of transporting a servant was from £6 to £10. "Servitude became slavery
when to such incidents as alienation, disfranchisement, whipping, and
limited marriage were added those of perpetual service and a denial of
civil, juridical, marital and property rights as well as the denial of
the possession of children."[1] Even after slavery was well established,
however, white men and women were frequently retained as domestic
servants, and the system of servitude did not finally pass in all of its
phases before the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

[Footnote 1: _New International Encyclopædia_, Article "Slavery."]

Negro slavery was thus distinctively an evolution. As the first Negroes
were taken by pirates, the rights of ownership could not legally be
given to those who purchased them; hence slavery by custom preceded
slavery by statute. Little by little the colonies drifted into the
sterner system. The transition was marked by such an act as that in
Rhode Island, which in 1652 permitted a Negro to be bound for ten years.
We have already referred to the Act of Assembly in Virginia in 1661 to
the effect that Negroes were incapable of making satisfaction for time
lost in running away by addition of time. Even before it had become
generally enacted or understood in the colonies, however, that a child
born of slave parents should serve for life, a new question had arisen,
that of the issue of a free person and a slave. This led Virginia in
1662 to lead the way with an act declaring that the status of a child
should be determined by that of the mother,[1] which act both gave to
slavery the sanction of law and made it hereditary. From this time
forth Virginia took a commanding lead in legislation; and it is to be
remembered that when we refer to this province we by no means have
reference to the comparatively small state of to-day, but to the richest
and most populous of the colonies. This position Virginia maintained