severed from his head with a knife. This punishment was severe enough to accomplish the purpose for which it was intended, but like a great majority of the drastic measures passed with reference to the slaves, it was doubtless very much modified when it came to be enforced, if it was not ignored altogether. No traveller in Virginia in the seventeenth century has remarked upon the number of earless negroes in the Colony, and in that age, as in more recent times, it must have been difficult for individuals of this race to have resisted the temptation of running down the many fine young hogs that crossed their path in the forest in whichever direction they might have been proceeding. It is quite unlikely that the master would have been willing to have had a valuable slave lowered in value in case he desired to sell him, as was always possible, by reporting him to the authorities to be subjected to disfigurement for life. Self-interest was alive here even if sentiment was dormant. A negro with two ears was worth more in the market than a dozen hogs, and to remove one of his ears was to proclaim to every planter in the Colony that he was a felon whom it would have been unwise to purchase.[1]
The law required that the same barbarous punishment should be imposed when the slave was convicted of robbing a house or store. He was first lashed by the sheriff until sixty strokes had been received, and was then placed in the pillory with his ears nailed to the posts, in which position he was compelled to remain for half an hour, at the end of which time these members were severed from his head.[2]
There are indications of the presence of free negroes in the Colony at a comparatively early date. They were
