He stated Massachusetts was first to legalize Slavery, and cited the
Massachusetts Body of Liberties.
There shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, or captivity amongst us unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons cloth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority.

The law established in Israel was:
Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.

This seems consistent with indentured servitude, voluntary or not.
The other instance was about John Punch, he was sentenced for a crime, the circumstances of the case were not known, the court sentenced him based on the whole case. He was not a slave but serving a form of incarceration. Anthony Johnson held the first Legal Slave. John Casor committed no crime yet he was forced into lifetime servitude. See Johnson v Parker

Sincerely,
Jeffrey M Schloo

To review what has been posted here on the topic of slavery, click on the “slavery” tag on the right side of this page. You will also find information on slavery in the Resources section.

Tyke, thank you for bringing this to our attention and pointing out the facts in the case. I deeply appreciate you taking the time and effort to correct a false statement here. Most of those who disagree with what is written on this blog just fire off a long list of insults, accusations, and statements that clearly show they did not read and comprehend what was posted (see the Hate Mail page for examples). You, on the other hand, used facts and reason to make your point. Again, thank you for writing and greatly contributing to the discussion.

I have added a note to the original article to be sure to read the “Reply” section for information that conflicts with what is presented in the original article.

Edited to add on 10/16/2013: I still haven’t had the time to follow up on “Tyke’s” reply, but I’m posting it anyway. While I can’t legitimately comment on the contents yet, it was well-written and thoughtfully presented – and I thank you for taking the time to do that.

Historians do differ on when slavery started in Virginia. Some historians think it started with the onset of Negros arriving in Jamestown in 1619. Some historians don’t consider anything before 1660 to be slavery. However, if historians do decide to identify the first legally documented example of slavery, then they refer to John Punch who was an indentured servant forced into slavery in 1640. Punch is the earliest legal account of slavery in Virginia and his master was a white man named Hugh Gwyn. This has been thoroughly recognized by historians and published in peer reviewed and scholarly journals. Most historians don’t even mention Casor when outlining important events that lead to the development of slavery. The ones that do mention Casor, like Breen and Foner, only use his civil case as an example to argue how hard it was for Negro indentured servants to escape from being reduced into lifetime slavery.

“”In another decision that same month, the Virginia Count demonstrated that it would not be reluctant to subject blacks who were not already enslaved to lifetime servitude….Thus, although he committed the same crime as the Dutchman and the Scotsman, John Punch, a black man, was sentenced to lifetime slavery.”
A. Leon Higginbotham. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. Oxford University Press. 1980.
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ErPg7VegkcMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=%22john+punch%22+higginbotham&ots=RD8BjPWEsA&sig=rqEqTivBBg9I3VfMuRS48157bPQ#v=onepage&q=%22john%20punch%22&f=false

“The third servant, ‘a negro named John Punch,’ was punished differently. Rather than take on additional years, he was made a slave for life. Scholars have argued that this decision represents the first legal distinction between Europeans and Africans to be made by Virginia courts.”
Tom Costa. Runaway Slaves and Servants in Colonial Virginia. Encyclopedia Virginia. 2011.
http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Runaway_Slaves_and_Servants_in_Colonial_Virginia

“In 1640…there is the first evidence that some blacks were not being held as servants but at least as life-long slaves. The General Court session of 22 July 1640 saw the sentencing of several runaway servants who had been captured in Maryland and returned to Virginia….The third servant was John Punch.”
W. T. M. Riches. “White Slaves, Black Servants and the Question of Providence: Servitude and Slavery in Colonial Virginia 1609-1705. Irish Journal of American Studies. 1999.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30002672?Search=yes&searchText=%2522john%2Bpunch%2522&uid=3739824&uid=373843731&uid=2&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21102742159601

“Ten years later, the Virginia Courts would establish servitude for life in a case involving runaway servants…John Punch ‘was ordered to serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural life’…Thus, John Punch’s name should go down in history as being the first official slave in the English colonies.”
Rodeney D. Coates. Law and the Cultural Production of Race and Racialized Systems of Oppression. American Behavioral Scientist. 2003.
http://web.pdx.edu/~ingham/syllabi/Perspectives/LawHistRacism.pdf

“…however, as early as 1640, colonial courts began constructing racial identities to determine who could be enslaved for a fixed term and who could be enslaved for life…In 1640, John Punch, a person of African descent, was sentenced to lifetime slavery in Virginia for running away with two bond slaves of European extraction. The latter were sentenced to flogging. This can be interpreted as the first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake.”
John Donoghue. Out of the Land of Bondage”: The English Revolution and the Atlantic Origins of Abolition. The American Historical Review. 2010
http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/content/115/4/943.full.pdf

“The next year, 1640, the first definite indication of outright enslavement appears in Virginia…’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 else where.'”
Winthrop Jordan. White Over Black: American attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. University of North Carolina Press. 1968.
http://www.amazon.com/White-Over-Black-Attitudes-1550-1812/dp/0807871419

These are just a portion of sources written by well reputed and established historians, lawyers, and sociologists with Ph. D’s in related fields. The lie of calling Casor the first slave in the new world and Anthony Johnson the father of slavery is a conservative attempt at revisionist history based on misinformation. Just like you did, it gets copied and pasted all over conservative sites and spread as truth, though no one bothers to check the sources and verify the veracity of such an outlandish claim. The fact that Curtis Patranella doesn’t list any sources or cite his work should be a red flag for anyone interested in learning the truth.

You said, “You evidently didn’t look at too many specials or research black history because it is always mentioned how we were betrayed by our so called own.” It’s been quite a while since I have watched anything on TV about the subject – we removed TV from our house almost 15 years ago, so perhaps I have just missed out on seeing that pointed out. I’m not doubting you – just saying that I haven’t seen anything more than a very brief mention before going back to laying the blame for slavery on Southern Whites.

The point of this entire post and many of the replies is that there is plenty of blame to go around when it comes to the subject of slavery. If, as you said, television specials and other forms of Black history are now pointing out that the slaves imported to America were captured and sold by other Africans, then that is certainly a big step in the right direction. It is my opinion that one of the biggest obstacles to resolving some of the racial conflict in America is the one-sided blame game in which Southern Whites are assumed to shoulder the blame for slavery. Yes, there are brief mentions here and there of Black involvement, but when it comes to popular opinion and “political correctness”, there is only one villain and one victim; one is evil incarnate and the other is an innocent victim. I am quite confident that you know that is not the case, and I am quite confident that many other Blacks are, at some level, aware of that also.

It won’t be until it is openly understood that it was system with both Blacks and Whites profiting that there will be some level of honesty injected into the discussion. Frankly, I don’t really see that happening any time soon. There are too many people (both Black and White) with too much at stake to finally destroy such a popular notion.

Again, thank you for writing.