Two were white; one was black. They were captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentenced all three to thirty lashes. This was considered a severe punishment even by the standards of 17th century. The two white men were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude. The strong punishment for whites, but in addition to the whipping, the black man John Punch was ordered to serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere. (C Degler pg 65) Because he was a different color John Punch no longer had hope for freedom. Why, because he was African and was braking the law of the land at the time. The grounds for this harsh sentence presumably lay in the fact that he was non-Christian rather than in the fact that he was physically dark. But religious beliefs could change, while skin color could not. Within a generation race, religion was not being made the defining characteristic of enslaved Africans. Because the defining characteristics of Africans it lead to the terrible transformation to racial slavery. What were needed in Jamestown were laborers. Or what we call slaves to clear fields, to plant and harvest crops. During the 1620s and 1630s, when the price of tobacco was high and English workers had too few jobs available at home, Jamestown offered jobs to the few English workers that came over. Then after 1660 the value of tobacco dropped and the Great Plague reduced England's population. In addition, a terrible fire in London destroyed much of the city and created new jobs at home for English construction workers of all sorts. No longer able to lure their own countrymen, Jamestown looked toward African labor, following the pattern established by the Spanish and Portuguese more than a century before. African labor was cheap and Africans were being captured from their homeland and were sent to work at towns like Jamestown. Because the Africans were not Christians, Africans could b...
