"All servants imported and brought into the country... who were not Christians in their native country... shall be accounted and be slaves, and as such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity afterwards... If any slave resist his master... and shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony." — An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves, Virginia Slave Code (1705)
Which earlier event most directly accelerated Virginia's shift toward the racial slave regime codified in 1705?
- Acheck_circle
Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, which alarmed elites about armed alliances of poor whites and Black laborers
- B
The Halfway Covenant's expansion of church membership
- C
The Pueblo Revolt's disruption of Spanish trade routes
- D
The Glorious Revolution's restoration of Parliamentary supremacy
Explanation
Bacon's Rebellion exposed the danger of a multiracial servant underclass to Chesapeake elites, who increasingly turned to lifelong, hereditary, race-based slavery as a more controllable labor system, culminating in codes like that of 1705.