In 1667 in Jamestown, Virginia, the House of Burgesses approved a statute, Act III of September 1667, that answered the following query: Does the conferring of the Christian sacrament of baptism in any way change the legal status of a slave? The legislators ruled that baptism did not alter a slave’s legal status, with the act thus titled “An act declaring that baptism of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage.” Their decision, when added to certain previous rulings made concerning the colony’s enslaved blacks, revealed a distinct pattern of behavior. Virginia’s House of Burgesses slowly, over a period of years, crafted a legal system that identifi ed enslaved blacks and their descendants as a permanent source of cheap labor. Through that process, British colonials sowed the seeds of institutionalized slavery based on race, a system that survived in the Chesapeake region for more than two centuries.