Ethnic Studies - Unit 3
Per: _________________
Name:________________________
Indentured Servants &
the Pursuit of Happiness
Adapted from: Crandall Shifflett - Virginia Tech
Indentured servants have a long history in
America. Though slaves replaced servants as the
major source of labor in the late 1600s, servants
continued to work into the 1800s.
Indentured servants were maybe the first
symbols of the American dream, early symbols
1
of American exceptionalism . Who were these men and women who were indentured servants? How
were they treated and how did this experience shape the attitudes of later generations? These questions
help us to think of Jamestown's place in the creation of an early American culture.
An “indenture” was a promise made to work for the person who paid your travel to the “New World.”
The written contract was a legal agreement. Its terms usually meant a period of service—typically four to
seven years—in exchange for the cost of transportation, food, and shelter. By one estimate, three-fourths
of the white population were dependent laborers when they arrived in the “New World.”
Labor recruiters2 promoted Virginia as a paradise on earth and an open society where laborers were sure
to become landholders. Yet in 1623, Richard Frethorne, writing from a settlement about ten miles from
Jamestown, begged his parents to redeem him or send him food. He wrote after one of the bloodiest
Indian assaults in a series of attacks on settlements along the James River. Frethorne provided a
dramatic narrative of the settlers' fears, having become the hostages of local Indians who were angry over
unkept promises, encroachments3 of their economy, and threats to their culture.
The indentured servants' chances for success improved substantially a few years later. In 1624, after
eighteen years of settlement, Jamestown's population was only 1,200 people. But after 1625 and until
the end of the 1650s, a profitable tobacco market and high labor demand drove the immigration rates
upward to almost 2,000 per year. With cheap land and low costs for tools and equipment, a man could
start at the bottom and with hard work, avoidance of legal troubles, and good luck, become a landholder4
and, perhaps, an officeholder5.
A number of laws enacted in the 1600s controlled the behavior of masters and servants. Restrictions had
to be placed both upon masters against "barbarous6" treatment of their servants and upon servants
against "fornication7" and "unapproved" marriages. Additionally, distinctions evolved in the laws between
Indians, slaves, and servants, and between Christians and heathens8. Many of these distinctions meant
the difference between freedom and slavery. 1
“American Exceptionalism”: the belief that America is the greatest country ever
“Labor Recruiter:” someone who tries to convince others to come work somewhere
3 Taking over someone else’s area
4 Someone who owns property
5 A local politician or high-status person
6 Really terrible
7 Sex outside of marriage
8 Non-Christian
2
For most of the 1600s the lives of white and black indentured servants were similar. They worked
together in the fields; they ate together and slept in the same part of a building. The changes in day-today conditions really came after Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, an armed rebellion that included white and
black indentured servants and slaves working together.
But indentured servitude differed from slavery in one very substantial way after 1662. Bondage “in
perpetuity,” or forever, carried with the condition of inheritance for every child born of a slave mother.
This meant that all children born of slaves would become slaves themselves. This set slavery apart from
indentured servitude, however similar were the physical conditions of their lives. And, obviously,
indenture was contractual and consensual; slavery was forced and involuntary, usually the result of
capture and sale.
Indentured servants were often treated like slaves. Even those who did have contracts had masters who
abused them (especially in the case of women), provided the bare minimum in terms of food, clothing
and shelter, and took payments that were supposed to be theirs.
Not surprisingly, servants ran away. It is difficult to know how often this happened. But running away
was taken quite seriously by colonial officials and was met with harsh treatment, not much different
from that given to resistant slaves. Runaway servant entries in York County, Virginia records, for
example, reveal punishments of twenty, thirty, or more "lashes on his bare shoulders" for a runaway
servant. As the years progressed and slavery became more widespread, though, the punishment for
running away also got harsher.
Summarize this article in 4-5 sentences.
How does this article support the idea of race as a social construction?