This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, August 6th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Institution of Slavery marked a horrible chapter in American history, but how it developed deserves its own attention.

Rob McDonald is Associate Professor of History at the United States Military Academy and an adjunct scholar

at the Cato Institute, who spoke last week during Cato University.

In one of your previous talks at Cato University,

you talked about the emergence of slavery as both a legal and cultural institution in Virginia and how it's

sort of a chicken and egg problem historically of what came first slavery or racism and the answer

if I understand you correctly is that it's not clearly racism. I think that's true

You know I think a lot of people from our modern day

perspective they look back in the past and they tell themselves a story that the

farther you get back the farther you go back the

more racist it gets and it seems as if the evidence suggests otherwise that in

Virginia especially in the early rough kind of pioneer environment of the

1600s there was a fair amount of work a day equality and good race relations between people who came from Europe and people who came

from Africa.

There's evidence of a good deal of interracial marriage.

There were people brought here as slaves who were able to buy their freedom and own their own land.

Seemed to get along well with their white neighbors, or members of the militia or parish vestries, had lawsuits against white neighbors

over property line disputes and white judges and white juries would rule in their favor.

It seems as if the racism really came after slavery was legalized and instituted and formalized in the way that it was set up and arranged.

What legal institutions existed in the 1600s

...