Quotes About Indentured

As many as two out of every three Europeans who came to the colonies were debtors on arrival: they paid for their passage by becoming indentured servants.

God never wanted our indentured servitude but to share his life with his grateful children.

Abbot E. Smith, an authority on the subject, estimates that 'not less than a half, nor more than two-thirds, of all white immigrants to the colonies were indentured servants or redemptioners or convicts,' and that, beginning in 1728, 'by far the greatest number of servants and redemptioners' came from Ireland. It would seem, therefore, that more than one hundred thousand Scotch-Irish came to America as indentured servants.

On November 14, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, made it official: And I do hereby further declare all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free, that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining HIS MAJESTY'S Troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty, to HIS MAJESTY'S Crown and Dignity.42

There's an argument that private debt, in some way, is creating indentured servants in our country. But public debt does not do that. In fact, public debt does the exact opposite - it relieves private debt.

Threezed seemed to sense her mood. "Don't feel bad that you never got indentured." He touched her arm for a few seconds. "Nobody wants that. Plus, I'm sure you've been fucked over in lots of other ways." It was one of the nicest things a human outside her family had ever said to her.

They had known each other for many years. Young Jacob had found his way onto a ship borne for the tropics, indentured to a pair of wealthy male planters, and he'd run away, ending up at the decaying ruins of La Briere, the plantation house of the de Malheurs. Lucien had been living there alone, the only survivor of a virulent outbreak of cholera, and the two young men, barely more than boys, had bonded together, determined to escape.

Once they got finished slapping you with pay deductions, late fees, and interest penalties, you wound up owing them more each month, instead of less. Once you made the mistake of getting yourself indentured, you would probably remain indentured for life. A lot of people didn't seem to mind this, though. They thought of it as job security.

These demographics presented real threats to white planters, including a potential cross-racial labor movement. Plantation work was close and intimate, and it fostered a troubling solidarity between the growing Black population and white indentured servants. White planters could not afford for such a dangerous bond to form--which is why in 1705 Virginia's legislature did as much to codify white privilege as it did to establish Black subjugation.

Slavery wasn't something that grew up in the American South. and black people were not the first to be slaves in America. Before them there were 'indentured laborers,' taken out of jails in England and Scotland and so forth and brought to the colonies to work out their terms in the fields and then be set free.

More than half the colonists who came to the North American shores in the colonial period came as servants.

Between a half and two-thirds of all Europeans who migrated to North America between 1650 and 1780 did so under contracts of indentured servitude;

The early settlers amazed her--they had pluck, they led lives of sweaty drama. Theirs was a world of corsets and whipping posts and indentured servitude. People worked the land and died in ungainly ways. Modern life, in comparison, seemed a cinch.

I like the relationship between the master and the student. Each piece has new problems, and each is different. They're all an indentured servitude. There's that subjugation that you have to put yourself under. It's a give and take. There is work involved, and during that time, the greatest things are revealed.

Colonies like the Carolina settlement included the right to own African people in their charters. Early in colonial America, some poor whites worked without wages as indentured servants. The practice died out, however, and indentured servants eventually earned their freedom. Colonial law regarded African men and women as chattel, literally "movable property" like a cow or a wagon.

Austin introduced a plan designed by Peter Ellis Bean, and obtained the support of the Bexar Ayuntamiento. Bean had found a loophole that allowed immigrants to continue introducing slaves into Texas. Enslaved people would be brought to Texas as indentured servants. First, while slave owners were residing in US territory, they would take their slaves to a notary public, emancipate them, and afterward require them to sign a contract indenturing themselves and their children for life.

Waste men and waste women (and especially waste children, the adolescent boys who comprised a majority of the indentured servants) were an expendable class of laborers who made colonization possible.

more insidious practices in the colony, wives and children were held accountable for their husband's or father's indentured period of labor.

leaders of Jamestown had borrowed directly from the Roman model of slavery: abandoned children and debtors were made slaves. When indentured adults sold their anticipated labor in return for passage to America, they instantly became debtors, which made their orphaned children a collateral asset.

Indians captured in "just wars," and "strangers as willingly sell themselves, or are sold to us." The "strangers," in this case, were indentured servants from outside the colony as well as imported African slaves.44

The 1648 Laws and Liberties established two classes of an even lower order who could be divested of liberty: Indians captured in "just wars," and "strangers as willingly sell themselves, or are sold to us." The "strangers," in this case, were indentured servants from outside the colony as well as imported African slaves.44

If it were profitable to have indentured servants in the modern world, I'm sure that Richard Scaife's think tanks would have no trouble finding justifications, and assorted Christian groups would explain why it's God's will.