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However, this conflation of Irish indentured servants with African chattel slaves, known as the Irish slaves myth, is incorrect and ahistorical. Chattel slavery was a different legal category based on race as codified in The Barbados Slave Code, did not cease after a period of time (usually 7 years for indentured servitude), and stripped those ...
Indentured servants could not marry without the permission of their master, were frequently subject to physical punishment, and did not receive legal favor from the courts. Female indentured servants in particular might be raped and/or sexually abused by their masters. If children were produced the labour would be extended by two years. [14]
It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants. [136] [137] After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life.
Indentured servitude in British America was the prominent system of labor in the British American colonies until it was eventually supplanted by slavery. [1] During its time, the system was so prominent that more than half of all immigrants to British colonies south of New England were white servants, and that nearly half of total white ...
All Northern states had abolished slavery to some degree by 1805, sometimes with completion at a future date, sometimes with an intermediary status of unpaid indentured servant. Abolition was in many cases a gradual process. Some slaveowners, primarily in the Upper South, freed their slaves, and charitable groups bought and freed others.
Slave for life: Legal term used to distinguish between chattel slaves and indentured servants or apprentices, who were held in bondage for a limited term under certain conditions. [ 23 ]
Fifteen years later, the Islands slave population had grown to 20,000, while indentured servants numbered 8,000. There were also more than 1,000 Irish freemen (former indentured servants whose term had expired) living on the island at that time. [10]: 230–1 By 1660, there were 26,200 Europeans and 27,100 African slaves on the Island.
In other cases, some slaves were reclassified as indentured servants, effectively preserving the institution of slavery through another name. [ 119 ] Often citing Revolutionary ideals, some slaveholders freed their slaves in the first two decades after independence, either outright or through their wills.