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Slavery in North America
Slavery in North America meant that a person was another's property for life, that children inherited the condition, and that the law tied it to African descent. What matters is that the system was constructed in law, step by step, rather than inherited whole. Virginia tied status to the mother's condition in 1662, broke the link between baptism and freedom in 1667, and made killing during "correction" unpunishable in 1669. Around 388,000 people were carried directly to North America of the roughly 12.5 million shipped across the Atlantic — a small share, but the North American enslaved population grew by birth and was the largest in the Americas at emancipation.
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