Your OP is blatantly false and it is well known that Hugh Gwyn is the first slave owner. Even though it does not excuse the actions of Antonio Johnson who was an indentured servant himself prior to gaining freedom.
Interesting link regarding the POTUS connection in this.
Little Known Black History Fact: John Punch | Black America Web
Find name the court case or produce the court transcripts. I will help you because you are not that smart. The case is
Re Negro John Punch. How your article blatantly lies. At the time people came in as indentured servants. Very similar to slavery, but not the same thing. In the John Punch case, the Indentured Servant was sentence to life indentured servitude for his crimes of breach of contract. Technically slavery, but it didn't set a legal precedent to enslave Africans. It set a legal precedent to put people to force labor for punishment for a crime (still goes on today and was SPECIFICALLY left out of the 13th amendment). Unjust for the crime, but it didn't set the legal precedent you claim.
The legal precedent to enslave Africas was set by the
Johnson v. Casor case. In that case Casor finished his term and Johnson sued stating the he was his slave not indentured servant and the court erroneous held for Johnson, despite two white Property Owners arguing on his behalf, this was the precedent that VA used to set up their slave laws!
The African American Experience
Some Negro servants were forced to serve for life by masters who simply refused to acknowledge that the period of indenture was completed. A precedent-setting case was that of Johnson v. Parker (1654) in Northampton County, involving John Casor, the black servant of Anthony Johnson, Virginia’s first free Negro and first black landowner. In November 1653 Casor complained to a white planter visiting his master that although he had been indentured for seven years, Johnson had kept him “seven years longer than he should or ought.” Johnson insisted that he had “ye Negro for his life,” but after being warned that unless he released his servant, the latter could recover his master’s cows as damages, he freed Casor, who then bound himself to the white planter. Johnson petitioned the Northampton County court for the return of his servant, and in March 1654, the court ordered Casor returned to Johnson and handed down the judgment that Casor was Johnson’s servant for life, that is, his slave.
Other evidence that Virginia Negroes were serving for life in the 1650s is the fact that in 1660, in an act concerning runaways, the Assembly stated that “in case any English servant shall run away in company with any Negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by addition of time…[he] shall serve for the time of the said Negroes absence.” While it does not say so in so many words, the statute indicates quite clearly that Negroes served for life and hence could not make “satisfaction” by serving longer once they were recaptured. This phrase gave legal status to the already existing practice of lifetime enslavement of Negroes.
I would be willing to agree that Johnson was not the first slave owner, but his lawsuit brought about a precedent that facilitated African enslavement and was used to set up the first slave trade laws.
Yet of course your article falsifies the terminology to fit it's narative try, but the precedent for slavery to be legalized was by the Johnson case!
.