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Show 180 DI~::SPOTIS:\1 actly with these Jewish provisions, indeed would seem to have been regulated by t hem. Thus they took with them, or caused to be broug ht out, a Iarg~ !lumber of indented Christian servants, whose penod of bondaae was limited to seven years, and who, till after the Revolution, constituted a distinct class in the community. Indeed, of the white lm1~igrants to America preceding that era, the large.r port_1on would :seem to have arri ved there under t his servile character. But while the servitude of Christians was thns limited the colonists supposed themselves justified in holdin~ nearoes and India ns as slaves for life. 'l'hc first E~alisl1 colonists arrived in Virginia in 1607. In 1620 a "Dutch trading vessel entered James' River with twenty negroes on board, who were sold to the settlers. Other similar importations cont inued to be made from time to time; but it not being imagined t hat any local legislation was necessary to give lo the purchasers of t hese black servants t he right to hold them and their posterity as bondmen for ever, more than forty years elapsed before any notice was taken of slaves by the Virginia statutes, as distinct from other servants. · It was not in Virg inia, but in New Engla~d, that the earliest colonial legislation on the subJect of slavery occurred. The 1\Iassachusetts "Body of Liberties," or "Fundamentals," as they were called, first promulgated in 1641, contain the following provision: "rrhcre shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, nor captivity among us, unless it be lawful captive.< taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves, or m·e sold, unto us." But in thus giving an express sanction to negro and Indian slavery, the freemen of Massachusetts did not conceive themselves to be running at all counter to the law of England, to which, by their charter, they were bound to conform, though on ecclesiastical points somewhat mclined to deviate from it. On the contrary, they supposed themselves to be conforming as well to the IN A!\lBRICA, 181 law of England, as to "the law of God established in Israel." This Massachusetts law, it ~vill be perceived, not only sanctioned slavery, but also the slavetrade. An American historian, a lways too much a panegyrist or an apologist to be implicitly relied on, ha:; indeed undertaken to claim for Massachusetts the honor of having denounced, at that early day, as "malefactors and murderers," those "who sailed to Guinea, to t rade for negroes "- a claim fou nded upon a misapprehension of a passage in Winthrop's J ournal. It a ppears, on the contrary, from other passages in VVinthrop, 1 hat "the trade to Guinea for negroes" was recognized as a just and lawful traffic. New England vessels, after carrying cargoes of stave.:; to Madeira, were accustomed to sail to Guinea for slaves, who generally, as there was little or no demand for them at Boston, were carried to Barbadoes, or the other English •ettlements in the West Indies, there to be sold. In t he particular case above referred to, instead of buying negroes, in the regular course of the Guinea trade, the Boston crew had joined with some Londoners already on the coast, and, on pretence of some quarrel with the natives, had landed "a murderer,"-t he expressive name of a small piece of cannon,-had attacl<ed a negro village on a Sunday, and after killing many of the inhabitants, had made a few prisoners, of whom two boys fell to the share of the Bostonians. A violent quarrel between the master, mate, and owners, as to the mutual settlement of their accounts, brought out the whole history of this voyage before the magistrates, one of whom presented a petition to the General Court, charging the master and mate, not with having "sailed for Guinea to trade for negroes," as the case is represented, but with the threefold oflence of murder, manstealing, and Sabbath-breaking,-the first two capital, by the Fundamental L aws of the colony, and all three "capital, by the laws of God." It was right enou~h to purcltase slaves, but wrong to steal them, espemally on a Sunday, and to commit murder in 16 |