[24] These acts, which remained in effect
throughout the colonial period, constituted a code of slave police which
differed only in degree and fullness from those enacted by the more
southerly colonies in the same generation. A somewhat unusual note,
however, was struck in an act of 1730 which while penalizing with stripes
the speaking by a slave of such words as would be actionable if uttered by
a free person provided that in his defence the slave might make the same
pleas and offer the same evidence as a freeman. The number of negroes in
the colony rose to some 6500 at the eve of the American Revolution. Most
of them were held in very small parcels, but at least one citizen, Captain
John Perkins of Norwich, listed fifteen slaves in his will.
[Footnote 22: The scanty materials available are summarized in B.C.
Steiner, _History of Slavery in Connecticut_ (Johns Hopkins University
_Studies_, XI, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1893), pp. 9-23, 84. See also W.C.
Fowler, "The Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut," in the
_Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries_, III, 12-18, 81-85, 148-153,
260-266.]
[Footnote 23: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, III, 298.
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