[Footnote 1:  Coffin:  Slave Insurrections, 8.]

In New York slavery began under the Dutch rule and continued under the English.  Before or about 1650 the Dutch West India Company brought some Negroes to New Netherland.  Most of these continued to belong to the company, though after a period of labor (under the common system of indenture) some of the more trusty were permitted to have small farms, from the produce of which they made return to the company.  Their children, however, continued to be slaves.  In 1664 New Netherland became New York.  The next year, in the code of English laws that was drawn up, it was enacted that “no Christian shall be kept in bond slavery, villeinage, or captivity, except who shall be judged thereunto by authority, or such as willingly have sold or shall sell themselves.”  As at first there was some hesitancy about making Negroes Christians, this act, like the one in Massachusetts, by implication permitted slavery.

It was in 1632 that the grant including what is now the states of Maryland and Delaware was made to George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore.  Though slaves are mentioned earlier, it was in 1663-4 that the Maryland Legislature passed its first enactment on the subject of slavery.  It was declared that “all Negroes and other slaves within this province, and all Negroes and other slaves to be hereinafter imported into this province, shall serve during life; and all children born of any Negro or other slave, shall be slaves as their fathers were, for the term of their lives.”

In Delaware and New Jersey the real beginnings of slavery are unusually hazy.  The Dutch introduced the system in both of these colonies.  In the laws of New Jersey the word slaves occurs as early as 1664, and acts for the regulation of the conduct of those in bondage began with the practical union of the colony with New York in 1702.  The lot of the slave was somewhat better here than in most of the colonies.  Although the system was in existence in Delaware almost from the beginning of the colony, it did not receive legal recognition until 1721, when there was passed an act providing for the trial of slaves in a special court with two justices and six freeholders.

As early as 1639 there are incidental reference to Negroes in Pennsylvania, and there are frequent references after this date.[1] In this colony there were strong objections to the importing of Negroes in spite of the demand for them.  Penn in his charter to the Free Society of Traders in 1682 enjoined upon the members of this company that if they held black slaves these should be free at the end of fourteen years, the Negroes then to become the company’s tenants.[2] In 1688 there originated in Germantown a protest against Negro slavery that was “the first formal action ever taken against the barter in human flesh within the boundaries of the United States.” [3] Here a small company of Germans was assembled April 18,