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Introduction Part Two
Anthony Johnson, a Negro who made progress between the time that he landed in Virginia and his death, and it will also show the diminishing progress caused by the laws made by the white Englishmen. -
Introduction
Slaves were not always slaves. They started as indentured servants, always having a day sometime in the future that they would be free. Then, the white Englishmen started making laws that slowly diminished the small progresses that the Negroes had made. And the Negroes slowly went from indentured servants and respectable men (and their wives) to pieces of property and slaves who would never be free unless they escaped or somehow managed to buy their freedom. This timeline will follow the life of -
Period: to
Events Representing Diminishing Progress
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Anthony Johnson Acquires Land
Anthony Johnson, a Negro, acquires land from his former master Captain Taylor. This is important because it shows that Anthony now has a way to support his family and that he can live independently of his former owner, with no hard feelings between the two. It also shows that he now has a chance of becoming financially important, as landowners could be very influential in colonial times. -
Anthony Johnson Wins Against an Englishman in Court
Anthony Johnson goes to court for the second time over one of his servants, a Negro man named John Casar, and wins the case against the Englishman Robert Parker, therefore also winning back his servant (John Casar). This is important because it shows that Anthony is considered either an honorable man or a powerful one. That is important because it shows that Negroes were once considered an Englishman's equal. -
Slave Children are Told When to Start Work Part One
Slave children, upon being brought to the colonies, would be given an age based upon their looks, and a law was passed to say that Negroes, or any other slave, upon reaching the age of twelve, would be put to work. Christian servrvants would be put to work upon reaching the age of fourteen. This is a mentioned point of the diminishing part of diminishing progress.important to diminishing progress because it is saying that the Englishmen not only had the power to assign your child an age, but to -
Slave Children are Told When to Start Work Part Two
also have the power to put them to work at anytime as soon as they reach the age of twelve, or fourteen if they are Christianized. -
Slaves to be Punished for Hog Stealing Part Two
Africans and the other slaves, because the one thing worse than death is torture, and this is a law that allows them to be tortured for stealing a hog, which they might have needed to keep their family alive. -
Slaves to be Punished for Hog Stealing Part One
For the first offense of "hog stealing", the slave who stole the hog, once found guilty, would receive "thirty-nine lashes [of a whip] well laid on" -Act VI. For the second offense, the slave convicted of hog stealing would "stand two hours in the pillory and have his eares nailed thereto and at the expiration of the said two hours have his ears cutt off close by the nailes"- Act VI. This is yet another point of the diminishing part of diminishing progress, because it plays on the fear of the -
Casual Killing of Slaves, Slaves Started to be Considered Property
An Act was passed where slaves were considered property, and if that piece of property just happened to die from the wounds of a punishment, then the master would not be convicted and charged of murder. This is a mentioned point of the diminishing part of diminishing progress. It is important because it shows that the Englishmen's view was less full of respect and fuller of their sense of superiority and greed towards the Negroes. -
Conclusion
Anthony Johnson was lucky. His life was spent during the time where there was no discrimination by color, just by religion. His descendants were not as lucky, for the laws slowly began taking away their rights, one by one, until they were considered nothing more than 'property', and discriminated against for their race and color. Even though, now, we Americans have reached a point in time where all are considered equal, if we are not careful, something like this could happen again.