Difference Between Slavery And Involuntary Servitude

To many people the terms ‘Indentured Servitude’ and ‘Slavery’ might seem to mean the same thing. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary (on-line), an Indentured Servant is a person who signs and is bound by indentures to work for another for a specified time especially in return for payment of travel expenses and maintenance. Slavery, according to The Free Dictionary, is the condition in which one person is owned as property by another and is under the owner’s control, especially in involuntary servitude. This paper will highlight how they are similar, how they are different, how both of them originated, and who was affected by them.

Indentured servitude and slavery are similar in a couple ways. One way is that people in both situations

had to work for people “higher” than them. In other words, indentured servants and slaves both had food, lodging and other needs provided for them. Another way is that both of them were kept alive, even though some slaves were treated badly.

Indentured servitude and slavery are different in a few ways. One is that indentured servants were able to be free after they worked for someone for a period of time. Slaves on the other hand generally would never be free; they had to work until they died and so did their children, and so on for generations. Also, indentured servants tended to be treated better than slaves. Another difference between indentured servants and slaves is that the colonists liked slaves more than indentured servants because slaves were permanent.

Slavery and Indentured Servitude have existed throughout the history of mankind in various forms. English colonists favored European indentured servants into the 1670s. In the 1660s, the southerners slowly switched their attitudes to Africans. This was the beginning of slavery in the colonies because southerners began to consider Africans as permanent servants. In 1664 some southern colonies declared slavery hereditary, which was that if you became a slave or married a slave your children and their children would be slaves their whole life and keep going for generations.

In the early history of the colonies many people from many backgrounds became indentured servants, although the majority were of European descent. Many of these were even criminals from English jails. The majority of the people affected by indentured servitude were men and women who signed a contract to work for an agreed period of time in exchange for transportation, food, water, clothing, shelter, for example. Adults usually served for four to seven years and children sometimes longer. Most children ended up working in tobacco fields.
Most of the slaves, however, tended to be of African descent, either having been brought directly from Africa to be slaves, or their descendants.

As you can see, although similar in some ways, Slavery and Indentured Servitude are very different. Much of this difference comes from the time that a person would be expected to be in that position, how they would be treated while in it, and what position in society they and their descendants would be in eventually, or forever in the case of slavery.