Slavery in Colonial Virginia: Driven By Overpopulation

Many Africans living in early colonial Virginia were not, as most tend to think, slaves to the settlers who came to the United States from England. Slavery was, in some regard, a gradual process that took hold of the colony. Several chief factors contributed to the rise of slavery in Virginia, and most were more important than race. Virginia ultimately became a slave society because of problems that stemmed from overpopulation led to the development of a desperate, poverty-stricken population.

Prior to 1660, Africans in colonial Virginia were slaves, servants or free. According to Morgan, they were granted nearly all of the same legal, social and economic rights as others living in the colony. There were, of course, Africans who were enslaved even while others walked free, and there were Africans who were considered indentured servants during this time. Scholars suggest the freedoms granted to these Africans likely happened because of a lack of a permanent slave system in the colonies during this early period. Still, Africans would not keep these freedoms. A surplus in population and a subsequent shift in the tobacco market over the next fifteen to twenty years lowered the overall quality of life for many Virginians, both white and black, leading to a restless colony that had too many people and not enough land.

It does not appear that early Africans in the colonies were primarily responsible for the progression to a slave society, but rather, that shift was driven predominantly by economic and social factors out of their control. Still, there was a gradual shrinking of the rights of free blacks in Virginia in nearly all facets of society. Africans “who were not freeholders” would lose the ability to carry weapons and every black woman in the colony was taxed as a field laborer. These changes came about in the 1640s, decades before Bacon’s Rebellion, the implementation of laws that would make it more challenging for Africans to earn freedom from a life as an indentured servant, and the construction of a slave code just after the turn of the century.

The chief factors driving the shift to a slave system were economic and legal concerns plaguing the Virginia colony, and they were problems that mirrored what had previously happened in England. Overpopulation in England during the 1600s was a key consideration for colonization, and it was not long after settlers landed in Virginia that the colony, too, was facing a growing population that it could not keep up with. While the early days saw a slow-growing population, that trend reversed by the 1640s. The number of people living in Virginia jumped from around eight thousand in 1640 to more than twenty-five thousand in 1662. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that while the population was small and the land and work were plentiful, Africans were not subject to a slave system and even enjoyed several freedoms.

The growing population had to be dealt with, and Morgan argues that once “Virginia thus acquired a social problem analogous to England’s own, the colony began to deal with it as England had done.” Colonial leaders continued to shrink what little rights were remaining and made it much more difficult for indentured servants to break free from that life. All indentured servants would automatically have to serve until the age of twenty-four when it had previously been twenty-one, the government created harsher punishments and added to the list of behaviors that could be penalized by more time as a servant and reduced how servants could move through the colony. They were moves designed to keep more people from becoming free and to reduce the pressure on a society that was already buckling under the demands of its free, but poor citizens. Virginia was growing desperate, but it had not yet reached its boiling point.

Despite the new regulations, Virginia was unable to keep its free population from increasing, and as more laws were passed, the population that had been squeezed from land or was not able to own land became more volatile. It was a problem compounded by the fact that most of these men were armed (threats from Indians and settlers whose native nations were at war with England in Europe required this) and single. Bacon’s Rebellion was a pivotal turning point for the colony, as the poor began to lash out at the upper class, and though it did not bring about societal change, it was a symbol of the desperation the colonists were feeling regarding their own survival.

Slavery was, according to Morgan, a natural but not necessarily inherently intentional progression for the colony. Overpopulation and all the problems it created led to the decision that free and cheap labor from slaves was the easiest economic move for the colony to make. By enslaving Africans in Virginia, there were fewer and fewer indentured servants, and thus as a result, there were fewer men ultimately going free. By 1790, Virginia possessed about forty percent of all the slaves in the United States.

Virginia did not begin as a colony with a complete slave system, but it undeniably progressed to just that. Several factors led to this shift, and while race was undoubtedly a contributing consideration, it does not appear to be the overwhelming force that drove Virginia to create its slave code. There were more pressing concerns in the colony during the latter half of the seventeenth century, as tensions rose even among the freemen who were battling for their survival. In many ways, what happened in Virginia was like a blueprint of what occurred in England, as overpopulation drove leaders to make critical choices. For that reason, social, legal and primarily economic factors were the driving forces behind Virginia’s shift to a slave society.