“S” is for Slave codes

“S” is for Slave codes. South Carolina’s earliest formal code of law regarding enslaved persons (1690) borrowed heavily from statutes governing slavery on Barbados. In the first decade of the eighteenth century, the African population surpassed the White population. Shortly thereafter a new slave code went into effect in 1712. As with earlier statutes, enforcement of the revised code was difficult and frequently haphazard. The Stono Rebellion in 1739 resulted in a more rigid slave code, the Negro Act (1740) that laid out the basis for a mature colonial society based on enslaved labor. It codified the slaves’ lack of access to the rights of English common law and constructed them as legal nonentities. The Negro Act would remain the basis for South Carolina slavery until its end in 1865, and would influence slave codes throughout the American South.