[Footnote 3: Ballagh: _Slavery in Virginia, 12_.]


4. _Planting of Slavery in the Colonies_

It is only for Virginia that we can state with definiteness the year
in which Negro slaves were first brought to an English colony on the
mainland. When legislation on the subject of slavery first appears
elsewhere, slaves are already present. "About the last of August
(1619)," says John Rolfe in John Smith's _Generall Historie_, "came in a
Dutch man of warre, that sold us twenty Negars." These Negroes were
sold into servitude, and Virginia did not give statutory recognition to
slavery as a system until 1661, the importations being too small to make
the matter one of importance. In this year, however, an act of assembly
stated that Negroes were "incapable of making satisfaction for the time
lost in running away by addition of time"; [1] and thus slavery gained a
firm place in the oldest of the colonies.

[Footnote 1: Hening: _Statutes_, II, _26_.]

Negroes were first imported into Massachusetts from Barbadoes a year or
two before 1638, but in John Winthrop's _Journal_, under date February
26 of this year, we have positive evidence on the subject as follows:
"Mr. Pierce in the Salem ship, the _Desire_, returned from the West
Indies after seven months. He had been at Providence, and brought some
cotton, and tobacco, and Negroes, etc., from thence, and salt from
Tertugos. Dry fish and strong liquors are the only commodities for those
parts. He met there two men-of-war, sent forth by the lords, etc., of
Providence with letters of mart, who had taken divers prizes from the
Spaniard and many Negroes." It was in 1641 that there was passed in