C.        Statutory Law

The laws show the white majority grappling with a whole new set of problems created by the
transformation to a slave society. The seventeenth century legislation had fixed hereditary perpetual
slavery and sought to reinforce racial identity by anti-miscegenation laws. The eighteenth century
lawmakers tried to control the responses, which slaves could make to this dual society. Flight,
rebellion, isolated acts of violence, indolence and petty theft were all reactions of various individual
slaves to their situation. Each posed a threat to the white society's drive for security and prosperity.
Some of these reactions were common to indentured servants, and the seventeenth century servant
laws restricted both servant and slave, but the eighteenth century legislature developed special laws
for slaves.

1.         Runaway Legislation

In 1715 the various laws relating to servants and slaves were codified into permanent
legislation.152 The preamble stated that previous acts had been ineffectual in halting runaways. The
new code required all servants who travelled more than ten miles from their master's house to have
a signed note. Any person willingly entertaining a servant or slave unlawfully absent from their
master was fined 500 pounds of tobacco for every night or 24 hours they did so -half the fine going
to the informer. Free Negroes or Mulattoes who entertained servants or slaves unlawfully absent
were fined 1000 pounds of tobacco and forced to pay the fine by servitude if they did not have a
sufficient amount of tobacco. The higher fine suggests at least a fear that free negroes and mulattoes
would be particularly sympathetic to servants and slaves. Persons travelling outside the county where
they live were to have a pass under the county seal or be deemed runaways. Persons capturing
runaway servants or slaves were entitled to 200 pounds of tobacco to be paid by the owner, and 400
pounds if the servant or slave was taken in Pennsylvania or Virginia and brought back to a magistrate
in Maryland. If the person captured were not a runaway, but simply a stranger without a pass from
his home county, he would be personally liable to pay the sum.163 The runaway servant could have
ten days added to his term of service for each day absent, but no provision was made to punish the
runaway slave -presumably leaving the sanction to the master.

A law of 1723 permitted plantation owners to inflict up to 39 stripes with a whip on any
unknown negro found on his plantation.164  This was still insufficient to prevent slave escapes. In
1725 the legislature noted that sundry slaves had run away to the backwoods and lived with the
Shewan Indians. "[Fjorasmuch as many Negroes (upon hearing the Success some of their fellow-
Slaves have met with) are daily making Attempts to go the same Way, which if not timely and
effectively prevented, may be of very ill and fatal consequences to the Inhabitants of the
Province," the General Assembly offered a 5 pound reward (about 1000 pounds of tobacco
equivalent) to any person capturing a runaway slave northwest of the Monocacy river. A special
fund was created for this purpose. Slaves who escaped to this area and were recaptured were to
have one ear cut off for the first offense. For a second escape, the slave would have the other ear
cut off and the letter R branded on his chin. These penalties, however, did not apply to juveniles
and "New Negroes Twelve Months after their arrival in the country.165    The statute was not

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