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Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for a prepaid lump sum, as payment for some good or service (e.g. travel), purported eventual compensation, or debt repayment.
Indentured servitude in British America was the prominent system of labor in the British American colonies until it was eventually supplanted by slavery. [1] During its time, the system was so prominent that more than half of all immigrants to British colonies south of New England were white servants, and that nearly half of total white ...
Though Casor was the first person who was declared an enslaved person in a civil case, there were both black and white indentured servants sentenced to lifetime servitude before him. Many historians describe indentured servant John Punch as the first documented slave (or slave for life) in America as punishment for escaping his captors in 1640 ...
The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a black man, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant ...
Fifteen years later, the Islands slave population had grown to 20,000, while indentured servants numbered 8,000. There were also more than 1,000 Irish freemen (former indentured servants whose term had expired) living on the island at that time. [10]: 230–1 By 1660, there were 26,200 Europeans and 27,100 African slaves on the Island.
In the slave-owning areas controlled by Union forces on January 1, 1863, state action was used to abolish slavery. The exceptions were Kentucky and Delaware, and to a limited extent New Jersey, where chattel slavery and indentured servitude were finally ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.
The last indentured ex-slaves, born before 1780 (fewer than 100 in the 1840 census [125]) are freed. Danish West Indies: Royal edict ruling the freedom of children born from female slaves and the total abolition of slavery after 12 years. Dissatisfaction causes a slave rebellion in Saint Croix the next year. 1848: Hungary
Thus, the black man, John Punch, became a slave unlike the two white indentured servants who merely had to serve a longer term. This was the first known case in Virginia involving slavery. [27] It was significant because it was documented. [27]