The money gained from his labor was his own; he might become skilled at a trade; he might buy land; he might buy slaves;[1] he might even buy his wife and child if, as most frequently happened, they were slaves; and he might have one gun with which to protect his home.[2] Once in a long while he might even find some opportunity for education, as when the church became the legal warden of Negro apprentices.  Frequently he found a place in such a trade as that of the barber or in other personal service, and such work accounted very largely for the fact that he was generally permitted to remain in communities where technically he had no right to be.  In the North his situation was little better than in the South, and along economic lines even harder.  Everywhere his position was a difficult one.  He was most frequently regarded as idle and shiftless, and as a breeder of mischief; but if he showed unusual thrift he might even be forced to leave his home and go elsewhere.  Liberty, the boon of every citizen, the free Negro did not possess.  For all the finer things of life—­the things that make life worth living—­the lot that was his was only less hard than that of the slave.

[Footnote 1:  Russell:  The Free Negro in Virginia, 32-33, cites from the court records of Northampton County, 1651-1654 and 1655-1658, the noteworthy case of a free negro, Anthony Johnson, who had come to Virginia not later than 1622 and who by 1650 owned a large tract of land on the Eastern Shore.  To him belonged a Negro, John Casor.  After several years of labor Casor demanded his freedom on the ground that from the first he had been an indentured servant and not a slave.  When the case came up in court, however, not only did Johnson win the verdict that Casor was his slave, but he also won his suit against Robert Parker, a white man, who he asserted had illegally detained Casor.]

[Footnote 2:  Hening:  Statutes, IV, 131.]

3. First Effort for Social Betterment

If now we turn aside from laws and statutes and consider the ordinary life and social intercourse of the Negro, we shall find more than one contradiction, for in the colonial era codes affecting slaves and free Negroes had to grope their way to uniformity.  Especially is it necessary to distinguish between the earlier and the later years of the period, for as early as 1760 the liberalism of the Revolutionary era began to be felt.  If we consider what was strictly the colonial epoch, we may find it necessary to make a division about the year 1705.  Before this date the status of the Negro was complicated by the incidents of the system of servitude; after it, however, in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts alike, special discrimination against him on account of race was given formal recognition.