As a slave the negro had none of the ordinary civil or personal rights of the citizen. In criminal cases, he could be arrested, tried, and condemned with but one witness against him, and he could be sentenced without a jury…. Zealous for religion as the colonists were, they made little attempt to convert the Negroes in the earlier decades of the 17th Century, there being a very general opinion that neither Christian brotherhood or the law of England would justify the holding of Christians as slaves. In course of time, however, they lost their scruples, and it became generally understood that conversion and baptism did not make the slaves free, Virginia in 1667 enacting a law to that effect.

The fear of Negro insurrection caused violent measures to be taken. In New York in 1712, twenty-four Negroes were put to death, some in cruel ways, and in 1711 on the mere rumor of an intended rising occurred an organized persecution of the blacks.

Every one of the eight lawyers in town appeared against the Negroes, who had no counsel and were convicted on most insufficient evidence. Fourteen of the unfortunate people were burned at the stake, eighteen were hanged, and seventy-one deported.⁶

This has a modern ring though distinguished by the fact that the victims had the form of a trial. The Negroes' status was ordinarily beyond the reach of any civil process.

The negro slave in the eyes of the law was a chattel, could be bought and sold, bequeathed by will, given away, mortgaged, or seized in satisfaction of a judgment. Not a civil right of any kind was his. He could not make a contract, or give testimony against a white man in any court, nor acquire property in any way. Whatever he found, whatever he made, whatever was given to him, reverted at once to his master. To teach a slave to write was not allowed anywhere; to teach him to read was allowed in a few colonies.⁷

THE CONSTITUTIONAL PERIOD

This period (1776–1863) may be so called though slavery was never explicitly recognized in the American constitutions. No provision on the subject appears in any State constitution except in Delaware's of 1783. The Federal Constitution implicitly recognized slavery in providing that representation shall be determined on the whole number “of free persons, three-fifths of all others.” (Article I, section 11, clause 3.) It permitted the importation of slaves until 1808. In the “free States” where the Negroes were not numerous or economically important they advanced to a relative liberty. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that the provision in the State Bill of Rights that “all men are born free and equal” prohibited slavery. The status varied:

In New England slaves were regarded as possessing the same legal rights as apprentices, and if masters abused their authority, they were liable to indictment. Each State had its own slave code … and it is difficult to make general statements about the legal side…. If he did not get what was due him, he had no redress, for he had no legal voice. His marriage was not considered binding and he was not supposed to have any morals.⁸

Mob violence against the Negro was ferocious in the “free States” because the Negro was not a valuable chattel but a competitor with white workers. The fields of employment were limited rather by social control than by law. Education was generally denied, Negroes being refused admission to schools and even theological seminaries.

In the Southern States the Negro had no rights and no liberties. The laws penalized teaching slaves to read and even talking to them.⁹ In South Carolina the law authorized the arrest of English sailors under the English flag if the sailors were black and labor was needed in the rice swamps. Owners had absolute control of the slave's body; and treatment ranged from kindness to cruelty.