Slavery and the slave trade. continued by mediawal Venice, the Saracens, Tatars, Turks, and African tribes, were freshly extended by hammedans in Africa and Asia. who made sub ject alike Christians, heathen, whites, and blacks. Negro slavery was a long established African tribal custom with debtors, criminals, vagrants, and captives. The commercial expansion of Por tugal incidentally began the African slave trade in modern Europe and America. Through kid napping and from Moorish slavers Prince Henry of Portugal received negro slaves in 1442, and two years later began the European slave trade from the west coast of Africa. For a half cen tury Portugal monopolized the traffic, which finally embraced the Spanish possessions in America, where Indian slavery established by Spain was exterminating, the natives. Spain en tered the slave trade in 1517; the English (under .John Hawkins) in 1553. and France in 1624: they were followed by Holland. Denmark, and the American colonies. The market was the \Vest-European countries and their colonies in America, particularly the Spanish West Indies. England finally took the lead in the commerce, granting from the time of Elizabeth to 1670 five separate patents for its monopoly to favored mer chants and companies. Between 1712 and 1749 the exclusive supply of the Spanish colonies was granted by Spain to the English South Sea Com pany. Thereafter all Englishmen could enter this field and continue their former trade to the Eng lish colonies. Of the total number of slaves imported previous to the American Revolution, British subjects probably carried half. employ ing in one year 192 ships, carrying 47,000 slaves. Often a fourth of the slaves perished in the over crowding of the 'middle passage.' Massacre and the torch marked the track of the kidnapping African slaver and numbers of slaves died during the process of 'seasoning,' or acclimatization in their new homes.
Research has proved that the first negroes landed at Jamestown in 1619 and others brought by early privateers were not reduced to slavery. but to limited servitude, a legalized status of Indian, white, and negro servants preceding slavery in most, if not all, of the English main land colonies. Statutory recognition of slavery occurred in llassachusetts in 1641, in Connecti cut in 1650, in Virginia in 1661, and later in the other colonies. Jews. Moors, and Turks were also subjects of colonial slavery. Indian slavery was confined chiefly to the seventeenth century with the English, as their Indian captives were less profitable than those of the Spanish, who were subjected to more rigorous treatment, Slavery in the region now constituting the United States was patriarchal. Statutory law and court de cisions added to such incidents of servitude as alienation, whipping, disfranchisement, limited marriage, trade. etc., first the incident of per petual service and then a denial of civil and juridical capacity, as well as of marriage, prop erty, and possession of children, thus creating slavery. The slave, contrary to the famous obiter dicta in the Dred Scott decision (see DEED SCOTT CASE) , had some legal rights, such as limited personal agency, security (after 1788).
support in age or sickness, a right to limited religious instruction, and suit and evidence in special cases. Custom gave numerous rights, such as private property. marriage, free time, contractual ability, and to females domestic or lighter prfedial labor, which, however, the mas ter was not bound to respect. Barbarities like mutilation, branding. chaining, and murder were regulated or prohibited by law, but instances of cruelty were not infrequent before the nineteenth century.
It was a mooted point in the courts of the former slave-holding States of the United States whether a slave had any rights under the COM mon law which the master was bound to respect. There was very little precedent in the English law, and under the early Roman law a master had absolute power of life and death over his slaves, who were generally captives taken in war. In 1820 a Mississippi court held that under the common law the wanton killing of a slave was murder. In 1851 the Supreme Court of Georgia repudiated the reasoning advanced for the above conclusion, contending that a master had abso lute dominion over a slave under the common law. The first legal provision in America on this subject seems to have been a Virginia statute of 1723, making the willful killing of a slave murder. In 1770 a colonial net prohibited the malicious and unnecessary killing of slaves by white men. However, in most of the Southern States, stat utes were enacted prohibiting the wanton killing or mutilation of a slave, thus finally disposing of the question. Slaves were liable under the criminal laws of the States in which they lived. Most of the slave States also passed statutes se curing to slaves certain other rights, such as to be treated in a humane manner, to receive medi cal attention when ill, and to be provided with the necessaries of life when from old age or other causes they were unable to work.
With such humane provisions recognition of a slave as a person ceased, and for all other pur poses he was regarded as a chattel, subject to the will of his master, and a thing to be bought and sold. The law of personal property was applied in governing his ownership. The children of a slave mother belonged to her owner, irrespective of who owned the father. In most of the South ern States the marriage of slaves was not recog nized in law, though perhaps generally encour aged by slave-owners from religious or moral principles. The legal duties and priviliges of the marriage relation were considered to be incom patible with the duties owed by the contracting parties to their owners. The question of the legal status and effect of a slave marriage has be come important since the general emancipation of the slaves in determining the descent and dis tribution of property of former slaves. General ly, the States in which slavery flourished have enacted statutes providing for legalizing such marriages by certain formalities, and in a few States continued cohabitation merely, after eman cipation, was held sufficient. However, it is doubtful if any of these States would recognize as valid a marriage contracted during slavery and followed by separation before emancipation.