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Because there was a labor shortage. Anybody who could get to America had all the land they could possibly want for very low cost, but they could get no one to help them work it. New arrivals could get their own land, so , who would want to be someone else's field hand? There was a partial solution in indentured servants. These were poor people recruited in England to go to the colonies. They did not have the money to pay their way, so someone would pay their passage, in return for which they had to work for that person, usually for seven years. But after the seven years they were free to go their own way and acquire their own land.

So, in 1619 when a Dutch ship captain arrived off Jamestown with a cargo of African slaves he had been unable to sell elsewhere and proposed to sell them to the Virginians, it seemed to some like a good idea. Originally these Africans were treated just like the other indentured servants, and freed after seven years. Within a generation or two though the Virginia legislature, and those of other states, had changed laws so that white indentured servants were still freed after seven years but Africans became perpetual servants, never to be freed.

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15y ago

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