December 1662
Virginia makes children’s bondage follow the mother
Virginia; enslaved women and their children
In December 1662, Virginia’s General Assembly declared that children born in the colony would be bound or free according to their mother’s status. A child born to an enslaved woman could therefore be enslaved even if the father was English and free. Hereditary enslavement gave enslavers a financial interest in enslaved women’s childbearing.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
Act XII applied to colonial Virginia, not all colonies or the later United States. Its preamble refers to an Englishman and a Black woman; it does not use the word “white.” The same act doubled the existing fornication fine for Christians with Black partners. Historians connect hereditary enslavement to reproductive coercion and sexual exploitation; those consequences are distinct from the statute’s stated concern about children’s status. The act does not explicitly authorize sexual assault. Earlier freedom claims could invoke a free father, as the 1656 Elizabeth Key committee report shows, but that does not establish a uniform earlier rule. December identifies the legislative session, not a verified enactment day.
Sources
- Statute transcription: Virginia General Assembly, December 1662, Act XII; Hening (1823), volume 2, page 170 ↗
- Printed source checked: Hening’s Statutes at Large (1823), volume 2, page 170, Act XII and textual note (a) ↗
- Earlier legal argument: Elizabeth Key committee report (1656), transcribed from Billings (1975), pages 197–198 ↗
- Historical interpretation: Thomas Foster, “Sexual Exploitation of the Enslaved,” especially “Reproductive Control and Coercion” ↗
- Later primary evidence, not proof of 1662 intent: James H. Gholson’s speech of January 12, 1832, paragraphs on enslaved women’s children as property ↗