1619
Twenty Africans are deposited at Jamestown, Virginia, by a Dutch frigate; whether their legal status was that of slaves or servants remains unclear.

1641
Massachusetts is the first American colony to recognize slavery officially in its laws.

1671
Maryland's legislature enacts a law holding that conversion to Christianity does not alter one's slave status.

1672
Virginia passes a law rewarding the killing of "Maroons"— runaway slaves who maintain a nomadic existence on the western frontier; between 1672 and 1864 dozens of Maroon communities are formed in the forests and swamps of South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and other colonies and states.

1688
Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, denounce slavery in America's first recorded formal protest against the institution.

1723
Virginia forbids owners to free (manumit) their slaves by law.

1739
Forty-four black slaves and thirty white colonists are killed in the Stono slave rebellion near Charleston, South Carolina.

1775–1783
The British royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issues...