An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, and Others, Which Have Occurred, or Been A | Page 4

require. This exempts none from servitude, who shall be judged thereto by authority."
"He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death."--Ex. 21:16.
In 1646, one James Smith, a member of Boston church, brought home two negroes from the Coast of Guinea, and had been the means of killing near a hundred more. In consequence of this conduct, the General Court passed the following order:--
"The General Court conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man- stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for what is past and such a law for the future, as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter with others unlawfully taken, be by the first opportunity at the charge of the country for the present, sent to his native country (Guinea) and a letter with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice thereof desiring our honored Governor would please put this order in execution."
From this time till about 1700, the number of slaves imported into Massachusetts was not large. In 1680, Governor Simon Bradstreet, in answer to inquiries from "the lords of his Majesties privy council," thus writes:--
"There had been no company of blacks or slaves brought into the country since the beginning of this plantation, for the space of 50 years, only one small vessell about two yeares since after 20 month's voyage to Madagasca brought hither betwixt 40 and 50 negros, most women and children, sold for 10 pounds, 15 pounds and 20 pounds apiece, which stood the merchants in near 40 pounds apiece one with another: now and then two or three negros are brought hither from Barbados and other of his majesties plantations, and sold her for about 20 pounds apiece, so that there may bee within our government about 100 or 120, and it may bee as many Scots brought hither and sold for servants in the time of the war with Scotland, and most now married and living here, and about halfe so many Irish brought hither at several times as servants."
The number of slaves at this period in the middle and southern colonies is not easily ascertained, as few books, and no newspapers, were published in North America prior to 1704. In that year, the Weekly News Letter was commenced, and in the same year the "Society for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts opened a catechising school for the slaves at New York, in which city there were then computed to be about 1500 negro and Indian slaves," a sufficient number to furnish materials for the "irrepressible conflict," which had long before begun. The catechist, whom the Society employed, was "Mr. Elias Neau, by nation a Frenchman, who, having made a confession of the Protestant religion in France, for which he had been confined several years in prison, and seven years in the gallies." Mr. Neau entered upon his office "with great diligence, and his labors were very successful; but the negroes were much discouraged from embracing the Christian religion upon account of the very little regard showed them in any religious respect. Their marriages were performed by mutual consent only, without the blessing of the Church; they were buried by those of their own country and complexion, in the common field, without any Christian office; perhaps some ridiculous heathen rites were performed at the grave by some of their own people. No notice was given of their being sick, that they might be visited; on the contrary, frequent discourses were made in conversation, that they had no souls, and perished as the beasts," and "that they grew worse by being taught, and made Christians."
In 1711, May 15, Gov. Gibbes, of South Carolina, in his address to the Legislature of that Province, thus speaks:--
"And, gentlemen, I desire you will consider the great quantities of negroes that are daily brought into the government, and the small number of whites that comes amongst us: how insolent and mischievous the negroes are become, and to consider the Negro Act already made, doth not reach up to some of the crimes they have lately been guilty of, therefore it might be convenient by some additional clause of said Negro Act to appoint either by gibbets or some such like way, that after executed, they may remain more exemplary than any punishment that hath been inflicted on them."
In the next month, June, the Governor thus writes:--
"We further recommend unto you the repairs of the fortifications about Charleston, and the amending of the Negro Act, who are of late grown to