PREFACE
In a sense, two approaches were possible in the preparation of this report on Williamsburg's Negro population in the colonial era. One alternative would have been a broad survey of what would really amount to slavery and the Negro in Tidewater Virginia. The other would confine itself as far as possible to Williamsburg and to the impact of town life on an element in the population whose initial reason for being here had been the performance of agricultural labor.

For the most part, this report attempts to follow the narrower approach. Many of the subjects in which it seemed likely Colonial Williamsburg would be most interested—the actual number of slaves in Williamsburg, the distribution of ownership, the work the slaves performed, their living conditions—were precisely the features of slavery most likely to be modified by whatever urban characteristics Williamsburg possessed.

Certain other parts of the report, which touch matters of criminal law, runaways, religion, and education apply much more generally to town and plantation alike. Even here, however, I have tried to come as quickly as possible to their specific relevance to Williamsburg.

There are no doubt some omissions that may have arisen from this attempt to limit the scope of the report as far as possible to Williamsburg, and there is almost certainly much about plantation slave life that could have been useful in ourinterpretation of the eighteenth century. However, a detailed investigation of plantation slavery in colonial Virginia, one that would really present new information or modify existing interpretations, would constitute a project of major proportions without necessarily meeting the immediate need of specific information on Williamsburg. It would also, I think, increase rather than diminish the problem of the shortage of sources of information on an inarticulate part of the population.