Editing Slave codes (section)

==England's American colonies and the United States==
There was no central English slave code; each colony developed its own code, often with reference to [[Roman law]] and its treatment of the [[Status in Roman legal system|status of slaves]].<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Sessarego
 |first1               = Sandro
 |date                 = 12 September 2019
 |title                = Language Contact and the Making of an Afro-Hispanic Vernacular: Variation and Change in the Colombian Chocó
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=iNGoDwAAQBAJ
 |series               = Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact
 |publisher            = Cambridge University Press
 |page                 = 156
 |isbn                 = 9781108485814
 |access-date          = 9 April 2023
 |quote                = English slave law [...] was not imposed by the motherland; rather, it was the result of local processes, involving colonial judges and local authorities. Colonial judges had to create a law on slavery in a context in which they could not rely on any established slave code. For this reason, it was common practice to refer to Roman law, and thus to a system that was comparatively harsher on slaves than the one Spanish society was able to elaborate during the course of its medieval history.
}} 
</ref>
After the [[United States]] established independence in the [[American Revolutionary War]] of 1775–1783, the individual states ratified new constitutions, but their laws were generally a continuation of the laws those regions had maintained prior to that point, and their slave codes remained unchanged.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

The first comprehensive slave-code in an English colony was established in Barbados, an island in the [[Caribbean]], in 1661.  Many other slave codes of the time are based directly on this model. Modifications of the Barbadian slave codes were put in place in the [[Colony of Jamaica]] in 1664, and were then greatly modified in 1684. The Jamaican codes of 1684 were copied by the [[Province of South Carolina|colony of South Carolina]], first in 1691,<ref name="Rugemer 2013, 430" /> and then immediately following the Stono Rebellion, in 1740. The South Carolina slave-code served as the model for many other colonies in North America.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Slave Codes |url=https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/slave-codes/ |access-date=2025-01-10 |website=South Carolina Encyclopedia |language=en-US}}</ref> In 1755, the [[Province of Georgia|colony of Georgia]] adopted the South Carolina slave code.<ref>{{Citation |url= https://www.georgiaarchives.org/assets/documents/Slave_Laws_of_Georgia_1755-1860.pdf |title=Slave Laws of Georgia, 1755-1860}}</ref>

Virginia's slave codes were made in parallel to those in Barbados, with individual laws starting in 1667 and a comprehensive slave-code passed in 1705.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1= Greene|first1= Jack P.|last2= Morgan|first2= Edmund S.|date= 1976|title=American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.|journal= Political Science Quarterly|volume= 91|issue= 4|pages= 742|doi= 10.2307/2148833|issn= 0032-3195|jstor= 2148833}}</ref> In 1667, the Virginia [[House of Burgesses]] enacted a law which did not recognize the conversion of African Americans to Christianity despite a baptism. In 1669, Virginia enacted "An act about the casual killing of slaves" which declared that masters who killed slaves deemed resisting were exempt from felony charges. In 1670, they enacted a law prohibiting free Africans from purchasing servants who weren't also African. In 1680, Virginia passed Act X, which prohibited slaves from carrying weapons, leaving their owner's plantation without a certificate, or raising a hand against "Christians".<ref>
{{Cite journal |last= Browne-Marshall |first= Gloria J. |date= 2020-09-01 |title= The Africans of 1619: Making Black Lives Matter in the Virginia Colony |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/711023 |journal=The Journal of African American History |volume= 105 |issue= 4 |pages= 655–662 |doi= 10.1086/711023 |s2cid= 229355113 |issn= 1548-1867|url-access= subscription }}</ref>

The slave codes of the other [[tobacco colonies]] ([[Delaware Colony|Delaware]], [[Province of Maryland|Maryland]], and [[Province of North Carolina|North Carolina]]) were modeled on the Virginia code.<ref name="Christian, pp. 27-28">Christian, pp. 27-28</ref>  While not based directly on the codes of Barbados, the Virginia codes were inspired by them.<ref>{{Cite thesis |last=Riley |first=Jamin Paul |url= https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1676&context=etd_all |title=Misrepresenting Misery: Slaves, Servants, and Motives in Early Virginia |type=MA thesis |publisher= Wright State University |date=  2012 |quote= This period of migration saw thousands of people move from Barbados to Virginia. Both Virginia’s role in the slave trade and its knowledge of [[Plantation complexes in the Southern United States|plantation]] management grew as a result.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=vUAlDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA127 | isbn= 9781317662143 | title= The World of Colonial America: An Atlantic Handbook | date= 28 April 2017 | publisher= Taylor & Francis }}</ref>  The shipping and trade that took place between the West Indies and the Chesapeake (the "final passage" of the [[Triangular Trade]]) meant that planters quickly became aware of any legal and cultural changes that took place.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://eh.net/book_reviews/atlantic-virginia-intercolonial-relations-in-the-seventeenth-century/ |title=Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century |last= Hatfield |first= April Lee |date= September 2004}}</ref>  According to historian [[Russell Menard]], when Maryland put its slave code in place in the 1660s the Barbadian codes functioned as a "legal cultural hearth" for the law, with members of the Maryland legislature having been former residents of Barbados.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=FyB24GZrJxAC&pg=PA112 Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados], Chapter 6 ''The Expansion of Barbados'', p. 112 - "So influential was the Barbadian slave code that Barry David Gaspar refers to the island as a 'legal cultural hearth [...]' [...]. [...] in the early 1660s, when the Maryland legislature, with the Barbadians Thomas Notley sitting in the speaker's chair and Jesse Wharton in the governor's seat, decided that it was time to address the colony's growing slave population, the laws it passed clearly reflected the influence of Barbados, even if Barbadian laws were revised slightly to address the Maryland legislature's perceptions of how the problem should be handled."</ref>

The northern colonies developed their own slave-codes at later dates, with the strictest evolving in the [[Province of New York|colony of New York]], which passed a comprehensive slave code in 1702 and expanded that code in 1712 and 1730.<ref name="Olson 1944">{{Cite journal|last= Olson|first= Edwin|date= 1944|title= The Slave Code in Colonial New York|journal= The Journal of Negro History|volume= 29|issue= 2|pages= 147–149|doi= 10.2307/2715308 |jstor= 2715308|s2cid=149585104}}</ref>

The British [[Slave Trade Act 1807]] abolished the [[Atlantic slave trade|slave trade]] throughout the [[British Empire]]. In 1833, the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833|Slavery Abolition Act]] ended slavery throughout the British Empire.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Henry |first1=Natasha |title=Slavery Abolition Act, 1833 |url= https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/slavery-abolition-act-1833 |website=The Canadian Encyclopedia |access-date=25 October 2021}}</ref>

The [[Slavery in the United States|United States]] experienced divisions between [[Slave states and free states|slave states in the South and free states in the North]]. At the start of the [[American Civil War]] in 1861, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states, all of which had slave codes. The 19 free states did not have slave codes, although they still had laws regarding slavery and enslaved people, covering such issues as how to handle slaves from slave states, whether they were runaways or with their owners.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

Slavery was not banned nationwide in the United States until the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]] was ratified by 27 states by December 6, 1865. The 1807 [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves]], in effect on 1 January 1808, had made it a felony to import slaves from abroad.