and Connecticut, Virginia legalized slavery in 1661. In 1672 the king of England chartered the Royal African Company to bring the shiploads of slaves into trading centers like Jamestown, Hampton, and Yorktown. Slavery spread quickly in the American colonies. At first the legal status of Africans in America was poorly defined, and some, like European indentured servants, managed to become free after several years of service. From the 1660s, however, the colonies began enacting laws that defined and regulated slave relations. Central to these laws was the provision that black slaves, and the children of slave women, would serve for life. This premise, combined with the natural population growth among the slaves, meant that slavery could survive and grow even after slave imports were outlawed in 1808. This was one of the first instances of race translating itself into political power in early colonial America. By the middle of the 18th century slavery was widely accepted in the colonies. There was no way to hide it, between 1680 and 1750 the proportion of slaves in America grew from 4.6 of the population to over 20 percent. In the southern colonies slavery went from about 5 percent to 40 percent of the population. Throughout most of the colonial period, opposition to slavery among white Americans was virtually nonexistent. Settlers in the 17th and early 18th centuries came from sharply stratified societies in which the wealthy savagely exploited members of the lower classes. Lacking a later generation’s belief in natural human equality, they saw little reason to question the enslavement of Africans. As they sought to mold a docile labor force, planters resorted to harsh, repressive measures that included liberal use of whipping and branding. That way of thinking would change, as the colonies would move toward war.The coming of the American Revolution would change the way Americans thought about slavery. In response to their perce...
