rape of a white woman was to incur the penalty of death. The penalty for attempted rape was to be castration.

In 1722 a woman was punished for complicity in a clandestine marriage of a white woman to a negro. Shortly after a petition came up to the Assembly attacking the wicked and scandalous practice of negroes' cohabiting with white people. The Assembly proceeded to the framing of a law. The law of 1725-1726 provided that no negro was to be married to any white person on any pretense whatever. A white person violating this law was to forfeit thirty pounds or be sold as a servant for a period not over seven years. A clergyman abetting such a union was to be fined one hundred pounds. The law was not able to check cohabitation tho there is almost no record of marriages of slaves with white people.

Advertisements for runaway slaves indicate that mulattoes were very numerous. The Chester County slave register for 1780 shows that they made up twenty per cent of the slave population in that locality. It would seem that it was not, in general, the masters that were guilty of illicit intercourse but rather servants, outcasts, and the lower class of whites109 The records of 1766 contain an instance of a white woman prostitute to negroes and those of the following decade give evidence as to mulatto bastards by pauper white women. One case was noted in 1715 where the guilty white man was probably not a servant. Benjamin Franklin was openly accused of having colored mistresses.11o

Children of negro slaves became, of course, the master's property. Owners considered the rearing of slave 109 Turner. History of Slavery in Pennsylvania, 31.

children a burden. One writer affirmed that in Pennsylvania "negros just born are considered an incumbrance only, and if humanity did not forbid it, they would be instantly given away" (1780). A likely wench was sold because of her fecundity. In 1732 the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas ordered a man to take back a negress that he had sold that proved to be with child. He was to return the price and pay the money spent "for phisic and attendance of the said negroe in her miserable condition." In the Pennsylvania Gazette occurs an advertisement of an exemplary young negress for sale. "She has

a fine, hearty young child, not quite a year old, which is the only reason for selling her, because her mistress is very sickly, and cant bear the trouble of it." The child of a free mother and a slave father was a servant for a term of years.

Slavery in Pennsylvania was mild. The chattels generally lived in the master's house. Some had cabins for their families. Negroes were often allowed to visit members of their families living in other households. Something was done toward the maintenance of slave family life. Penn's conscientious attempt in 1700 to secure a law for the regulation of slave marriage was > defeated. One writer attributes this result to the waning of Quaker influence, the lower tone of the later influx, and temporary hostility to the executive. But the universal incompatibility of property rights in men with stable marriage is sufficient to account for the vote.

Slaves came under the law forbidding servants to marry without the master's consent. It is said that many masters permitted their human cattle to marry as they pleased save that the owner would try to prevent marriage off the place. (In conflict with the alleged

unprofitableness of slave raising, Kalm adds that it was considered an advantage to own negro women, since otherwise the offspring of one's negroes belonged to another master.) The marriage ceremony was frequently performed as for white people. The records of Christ Church show many such instances. Among the Friends there are very few records of such marriages. But Joshua Brown's Journal kept during the year 1774 con

tains this item:

I rode to Philadelphia and lodged that night at Wm. Browns and fifth day of the Moth I spent in town and was at a negro wedding in the eving when several per mett and had a setting with them, and they took each other and the love of God seemd to be extended to them.

A negro marriage in Friends' fashion is recorded for West Chester. Mittleberger said: "The blacks are likewise married in the English fashion." But Benezet wrote: "They are suffered, with impunity, to cohabit together, without being married and to part, when solemnly engaged to one another as man and wife." It would be absurd to attribute to the negroes all the blame for family laxity. But in Pennsylvania there was no active trade in negroes and when they were bought or sold there was some attempt to keep families together.

It is said that negro children were taught submission to their parents and that these were suffered to train, cherish, and chasten them. Many slaves were treated like members of the master's family: nursed and cared for in sickness, provided for when past work, and in some instances remembered in the master's will. Often members of a negro family bought freedom for other members.111

Opposition to slavery took into account its influence 111 Turner. History of Slavery in Pennsylvania, 46, 51, 62.

on family relations. The Quakers of Germantown in 1688 indicted slavery as follows: "Some do commit adultery in others, separating wives from their husbands and giving them to others and some sell the children of these poor creatures to other men." In 1780 an act for gradual abolition was passed. It provided that no child thereafter born in Pennsylvania should be a slave; but it held in servitude till the age of twenty-eight children born of a slave mother.

After the passage of this act some masters sent negro children into other states there to be sold. Others sent their pregnant women into another state that the children might not be free. An act of 1788 provided that births of children of slaves should be registered; that husband and wife were not to be separated more than ten miles without their consent; that pregnant females were not to be sent out of the state pending delivery. In 1816 it was decided that in certain cases if a fugitive slave bore a child in Pennsylvania the child was free.

XII. THE FAMILY MOTIVE IN SOUTHERN COLONIZATION

In the first settlement of Virginia no regard was given to family and no appeal was made to the family motive. The settlement was a camp rather than a colony. The early voyagers did not expect to tarry long in the new country and did not bring their families or establish their homes. Their intention was to make a fortune and then return to England. It is natural, therefore, that the settlement did not thrive. Byrd thinks it a pity that the adventurers looked askance at marriage with the Indians. Intermarriage, he thought, would have been a good means for the conversion of the natives and for the reconciliation of them to the loss of lands.112 The natives were not averse to such unions 113 but it is to be feared that the Indian damsels would not have been adept at scouring dishes, darning hose, and the like.

A Spanish representative in England wrote in 1609 to Philip III. informing him that the English were about to send a few women to Virginia. He enclosed an advertisement inviting men and women of occupation "who wish to go out in the voyage for colonizing the country with people." In Virginia they would have houses, gardens, orchards, food, and clothing, a share of products, and a share in the division of the land for themselves and their heirs forever.

112 Goodwin. The Colonial Cavalier, 45-46. 113 Letters from Virginia, 167.