Slaves in York County did not usually use violence to challenge slaveholder authority. From the perspective of white victims of violent slave crime, only one white person died at the hands of a slave in York County over the course of the eighteenth century.6 All in all, over the course of the eighteenth century, slaves in York County did not often commit violent crimes, but when they did, it was more likely to have occurred before 1750. Of the 38 accused slave felons tried in the period from 1704 to 1750, 10.5 percent were tried for crimes of violence, two for arson (convictions), and one for the murder of a fellow slave (conviction). During the next thirty years, 1750 to 1780, only 5.2 percent of accused slave felons were tried for committing violent crimes out of 116 slaves charged: two rapes (one conviction and one acquittal), one poisoning and murder (conviction), one case of arson (conviction), one case of mutilation (reduced to a misdemeanor), and the above-mentioned murder of a white person that was reduced to manslaughter. The one charge of suspected slave rebellion and insurrection in York County (1753) resulted in an acquittal.7 For the whole period from 1700 to 1780, there were only six slaves convicted for violent crimes in York County. In one of those, the victim was a slave and in another the court invited a review and recommended a pardon by the governor and Council.
The great majority of accused slave felons were male; only 8 percent of the 154 slaves arrested and tried between 1704 and 1780 were women. Females made up 38 percent of all slaves prosecuted before 1735, but from 1735 until 1780 only 5 percent of accused slave felons tried were women. In spite of the fact that the rate of crime in the county accelerated after 1740, only five female slaves were accused of committing a felony and brought to trial between the years of 1743 and 1780. Four of the five women were prosecuted for theft, and four were accused of committing the crime with a male slave. Of the five female slaves brought to trial during those years, 40 percent were acquitted and discharged while 33 percent of all accused male slave felons were acquitted.
