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By 1756, however, the Negroes in Virginia numbered 120,156 and the white people but 173,316. Thirty-eight of the forty-nine counties had more Negro than white tithables, and eleven of the counties had a Negro population varying from one-fourth to one-half more than the white.
An elaborate act of 1682 summed up the new status, and Indians sold by other Indians were to be "adjudged, deemed, and taken to be slaves, to all intents and purposes, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding." Indian women were to be "tithables," and they were required to pay levies just as Negro women.
In 1769, however, all free Negro and mulatto women were exempted from levies as tithables, such levies having proved to be burdensome and "derogatory to the rights of freeborn subjects." More than other colonies Maryland seems to have been troubled about the intermixture of the races; certainly no other phase of slavery here received so much attention.
By 1648 property was released and taxes levied only on the tithables, at a specified poll-tax. If the Indian was destined to be a vanishing factor, the mulatto and the free Negro most certainly were not. In spite of all the laws to prevent it, the intermixture of the races increased, and manumission somehow also increased.
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