Indentured Servants Were White. Indentured servants could not marry without the permission of their master, were sometimes subject to physical punishment and did not receive legal favor from the courts. Slavery had been used for thousands of years prior to the use of african slaves in colonial america.
Female servants were often the subject of harassment from their masters. Indentured white slaves in the colonies (1770, by william eddis) by the eighteenth century indentured servants outnumbered african slaves in the north american colonies. The indentured servant system of people who voluntarily mortgaged their freedom evolved into slavery.
Early in the century, some servants were able to gain their own land as free men.
Contributed by brendan wolfe and martha mccartney. The indentured servant system of people who voluntarily mortgaged their freedom evolved into slavery. Their period of obligation to a colonial master was longer than that of a voluntary servant, usually seven to fourteen years. Although indentured servitude in america remained in force until the 1880s, social, political, and economic changes starting in the 1650s motivated the english to stop relying on white indentured servants as the primary labor force and, instead, to begin exploiting increasing numbers of enslaved africans.