According to laws in the seventeenth-century chesapeake:

The free blacks had the right to sue and testify in court.

By 1700, the Virginia pilgrims had made their fortunes through the development of tobacco, setting an example that was followed in Maryland and the Carolinas. In political and religious issues, Virginia varied extensively from the New England states.

Since well off grower manufactured their own particular wharves on the Chesapeake to deliver their product to England, town improvement was moderate. To develop tobacco, grower got huge quantities of English specialists, for the most part young fellows who came as contracted workers. More than 110,000 had touched base in the Chesapeake locale by 1700. Each contractually obligated slave implied more land for his support under the headright framework, which had the impact of crushing out small-scale cultivating.