History of the United States I / Unit 3 USH1 0318 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Indentured Servitude
The idea
Indentured servants were young, often illiterate English men and women who signed for five to seven years in exchange for passage, food, clothing, lodging, and freedom dues at the end. About one hundred thousand came to the Chesapeake during the sixteen hundreds, most of them young men in their early twenties. Conditions were harsh. They could not marry, could be sold or traded among planters, were often poorly fed and housed, and had terms extended for crimes or disobedience.
In practice
Female servants facing seduction and abandonment by planters seeking to avoid the cost of raising a child.
Where people slip
Those who completed their terms often became tobacco planters themselves, and that is the detail that matters later. A servant was a future competitor for land, which is why a growing class of freed servants alarmed wealthy planters and why the labour system was eventually replaced with one nobody could age out of.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for History of the United States I