Willie Lynch

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave

The Willie Lynch Letter and The Making of A Slave is a speech delivered by Willie Lynch to an audience on the bank of the James River in Virginia in 1712 regarding control of slaves within the colony. The speaker, William Lynch, is said to have been a slave owner in the West Indies, and was summoned to Virginia in 1712; in part due to several slave revolts in the area prior to his visit, and more so because of his reputation of being an authoritarian and strict slave master. The Willie Lynch Letter is an account of a short speech given by Willie Lynch, in which he tells other slave owners that he has discovered the "secret" to controlling enslaved Africans by setting them against one another.