1705

The legislative assembly of Virginia enacted a law that declared all non- Christian servants entering the colony to be slaves. It defined all slaves as real estate; acquitted masters who killed slaves during punishment; forbade slaves and free colored people from physically assaulting white persons and denied slaves the right to bear arms or to move abroad without written permission.

• Determined that if a white man or white woman married a black partner, the white individual would be sentenced to jail for six months and fined 10 pounds current money of Virginia.
• Determined that any minister who married an interracial couple would be assessed a fine of 10,000 pounds of tobacco.
• Determined that any escaped slave who was unwilling or unable to name his or her owner would be sent to a public jail.

New York declares that punishment by execution will be applied to certain runaway slaves.

Massachusetts makes marriage and sexual relations between blacks and whites illegal.

Virginia’s House of Burgesses enacts the Virginia Slave Codes regulating the interactions between slaves and citizens of the colony of Virginia. The colonial statute was devised to establish a greater level of control over the rising African slave population of Virginia.