Virginia General Assembly Acts Defining Slavery (1640-1680)

Vocabulary flashcards covering key Virginia General Assembly acts, legal definitions, and demographic shifts shaping slavery between 1640 and 1680.

Indentured Servants

Laborers imported to Virginia who worked for a specified term of years before receiving freedom and land.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

A power struggle for control of Virginia's government that led colonial officials to view former indentured servants as a threat to authority, prompting a shift toward permanent African slavery.

1640: Act X (Concerning Arms)

A Virginia law requiring masters of families to furnish their households with offensive and defensive arms, explicitly excepting negroes.

Act XII (December 1662)

A law establishing that all children born in Virginia shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.

Act III (September 1667)

A statute declaring that conferring the sacrament of baptism does not alter the legal condition of a slave regarding bondage or freedom.

Intestate

The legal status of a person who dies without leaving a valid will.

Act IV (September 1671)

An act authorizing county courts to decide whether negroes belonging to orphans of intestate estates should be appraised, sold at an outcry, or preserved in kind.

Act X (June 1680: An Act for Preventing Negroes Insurrections)

A law prohibiting slaves from carrying weapons or departing their master's land without a written certificate, and authorizing physical lashings or death for resistance.

Virginia Black Population Growth (1660–1760)

The demographic expansion of black people in Virginia from 950 (less than 4 percent) in 1660, to 23,118 (nearly 30 percent) in 1710, and 140,470 (more than 41 percent) in 1760.