History lesson of the week. Northam was right on this.
Calling it "VANITY" as the story referenced was from May of 2018.
Ping
wow, a black man started slavery in America.
This is an important history lesson that everyone should learn. What is missing is that it was an English judge and the colonies were under English rule.
Slaves became the “money” the English needed to pay for the cotton and other goods from the colonies.
The importation of slaves into the newly formed United
States was ended in 1808. Fifty-seven years later they were all free. In geopolitical time, that is like a mere blink of the eye.
There were slaves of all skin shades. Europeans were too hard to discern slave from free, Natives were considered to have a poor work ethic (not my words), and Africans were ideal because their skin color stuck out, their language barrier made plotting hard and they had an incredible work ability. African slavery in America was a crime of convenience and not bias - at least not in the beginning. Tangentially, in the world of reparations, are we going to hand out money to the Irish, Brits, and Native American?
Ping
He wasn't the first to be declared a slave for life. Perhaps he was the first to be enslaved to a black man but a 1640 Virginia court decision ruled, "Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath . . . brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away . . . the court doth . . . order [that] the first serve out their times with their master according to their indentures, . . . and that [the] third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere."
He was technically correct, but nobody will admit it.