As having the status of an apprentice the servant could sue in court and he was regularly allowed “freedom dues” at the expiration of his term.  He could not vote, however, could not bear weapons, and of course could not hold office.  In some cases, especially where the system was voluntary, servants sustained kindly relations with their masters, a few even becoming secretaries or tutors.  More commonly, however, the lot of the indentured laborer was a hard one, his food often being only coarse Indian meal, and water mixed with molasses.  The moral effect of the system was bad in the fate to which it subjected woman and in the evils resulting from the sale of the labor of children.  In this whole connection, however, it is to be remembered that the standards of the day were very different from those of our own.  The modern humanitarian impulse had not yet moved the heart of England, and flogging was still common for soldiers and sailors, criminals and children alike.

The first Negroes brought to the colonies were technically servants, and generally as Negro slavery advanced white servitude declined.  James II, in fact, did whatever he could to hasten the end of servitude in order that slavery might become more profitable.  Economic forces were with him, for while a slave varied in price from L10 to L50, the mere cost of transporting a servant was from L6 to L10.  “Servitude became slavery when to such incidents as alienation, disfranchisement, whipping, and limited marriage were added those of perpetual service and a denial of civil, juridical, marital and property rights as well as the denial of the possession of children."[1] Even after slavery was well established, however, white men and women were frequently retained as domestic servants, and the system of servitude did not finally pass in all of its phases before the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

[Footnote 1:  New International Encyclopaedia, Article “Slavery.”]

Negro slavery was thus distinctively an evolution.  As the first Negroes were taken by pirates, the rights of ownership could not legally be given to those who purchased them; hence slavery by custom preceded slavery by statute.  Little by little the colonies drifted into the sterner system.  The transition was marked by such an act as that in Rhode Island, which in 1652 permitted a Negro to be bound for ten years.  We have already referred to the Act of Assembly in Virginia in 1661 to the effect that Negroes were incapable of making satisfaction for time lost in running away by addition of time.  Even before it had become generally enacted or understood in the colonies, however, that a child born of slave parents should serve for life, a new question had arisen, that of the issue of a free person and a slave.  This led Virginia in 1662 to lead the way with an act declaring that the status of a child should be determined by that of the mother,[1] which act both gave to slavery the sanction of law and made it hereditary.  From this time forth Virginia took a commanding lead in legislation; and it is to be remembered that when we refer to this province we by no means have reference to the comparatively small state of to-day, but to the richest and most populous of the colonies.  This position Virginia maintained until after the Revolutionary War, and not only the present West Virginia but the great Northwest Territory were included in her domain.