“At this early period there appears to have been slavery on the Delaware.  As one Coinclisse was ’condemned, on the 3d of February, to serve the company with the blacks on South River for wounding a soldier at Fort Amsterdam.  He was also to pay a fine to the fiscal, and damages to the wounded soldier.’  On the 22d, a witness testifying in the case of Governor Van Twiller, (the governor of New Neitherlands before Kieft,) who was charged with neglect and mismanagement of the company’s affairs, said that ’he had in his custody for Van Twiller, at Fort Hope and Nassau, twenty-four to thirty goats, and that three negroes bought by the director in 1636, were since employed in his private service.’  Thus it will be seen that slavery was introduced on the Delaware as early as 1636, though probably not in this State, as the Dutch at that time had no settlement here."[432]

And on the 15th of September, 1657, complaint was made that Peter Alricks had “used the company’s oxen and negroes;” thus showing that there were quite a number of Negroes in the colony at the time mentioned.  In September, 1661, there was a meeting between Calvert, D’Hinoyossa, Peter Alricks, and two Indian chiefs, to negotiate terms of peace.  At this meeting the Marylanders agreed to furnish the Dutch annually three thousand hogsheads of tobacco, provided the Dutch would “supply them with negroes and other commodities."[433] Negroes were numerous, and an intercolonial traffic in slaves was established.

The first legislation on the slavery question in the colony of Delaware was had in 1721. “An Act for the trial of Negroes” provided that two justices and six freeholders should have full power to try “negro and mulatto slaves” for heinous offences.  In case slaves were executed, the Assembly paid the owner two-thirds the value of such slave.  It forbade convocations of slaves, and made it a misdemeanor to carry arms.  During the same year an Act was passed punishing adultery and fornication.  In case of children of a white woman by a slave, the county court bound them out until they were thirty-one years of age.  In 1739 the Legislature passed an Act for the better regulation of servants and slaves, consisting of sixteen articles.  It provided that no indentured servant should be sold into another government without the approval of at least one justice.  Such servant could not be assigned over except before a justice.  If a person manumitted a slave, good security was required:  if he failed to do this, the manumission was of no avail.  If free Negroes did not care for their children, they were liable to be bound out.  In 1767 the Legislature passed another Act restraining manumission.  It recites:—­