Matthew Fernandez

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Matthew FernandezTravis JaquessHis 105, Sec 52 September 2011

“That no master, mistress, overseer, or other person whatsoever…shall give their negroes

and other slaves leave…to go out of their plantations” ( Slavery and Prejudice …, 62). The

preceding extract from an act delegated by the colony of South Carolina epitomizes the injustice

and the lack of liberty profited to African slaves during the settlement of the New World.

Prejudice was not a new concept for the settlers; the English that had migrated were already

attuned to the idea of indentured servitude — a practice that is inherently degrading. Demeaning

the ideology of what America would later personify —“all men are created equal”— the land west

of the Atlantic had not even begun to ratify the bonds of inequality: sexism, ageism and, of

course, racism were in abundance — from the beginning. Verified by the horrors afflicted upon

the Africans, the New World was a breeding ground for unmitigated racism.

Drug from their homes and their lives, African slaves were affronted, mutilated, and

beaten. Thomas Phillips — commander of the slave-trading ship Hannibal — describes the horrors

bestowed upon the unwilling migrants : “[W]e mark’d the slaves we had bought in the breast, or

shoulde r, with a hot iron… appearing very plain and white after” (Phillips , 60). Evidenced by

the aforementioned quote, slaves lost their sense of identity with their former African heritages;

they were ripped from their known world and made to become “just another number.” F orced to

live amongst and serve a strange people, slaves were physically marked, contributing to their role

as a subservient.

Furthermore, respect toward Africans was an unversed notion: “Almost from the

beginning of Maryland and Virginia’ s slave history, as the first legislation defined the lifelong

condition of slavery, colonists imposed harsher punishments against laborers of African descent



than against white servants ” Respect was an unversed notion ( Archives of Maryland , 63).

Providing a particular instance of early racism, it can be concluded that discrimination was a

powerful force that dictated the treatment of particular minorities — in this case, African slaves.

Although, indentured servitude “was [a] life [that was] not all that easy” (McIlwaine, 37), life as

a slave was beyond harsh: “When our slaves are aboard we shackle the men two and two”

(Phillips, 60).

Additionally, laws were enacted throughout the southern colonies — particularly in South

Carolina and Virginia — to prevent even a modicum of freedom for the newly captured African

slaves. The colonies developed their governments in way that excluded slaves any true rights;the establishment of the colonies benefited only the Englishmen. In 1712, South Carolina

instituted a number of statutes that directly prohibited any independence among the slaves

(Slavery and Prejudice, 62-3). However, despite the clarity of the fact that such an act was

fundamentally racist, English bigotry remained a fierce and hypocritical dynamism. Virginia

aggrandized Englishmen, while discrediting the element of African abuse: “their Slaves are not

worked near so hard, nor so many Hours in a day, as the Husbandmen, and Day-Labourers in

England” (The History and Present State of Virginia, 65).

Even though religious intolerance was commonplace in the majority of the New World,

race relations toward the middle and end of the 17 th century began to overshadow religious

feuds. Legislators began to distinguish “English from African residents by col or (white-black)

rather than by religion (Christian- pagan)” (African Laborers, 55).

In evidence, slavery thrived, as well as racism, as harsher laws were mandated. As

typified in the attitude of lawmakers and even “common folk” of the New World, racism— from



the inception of the New World — was an institution wholly embedded in the development of the

thirteen colonies.

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