligned with Virginia’s colonial governor to pass a law known as Partus Sequitur Ventrem. This colonial law declared children born to enslaved mothers would inherit her status, a law that enshrined hereditary slavery into a generational regime.
But make no mistake, this was a legislative overreach, which meant that the law was void ab initio. The colonial assemblies acted without the requisite power or authority and did not have permission from the king, who, by colonial charter, controlled the upper house of every colonial legislature. Thus, these slave codes and Negro laws were void from the start and a violation of the very foundation of legal authority in the American colonies.
The tide, however, would turn. By the end of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the winds of liberty began to blow with renewed force. England’s Parliament in 1689 passed the English Bill of Rights, a document affirming the fundamental legal protections for all individuals on British soil. This Bill of Rights reestablished liberties that had been enshrined as early as the Magna Carta of 1215, including the crucial protection of habeas corpus, securing freedom from arbitrary detention. Here was a renewed commitment to liberty, a clarion call for human dignity, and a reminder of England’s foundational values.
And yet, as the British government reinforced these rights at home, it sought to assert control over its colonies. In 1763, it abandoned its policy of salutary neglect, reclaiming active authority over colonial American lawmaking. Then just three years later, in 1766, Parliament passed the American Colonies Act of 1766, also known as the Declaratory Act. This legislation was nothing short of transformative. It decreed that all colonial statutes and laws that denied or questioned parliamentary authority were utterly null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever, which included colonial slave codes and their Negro laws.
This was a profound turning point. Parliament’s Act had a clear purpose and a plain meaning. It was a resounding abolition of any colonial legal measures that had promoted hereditary slavery and oppressive statutes, as such laws not only violated common law but were fundamentally incompatible with the English Bill of Rights and Parliament’s supreme legislative authority in the kingdom.
As we look back on this pivotal era, let us recognize the strength of lawful authority over coercive power. The push for hereditary slavery was both a moral failing and a violation of legal boundaries. We honor Parliament’s legislative acts that ultimately reaffirmed freedom, reminding us that justice is a constant and hard-won journey.
Please share and visit our website at Wells Center on American Exceptionalism and look for future videos in this series.