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Difficulty: HardDevelopment of Chattel Slavery

"Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly, that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother..."
— Act of the Virginia General Assembly, 1662

The legal change enacted in the excerpt most directly contributed to which of the following historical developments in the British North American colonies?

  1. A
    The standardizing of contracts for European indentured servants to ensure their children remained bound to colonial landowners
  2. B
    The implementation of mercantilist trade restrictions designed to limit the purchase of enslaved laborers from non-British merchants
  3. The legal codification of a hereditary system of racial slavery that provided a permanent, self-reproducing labor forceAnswer
  4. D
    The harmonization of labor laws between the Chesapeake and New England colonies to establish a uniform agrarian economy

Answer

The legal codification of a hereditary system of racial slavery that provided a permanent, self-reproducing labor force
The correct answer is correct because the 1662 Virginia law legally codified slavery as a hereditary status passed down through the mother. This reversed English common law (which traditionally determined a child's status by the father) and ensured that children born to enslaved women would also be enslaved for life. This created a permanent, self-reproducing, and racialized labor system that gradually replaced indentured servitude on southern tobacco plantations.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the primary source excerpt to identify the core legal change being enacted.
The law establishes that a child's legal status (free or enslaved) is determined solely by the status of their mother.
Understanding the legal mechanism is crucial to assessing its long-term historical impact.
2
Relate this legal mechanism to the broader labor needs and social changes in the 17th-century Chesapeake.
By making enslavement hereditary through the mother, the colony created a self-reproducing labor pool independent of continuous importation or temporary indentured contracts.
This connects the specific legal statute to the systemic development of chattel slavery as a permanent economic institution.
3
Evaluate the options to identify which one accurately describes this long-term consequence while avoiding common misconceptions.
The option concerning the codification of a hereditary system of racial slavery matches this outcome, while options about indentured servants, New England labor patterns, or mercantilist trade limits represent historical errors.
This confirms the correct option by validating the historical context and rejecting incorrect alternatives.

Key Concept

Development of Chattel Slavery
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Topics

Development of Chattel Slavery

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