Virginia Enacts Partus Sequitur Ventrem Making Slavery Hereditary Through Mothers

The Virginia House of Burgesses enacts a law establishing that “all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother,” implementing the Roman legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem (literally “that which is born follows the womb”). The law directly responds to litigation uncertainty about the status of children born to enslaved African mothers and English fathers, declaring definitively that such children inherit their mother’s enslaved condition regardless of their father’s free status. This represents a radical break from English common law tradition of patrilineal inheritance where children’s legal status followed their father’s position as head of household (pater familias), instead adopting Roman civil law principles previously applied only to livestock and domestic animals.

The legislation emerges as a direct response to freedom lawsuits like that of Elizabeth Key Grinstead, who successfully won her freedom in 1656 by arguing that her father was a free Englishman and under English law she should inherit his free status. The 1662 statute closes this legal avenue by explicitly rejecting the principle of paternal inheritance for enslaved people, treating them instead under property law governing animal breeding where “the brood or offspring belongs to the owner of the dam or mother.” The law transforms slavery from a potentially temporary labor status into a permanent, self-perpetuating system: enslaved women automatically produce enslaved children generation after generation regardless of who fathers them, creating a perpetual labor supply without requiring continued importation of enslaved people from Africa.

This legal innovation establishes institutional corruption at the foundation of American slavery by creating perverse economic incentives for sexual exploitation and the commodification of reproduction. Slaveholders gain financial interest in the forced pregnancy of enslaved women since every child born increases their wealth and property holdings automatically. The law exempts white fathers from any legal relationship or obligation toward children they father with enslaved women, giving all rights in such children to the enslaver and creating legal cover for sexual violence. The doctrine spreads rapidly from Virginia to all Thirteen Colonies, establishing hereditary racial slavery as the legal baseline throughout British North America. It remains in force until the Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery in 1865, having enabled the transformation of approximately 20 enslaved people in 1619 Virginia into over four million enslaved people by 1860 through natural increase rather than importation. The law exemplifies how legal institutions can be captured to serve elite economic interests by fundamentally altering inheritance principles, property rights, and family law to maximize slaveholder profits from human reproduction.