Difference Between Indentured Servitude

The involuntary labor systems in 18th century America, may have started out only as indentured servitude but was soon split into slavery. Indentured servitude was protected under agreements including service times, wages, and mistreatment. If any of these provisions where violated, servants had the right to legally take on their masters. But the slavery system had no such protection. Resistance against involuntary labor came from both slavery and servants, in the most common form of runaways. Servants had more opportunities than slaves but non the less, when they ran off, their master’s first priority is to get then recaptured. The advertisements parallel those intentions and urged on the new lucrative business of slave catching. Though these two forms ultimately endured different faiths, one similarities they shared included separation of families, as Mittelberger explains, “families were often separated if ones debt couldn't be payed off, and is purchased somewhere else, never to be seen again (89). And slaves are often separated on arrival or through domestic slave trading.