Talk:Slave codes

Major Revision

I am working on a complete overhaul of this page. I will be updating the page later today, but my current progress is at User:Micahabresch/sandbox-slavecodes. I am going to be trying to broaden the scope out to all slave-codes, not just the slave codes of the United States and give a more general overview of how slave codes worked. I also intend to move all of the specifics of slave codes into their own pages, as there are too many slave codes to place them entirely on one page. I'm sorry I didn't post this note sooner, I'm somewhat new to working on Wikipeda. --Micahabresch (talk) 16:51, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Finished putting all of that revision in place. I feel that the page is now clearer and more focused on the topic of slave codes, rather than seeming like a recitation of various slave codes. I have also tried to give it stronger citations with page numbers noted and most of the citations inline. --Micahabresch (talk) 00:55, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Comment

I removed much of this article as it appears to have been plagiarized from a PBS web site.[1] The article needs to be reworked and expanded. H2O 07:31, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

i think should say more about slave codes then just that and explained more were not nice —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.204.181.217 (talk) 20:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

need help on the coded language of slaves!!! Not slave codes!

It is for my homework, and i dont need help on slave codes, i need help on the coded language slaves used to escape! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.149.246 (talk) 22:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Very old, but interesting question;

There were a number of ways in which people on the Underground Railroad announced their presence and that it was safe to come out. Harriet Tubman did this. See Fugitive slaves in the United States#Harriet Tubman about her clever ways of operating.

Many slaves helped freedom seekers (enslaved people running away from their enslavers). They sent signals by leaving a light out at night, signaling that they would help... or other signs to indicate that there were slave catchers in the area. See the third paragraph of Fugitive slaves in the United States#The Underground Railroad.

Some say that Quilts of the Underground Railroad had a number of symbols, like the north star, to help convey how to be prepared to run away.–CaroleHenson (talk) 01:01, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Monetary units

Was it the case that in South Carolina in 1739 both sterling and dollars were circulated? 2602:306:328C:6CD0:44E3:D129:F5DE:8439 (talk) 20:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Were slaves really treated like animals?

If one owns cattle then they have to make decisions about things like, castrating the males and making the bull calves into steers, selecting a males that have needed traits for breeding purposes, and when the bull or cows get too old sending them to the slaughter house. That's called animal "husbandry". What did they do with the old slaves that were no longer economical too keep? Did they put them out to pasture or set them free? Did they just work them till they dropped dead? Were there laws that governed this? Did the slave owner "husband" the slaves like ranchers "husband" their cattle? Was there such thing as slave "husbandry"?47.34.121.6 (talk) 06:48, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

This is an old post, but I will take a stab.

For slave breeding, see Slave breeding in the United States and Children of the plantation

The impact of age on slavery, it wasn't unusual to free slaves after the age of 45. It was particularly difficult for slaves in the Deep South and it wasn't unusual for enslaved people to die in their twenties due to disease or years of suffering. Children were particularly valuable as they had many work years ahead of them. Here are a couple of articles about age and slavery [2], [3].–CaroleHenson (talk) 00:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

References removed

There was a POV edit to the page to restore a somewhat whitewashed version lacking references, that had omitted a large chunk of history.

After several edits here was the updated version, the links are visible at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slave_codes&oldid=1030869378

It was reverted without comment by User:Materialscientist who claims no expertise the subject. Please revert to this version or some version of it:

--- England's American colonies, Canada and the United States There was no central English slave code; each colony developed its own. In the United States, after their independence, the individual states ratified new constitutions, but state laws continued and thus slave codes remained unchanged. Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery entirely [14]. In no part of Canada was there ever a formal slave code, but local common law was tolerant of the practice despite the 1772 English precedent against it. [15]

1619-1772 Africans first arrive in the territory of the United States as slaves at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, but the status of slaves versus indentured servants is unsettled for several decades. The first comprehensive English slave code was established in Barbados, an island in the Caribbean, in 1661. Many other slave codes of the time are based directly on this model. Modifications of the Barbadian slave codes were put in place in the Colony of Jamaica in 1664, and were then greatly modified in 1684. The Jamaican codes of 1684 were copied by the colony of South Carolina in 1691.[3] The South Carolina slave code served as the model for many other colonies in North America. In 1755, colony of Georgia adopted the South Carolina slave code.[16]

