Indentured Servants To Slavery

From the start of colonization in the Western Hemisphere, dating back to the birth of America beginning with Christopher Columbus, the idea of slavery played a major role of ultimately focusing groups of people into a workforce to construct a foundation for a growing country called the United States. Christopher Columbus enslaved the natives that were living there at the time and forced them to work for him and his men. This started a trend of events that led to the development of indentured servants and later, the enslavement of African Americans in U.S. history. Indentured servants were men, women, and children, who immigrated for countries in Western Europe that willingly signed agreements stating they would work on that owner’s land for

Many key factors led to the transition from indentured servants to slavery. Indentured servants became less cost- efficient due to the fact that land owners owned multiple pieces of land or needed more than one indentured servant to work on their land. Even though working conditions were harsh and the servants were limited to what they can and cannot do, they still had rights as humans, which means they were not slaves. But as more jobs were needed on the farm, the more indentured servant demanded in wages. As the needs of indentured servants increased, the owners believed they were not obliged to commit to the request of their servant. As a result, owners found that buying African Americans into slavery would suffice their working needs. It turned out that African Americans bought into slavery worked harder, which caused higher production rates. Slaves were also renewable and cheap to buy, so if one passed away, owners would just buy another one from the market and continue on with their production. Also as adults died their kids would also take their place as well because the children of slaves were also enslaved, so when they old enough to do and learn the basics of slave labor they would be put to work too. Owners did not have to pay wages, house them or feed the slaves properly, because the owners knew that they already owned them as property, so they did not have to pay them. The owners only had to feed the slaves enough so that they could work the next day. The living conditions of the slaves were horrendous, they pretty much lived on top of one and another in small quarters that were located in the backyard of the house of the owners. Similar to the treatment of indentured servants, slaves were being harassed and