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Life is Good
- Jul 27, 2009
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No. Not even your own link counts him as "the first." It says "one of the first".I disagree with you. Some historians believe Punch was the first. I believe most would disagree with them however. Furthermore, this matter has already been settled and we won't be reopening it for you - you're a day late as the saying goes..... As for the origins of slavery - see the video presentations and don't miss Thomas Sowell's videos as he is qualified to speak on subjects you may not be.It is the first documented legal case concerning a slave being owned permanently by another person. It happened in 1654 which predates your 17th century story about European settlers and although the first colony to arrive in Jamestown, Virginia was in 1619 as you state it was in 1654 that the first legal case of slavery ..
This gets so fucking old...having to correct the bullshit you spew.
Get this: Slavery was legalized in Massachusetts in 1641.
There were laws regarding fugitive slaves there in the 1630's.
Do the math. 1630's is earlier than 1656.
Johnson's 1656 case "was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life."
John Punch is considered by historians to be the very first official slave.
"In July 1640, the Virginia Governor's Council sentenced him to serve for the remainder of his life as punishment for running away to Maryland."
Hugh Gwyn was his master.
John Punch's sentence to slavery preceded the Mass legalization of slavery by a year:
July 9, 1640 - John Punch became the first African to be a slave for life by law in Virginia "Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath by order from this Board Brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away from the said Gwyn, the court doth therefore order that the said three servants shall receive the punishment of whipping and to have thirty stripes apiece one called Victor, a dutchman, the other a Scotchman called James Gregory..... that the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere."
Source: McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, p. 466.
Virtual Jamestown Slave Laws
And curiously enough -- Obama descends from this very first slave in America!
Howzaboutthat?
The National Park Service, in a history of Jamestown: "John Punch was the "first documented slave for life."