America’s First Slave Owner

The first forced immigration of Africans to the British colonies started in Virginia in 1619. Initially, these Africans had the same rights as European indentured servants. Some of the freed African indentures acquired slaves themselves in order to successfully work their tobacco crops.

European indentured servants first came to Virginia about ten years after the founding of Jamestown. Landowning colonists had quickly realized the need for cheap labor in order to maintain and profit from their plantations. There was no shortage of both skilled and unskilled labor in Britain. Many people were willing or in a position to be coerced to contract their labor for passage to the colonies.

The life of indentured servants was often harsh but they were not slaves. There were laws to protect them. Contracts varied from four to seven years of service for an indenture. Upon earning their freedom, the contracts also provided the indentures with enough land, grain and livestock to make a start of their own.

Anthony Johnson was a freed indentured servant of African origin who, by 1651, had accumulated 250 acres of land and five black indentured servants of his own. One of his servants, upon fulfilling his time of contracted service, was denied freedom by Johnson.  Sources vary as whether the servant, John Casor, left the Johnson of his own volition or was begrudgingly allowed by Johnson to work for another man, by the name of Robert Parker.

Either way, Johnson eventually chose to sue Parker, in county court, for stealing his servant. In 1655, the court ruled in Johnson’s favor declaring that John Casor was his slave for life. Casor did, in fact, die in service to Johnson. The court ruling had made John Casor the first true slave of the British colonies in America.

What is interesting about the ruling is that it did not provide for white colonists to permanently enslave black indentures. Nonetheless, the ruling was a catalyst for the eventual legal enslavement of black people in the American colonies. It was not, however, until 1670 that the Virginia assembly passed legislation allowing that all whites, free blacks and Indians had the right to own black persons as slaves.

The evolution of black people from indentures to slaves came about gradually over several generations. Though Anthony Johnson died a free man of property, most of his property was confiscated upon his death on the grounds that he was an alien and, thus, had no rights of citizenship. Two-hundred years later, the same thinking would deny freedom to Dredd Scott and his family.