The character of the slaves imported, and the pitiable condition of the white servants, produced rather an anomalous result.  “Male servants, and slaves of both sex” were bound together by the fellowship of toil.  But the distinction “made between them in their clothes and food"[141] drew a line, not between their social condition,—­for it was the same,—­but between their nationality.  First, then, was social estrangement, next legal difference, and last of all political disagreement and strife.  In order to oppress the weak, and justify the unchristian distinction between God’s creatures, the persons who would bolster themselves into respectability must have the aid of law.  Luther could march fearlessly to the Diet of Worms if every tile on the houses were a devil; but Macbeth was conquered by the remembrance of the wrong he had done the virtuous Duncan and the unoffending Banquo, long before he was slain by Macduff.  A guilty conscience always needs a multitude of subterfuges to guard against dreaded contingencies.  So when the society in the Virginia Colony had made up its mind that the Negroes in their midst were mere heathen,[142] they stood ready to punish any member who had the temerity to cross the line drawn between the races.  It was not a mitigating circumstance that the white servants of the colony who came into natural contact with the Negroes were “disorderly persons,” or convicts sent to Virginia by an order of the king of England.  It was fixed by public sentiment and law that there should be no relation between the races.  The first prohibition was made “September 17th, 1630.”  Hugh Davis, a white servant, was publicly flogged “before an assembly of Negroes and others,” for defiling himself with a Negro.  It was also required that he should confess as much on the following sabbath.[143]

In the winter of 1639, on the 6th of January, during the incumbency of Sir Francis Wyatt, the General Assembly passed the first prohibition against Negroes.  “All persons,” doubtless including fraternizing Indians, “except Negroes,” were required to secure arms and ammunition, or be subject to a fine, to be imposed by “the Governor and Council."[144] The records are too scanty, and it is impossible to judge, at this remote day, what was the real cause of this law.  We have already called attention to the fact that the slaves were but a mere fraction of the summa summarum of the population.  It could not be that the brave Virginians were afraid of an insurrection!  Was it another reminder that the “Negroes were heathen,” and, therefore, not entitled to the privileges of Christian freemen?  It was not the act of that government, which in its conscious rectitude “can put ten thousand to flight,” but was rather the inexcusable feebleness of a diseased conscience, that staggers off for refuge “when no man pursueth.”