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Why Do People Mistake Indentured Servants

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Reasons people would mistake indentured servants for slaves was because both were considered low in society, did not own many belongings, were not given much food or clothes, were shipped and both looked very similar in standards/appearance. Some see indentured servants as glorified butlers and people don’t realize that indentured servants had to go through a lot of the same trauma that slaves had to endure. Indentured servants and slaves had to be transported on ships. The voyage was often a horrible experience for all the passengers. On the ships the inmates had to sleep side by side each other with not much room to move. The best way to describe the sleeping arrangements are that they slept in compartments so the crew could fit more people in the ship. The prisoners were given only enough food to survive and …show more content…

I have nothing at all–no, not a shirt to my back but two rags.” Another account from a slave named William Henry Singleton, stated a similar experience. He told of his experience when he was sold to a new master. He said that “Of course I had hardly any clothes, but then I did not need many clothes to keep me warm.” Both of these experiences indicate that indentured servants and slaves did not own much. Not only that but indentured servants and slaves were only fed twice a day so they could stay alive to work. Frethorne also writes about this in his letter. He stated “And when we are sick there is nothing to comfort us; for since I came out of the ship I never ate anything but peas, and loblollies (that is, water gruel).” Another example from William Singleton was when he stated “I had all I wanted to eat. Of course I had hardly.” This shows that indentured servants and slaves were given minimal food. Indentured servants and slaves were alike in standards, treatment, and status, but they were also very much

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In fact, in 1650 indentured servitude was the more common variety of labor workers the colonists relied on. In the text it states, “About 80 percent of the immigrants to the Chesapeake during the seventeenth century came as indentured servants” (Roark 60). This evidence exhibits the fact that slaves weren’t exclusively

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Indentured servants were people who were granted their passage to America in exchange for their labor for up to seven years. Bacon’s Rebellion dramatically changed the ratio of indentured servants to slaves in the colonies. Socially, the bringing in of slaves made for more diversity

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When the slaves would go to bed they would sleep on straws or old rags which didn’t provide any warmth (4). The plantation owners provide the clothes for the slaves when they got to the plantation. Unfortunately, the clothes were really bad material and didn’t fit properly (4). Slaves were expected to work morning to night in the cotton fields. During harvest season, most of the slaves would work a 18 hour day (10).

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Indentured servants, were by all accounts, the main source of labor in the seventeenth century. The labor force was mainly needed for the newly discovery of the cash crop that was tobacco. It was a plant that need a lot of man power to be harvested and transported to port to be shipped back to England. “At first they turned to their overpopulated country for labor, but English indentured servants brought with them the same haphazard habits of work as their masters.” Indentured service being described as haphazard is an understatement; uprising.

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During the time of the 1650’s the Americas were not a part of what is now the United States and other countries in Central America and as well as the Caribbean. During those years European countries who were dominate in exploring the world and conquering new lands were the British, Spanish, French and the Dutch. The world economy was greatly impacted by the production of goods the Americas could provide Europe and even parts of Asia. The America’s were rich in materials that could not be made vastly, like the production of cotton, crops, tobacco and as well as natural gems like gold and silver that would increase wealth of the country who was exploring the region at the time. The British crown at the time was a powerful nation and if not the most powerful in wealth and military with great number of troops and

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The Enclosure Act drove many English people to become indentured servants because they had no means of survival with very little land. These colonies differed for the reason for leaving England and the emigrants who settled in these

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Basicly, the indentured servants were regularly from England, and did not have money to sail to Virginia. So then they had to become a servant to pay the voyage. The servants worked for a “master” for a period of time under a contract. They usually worked on tobacco. They were given food and a place to live.

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Indentured Servitude to Slavery in Colonial Virginia The first two centuries of colonial Virginia exhibit a significant transformation of the workforce that occupied the land. The beginning of the 17th century was marked by the first settlements in the colony, such as Jamestown, that ushered in an era of indentured servitude. In the end of the 17th century through the start of the 18th century, this labor transitioned to racial slavery. As the American tobacco industry prospered for the rich, the number of indentured servants began to fall, causing the direct development of slavery in colonial Virginia.

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After the plantation revolution in the 1600s, slavery became a horrible institution driven by the mass production of goods by white slave-owners who were looking to succeed economically. Slaves were treated as disposable commodities and lived hard lives under the brutal hand of their slave-owners. By the 1800s, slavery was natural and very common in the south, and was justified because African Americans were seen as an inferior race who were uneducated and incapable of engaging in society. Since slaves had no political power, especially in the south, they could not fight for their freedom; most were uneducated, so they could not write their accounts down; and even when slaves successfully escaped north, they had a hard time communicating with

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First of all, they were not given enough food. In the text, “Night” it states, “In the mornings: black coffee. At midday: soup. By the third day I was eagerly eating any kind of soup.” In comparison to that, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” says, “The men and women slaves received their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal.”

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Frederick Douglass is an ex-slave and an abolitionist. He wrote a narrative on himself on how slavery was like during his time. This is intent to be an autobiography. It is about how and when Douglass was in the slave life, he used to be born a slave to the time of his break out to gain the right and the only place is the North or Britain. But it's additionally a piece with a robust political message.

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So the things that the slaves needed, like food, clothing, and education, were not given. On the plantations the slaves were given a monthly supply of food and yearly supply of clothing. Neither of these amounts would last the slaves as long as they needed

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The need for survival was essential for both the crew of the slave ship and the African captives. When African captives were loaded on board a slave ship, a form of a cold war would reign on the ship until they sold all the captives as slaves at their destination in the New World. The crew aboard the slave ship would become increasingly paranoid since they did not know if a slave uprising would break out or not. All members of a slave ship crew (including cooks, carpenters, and doctors) would become jail keepers. The only way the crew of a slave ship could survive the middle passage is to prevent the outbreak of a slave rebellion.

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Nicholas Boston, a writer for PBS on the subject of slavery and living conditions, stated that slaves were mostly underfed due to small “Weekly food rations -- usually corn-meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour” (Boston 2). These rations, however, were “ high in fat and starch” which left out key nutrients, so many slaves were subject to many “ailments, including scurvy and rickets.” (Boston 2). John Simkin, an expert on this subject, claimed some owners “gave their slaves a small piece of land” (Simkin) on which they would have to grow their own food. Douglass’s account explained how little their monthly food allowance was, being only “eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal” (Douglass 10).

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