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Professor Oakes wrote, "In the nineteenth century defenders of southern slavery had little need to answer the first questions, in part because there were hardly any more initial acts of enslavement after 1808." After the North American colonies enacted laws dictating that slave or free status followed "the condition of the mother," each subsequent childbirth by an American slave mother in those colonies and their successive states was accompanied by an act of enslavement. Unless the universal usage in historical slave societies has been that children of slave mothers are automatically hereditary slaves (and I think that has not been the case), the American colonial laws (inherited by the states) conveniently seem to have removed questions of initial enslavement from consideration in 19th century thought. Had pro-slavery advocates felt compelled to answer why each newborn child born to a slave mother should also be a slave, I imagine the arguments and grounds of debate could have been significantly different. David Paterson Norfolk VA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
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