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American Revolution

Good Essays

Ques -Explain how and why slavery developed in the American colonies. Why couldn’t colonists use indentured servants as they had in the past?

Ans -The study of labor in the United States has a tendency to lean towards a myopic analysis of the battle between corporations and unions. Working-class organization struggling against industrial titans understandably dominates any modern labor discussion, but the sources of these conflicts in the US are older than the nation itself. The labor system in Colonial America established the pattern of labor exploitation witnessed and discussed continually throughout US history. Before the formation of the United States, the European colonies in the Americas had an insatiable demand for cheap, …show more content…

In the mid-17th century, indentured servitude became the method of choice for the poor to reach Colonial America.

Ques - How would you describe the differences between slaves and indentured servants?

Ans - Indentured servants were individuals who agreed to work without pay for another person for a set amount of time, often several years. Indentured servants by law were still free in that they had basic civil rights. Often times debt, or desire for passage to America, would provoke people to this kind of an agreement. After their time of service was concluded, indentured servants were free to continue their lives. In real life, the distinction between slavery and indentured servitude often blurred. Some people treated their servants as basically slaves, beating and threating them, forcing them to work long hours and perform backbreaking work. Others held up their contract admirably and treated their servants well.

By contrast, slavery was the formal ownership of persons by an individual. Enslaved people had no rights and were considered their owner's property, rather than human beings. They could therefore be killed legally, for no reason whatsoever, or abused however their master saw fit. Slaves were basically slaves for life, unless their master saw fit to free them (if this was even legal, in various times and places it was not).

Ques - During the 1760s and early 1770s, the English Parliament took a number of actions that angered the colonialists.

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