Early slave codes, Bacon's Rebellion aftermath, Leisler's Rebellion

In October 1705, the Virginia General Assembly passed An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves, consolidating earlier colonial statutes into a comprehensive slave code. The 1705 law defined enslaved Africans and their descendants as property, made status hereditary regardless of Christian conversion, and authorized harsh punishments for resistance. The statute also drew on earlier Virginia laws such as the 1662 rule that a child's condition followed the mother and the 1670 law barring free Blacks from owning white servants.

The 1705 code resolved a long legal effort by Virginia's planter leadership to convert piecemeal labor rules into a permanent racial system backed by statutory authority. By stripping enslaved people of legal standing and barring free Blacks from officeholding and arms-bearing, the General Assembly tied racial hierarchy directly to the colony's legal order. The measure therefore marked a decisive shift from improvisational labor control to a codified slave regime embedded in Virginia law.

Virginia's 1705 statute became a model for slave codes in Maryland, South Carolina, and later Georgia as plantation slavery spread through British North America. The code's legal logic endured in Virginia until emancipation and shaped slave law across the mainland colonies for generations.