Answer: In October 1705, Virginia passed a law stating that if a master happened to kill a slave who was undergoing “correction,” it was not a crime. Indeed, the act would be viewed as if it had never occurred. Furthermore, the legislation said, when slaves were declared runaways, it was “lawful for any person . . . to kill and destroy [them] by such ways and means as he ...shall think fit.” Short of killing, the law added, “dismembering” was approved. In practice, toes were usually cut off. It had been 86 years since a British ship landed in Virginia with the first documented captive Africans to reach the mainland of English North America. And it had been 86 years since the colony’s governor and council had convened the first continuous representative assembly of Europeans in what would become the United States.
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