Similarities Between Slavery And Indentured Servants

For the longest time, the primary means of a workforce for the wealthy in America were essentially slaves and indentured servants. Regardless of whether the worker was an servant or a slave they were expected and required to carry out tasks such as working the fields, maintaining crops, cooking meals, washing clothes, or whatever the owner of the debtor or slave so choose. This is where the similarities end. From their legacies to their origins, slaves and indentured servants differed in almost all aspects, and especially with regards to their treatment. However, before diving into discussion on the differences that divide the two, it is essential to discuss how the respective practices were popularized in the states in the first place.
Essentially,
Initially, during the earliest eras of colonial American slavery, the living conditions and treatment of a slave were comparable to those of an indentured servant (at the surface level). In 1680, James Revel, a thief sentenced to indentured servitude in the colonies, recounted the similar conditions that slaves and servants operated under in his poem, “A Poor Unhappy Transported Felon’s Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years’ Transportation at Virginia, in America.” The most insightful and intriguing aspects of this poem include the loss of property, an embarrassing lack of clothing, labor that spanned throughout the entire day, and that, “of work and food [slaves and servants] had an equal share.” When it comes to their rights, this notion of equality changes drastically. Servants were largely still eligible for the same protections under the law as any other citizen. While many instances of abuse went uncorrected, in the case of Charity Dallen, a maidservant in a Maryland household, a fellow indentured servant testified that their mistress, “did beate her mayd Sarvant . . . more Liken a dogge then a Christian,” which resulted in the courts removing Dallen from the property. Such a chance at justice was indeed possible for indentured servants. In contrast, slaves were provided with no such legal opportunity to escape the torture they endured. The only way to change their circumstances under an unmerciful owner was through physical escape. Runaways were a regular occurrence throughout slave territory which “investors” did not treat lightly. Slave owners scattered the news when any of their servants or slaves escaped in newspaper advertisements or posters, offering a reward for their return. An example of these, posted in a Maryland newspaper in 1755, gives descriptions both of an escaped slave and servant, but pays mind to mention “That this slave should