South Carolina’s layered slave trades grew in complexity. The multiplying African population increased the terror of White settlers, who codified their fear into law through new race codes in 1740: “All negroes and Indians, (free Indians in amity with this government, and negroes, mulatoos, and mestizos, who are now free, excepted) mulattoes (African/European) or mestizos (African/Native) who are now, or shall hereafter be in this province, and all their issue and offspring….shall be and they are hereby declared to be, and remain hereafter absolute slaves.” In other words, from that point forward, slavery once was slavery forever – for all future generations, in perpetuity.
From “Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World–and How to Repair It All” by Lisa Sharon Harper