apparent civil disabilities. On the other hand, the county judge appeared very reluctant to let him
testify, and there is no other known reference to a negro testifying in a suit involving whites during
this period. County courts were still in a primitive stage and may have varied in practice and
procedure, especially since early justices were usually major planters rather than trained lawyers.139

There is little evidence of any concern for the morality of the slave trade during the
seventeenth century. If freedom was limited to some mulattos and indentured servants brought from
England, the proportion of free blacks in the population must have been quite small. Like most
planters in the colony, free blacks had little time for learning. They were unlikely to come from an
educated family or to rise to prominence in a society where negroes were almost always slaves.
After 1660, indentured servants had great difficulty acquiring a freehold estate when their indentures
expired.140 The rich got richer, but the poor stayed poor. The free black suffered from all the
disadvantages of the poor white: lack of education, lack of capital, and lack of credit. These
handicaps were enough to prevent any significant social mobility for the white. The free black also
suffered from the prejudice reflected in the 1692 miscegenation statute and the suspicion revealed
in the county court's attitude toward Johnson. The free black was an anomaly even in the
seventeenth century. He may have had substantially equal formal rights with whites except in
interracial sexual relations, but he was likely to be viewed as more similar to the slave socially than
to the poor white. A detailed study of the county court records may someday reveal that some free
black served as an attorney in fact (representative for an absent party) in some litigation or that some
legal documents (deed, will or contract) were drawn by free negroes in this period, but it is unlikely
that any black could achieve prominence in the community in any capacity under the conditions in
which they lived in the seventeenth century.

V.        Blacks in Eighteenth Century Colonial Maryland:   The Legal Development ofthe
Institution

The eighteenth century witnessed great changes in the situation of blacks in colonial
Maryland. Their numbers grew tremendously, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the
population. Their living conditions changed from isolation to communities on plantations. As the
institution of slavery became economically important to the society, new laws were enacted to
respond to newly perceived issues. These laws increasingly restricted movement, life styles, legal
status and the potential for freedom ofthe slave population.

A.        The Rise of Slavery

The number of blacks brought to Maryland, especially those brought directly from Africa,
rose dramatically at the end ofthe seventeenth century. The number of slaves imported in the decade
from 1698 to 1708 was one and a half times the total of the black population of Maryland in 1690.""
By 1710, the black population of Maryland reached 8,000, an increase of almost 400% in two
decades.142 Although the rate of importation varied substantially in subsequent years, importation
and natural increase combined to raise the proportion of blacks to over 30% of the colony's

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