Virginia's slave codes were made in parallel to those in Barbados, with individual laws starting in 1667 and a comprehensive slave code passed in 1705.[17] The slave codes of the other tobacco colonies (Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina) were modeled on the Virginia code.[18] While not based directly on the codes of Barbados, the Virginia codes were inspired by them.[19][20] The shipping and trade that took place between the West Indies and the Chesapeake[21] meant that planters were quickly informed of any legal and cultural changes that took place.[22] According to historian Russell Menard, when Maryland put its slave code in place the influence of the Barbadian codes as a "cultural hearth" for the law is noted with members of the Maryland legislature having been former residents of Barbados.[23]

The northern colonies developed their own slave codes at later dates, the strictest being in the colony of New York, which passed a comprehensive slave code in 1702 and expanded that code in 1712 and 1730.[24]

In 1772 in England, Somerset v Stewart established that common law of trover could not be applied to humans as if they were property, thus placing the legal underpinnings of chattel slavery in extreme doubt: Without a slave code, no one was a slave, and England did not have one. Accordingly, no human being could be claimed as property, even if they had arrived as a legal slave elsewhere.

1773-1833 Abolitionism in the United States had risen long before the American Revolution, with some Northern advocates of independence, notably John Otis and John Adams, seeing it as a faster route to abolition. Southerners could no longer visit England with their slaves and guarantee return with them, so the opposite view prevailed there, seeing ties to England as a threat to slavery. During that revolution first the British then American armies each offered escaped slaves freedom for fighting against their rebellious masters. After the war, the 1793 Act Against Slavery phased out the practice in Upper Canada completely. While the Northern US states abolished their slave codes systematically in the following years, they remained obligated under the US Constitution to assist Southern slave owners to retrieve what the US common law regarded, in contrast to English law, as property. Thus the Underground Railroad served to ferry persons to Canada where the English approach prevailed and there was no legal grounds for them to be kidnapped or seized.

The slave trade was abolished throughout the British Empire by the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The US Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves on 1 January 1808, made it a felony to import slaves from abroad. In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act ended slavery throughout the British Empire.

1834-1865 In the United States, there was a division between slave states in the South and free states in the North. Prior to secessions and the American Civil War, of the 34 states in the United States in j1860, 15 were slave states, all of which had slave codes. The 19 free states did not have slave codes, although they still had laws regarding slavery and enslaved people, covering such issues as how to handle slaves from slave states, whether they were runaways or with their owners. The 1857 Supreme Court of the United States case Dred Scott v. Sandford established firmly that slaves remained chattel in the United States, even if they had escaped to free states. The ascent of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860 triggered secessions from the USA and the formation of the Confederate States of America by the slave states, each of which officially cites preserving slavery as motivation.

During the subsequent American Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, purported to nullify the slave codes of the Confederacy states, but had no direct effect on over 200,000 people still held in bondage in the Union states. [25] Since the Confederacy was a separate country at the time, the Proclamation had no effect there, until the law of the conquering Union could be imposed on it.

Slavery was not banned nationwide in the United States until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.192.40.68 (talk • contribs)

Confused

I am a bit confused by the recent changes and this "wall of text", so I am going to break down the edits one-by-one

• This edit adds interesting info, but has no citations here. - Either needs sources or needs to be removed. Lately, I have been leaning on removing text, especially where there is a lot of new information without sources, because it is much harder to back into the right sources to fit the verbiage than to research and write from scratch. (underlined to identify recent clarification) Also, in many cases is original research (a huge no-no, this is an encyclopedia, not a blog)
• Removal of fact template here. Templates should not be removed if the content remains uncited.
• More uncited content added, and another maintenance tag (fact / citation needed) was removed here
• Removed "Canada" from the heading, although British colonies would have included Canada and there is info about outlawing slavery. Content was added with bare link citations. Great to have sources. There is a function called "Expand citations" that could be run to see if that formats these bare links (sometimes, but not always works, like for pdfs). here
• Sections added, cool. Some content added, not sure if it's from the citation from the following content. (That's the way it looks right now, but not sure if it is all from one source. here
• A copy edit for a one-year difference. Does the cited source say 1860? here

This edit here reverted the content. Based on the above, I agree with that change. Most of the edits are not productive.

Please be careful about coming to an opinion that judges someone's intentions. You will find that it's much more helpful to assume good faith rather than to wrongly call someone out from one edit.

For instance, I assume that the recent changes have all been made in good faith. It's just that one user is quite aware of the importance of citing content. (I don't even read uncited content, and have started removing blocks of uncited content in articles.)–CaroleHenson (talk) 17:58, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Clarified - see underlined text.–CaroleHenson (talk) 18:24, 28 June 2021 (UTC)