Keen Observation.

In 1657 one traveler in the New World wrote, "The Hand is divided into three sorts of men; Masters, Servants, and slaves. The slaves and their posterity, being subject to their Masters for ever, are kept and preserv'd with greater care then the servants, who are theirs but for five years, according to the law of the lland."

Indentured Labor.

An indenture contract obligated an immigrant to an agreed term of labor, usually for a period of four to seven years, in return for payment for passage across the Atlantic. Indentured servants received shelter, food, clothing, and a Sunday free of hard labor. Upon completion of the contract, bound servants typically received a suit of clothing or dress with some additional "assets." An asset might have been land in seventeenth-century Chesapeake or South Carolina. Often the "freedom dues" were distinguished by gender. A man...