The law required owners to provide family housing and provision grounds, and to allow time for enslaved people to cultivate them. It also appointed white freeholder guardians to inspect estates and hear complaints. The statute framed “natural increase” as a way to reduce future imports from Africa: provisions for survival were bound to a colonial plan to reproduce an enslaved population. Legal protections remained administered by a slaveholding legislature and did not end ownership or coercion.
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Why did the 1797 Guardian Act combine provision grounds with “natural increase”?
The law invoked welfare and provisions while expressly seeking to reduce future imports by increasing the enslaved population.
The 1797 Guardian Act’s concern with provisions grounds was separate from any demographic agenda.
The act explicitly tied “natural increase” to reducing future imports from Africa.