Moreover, the master for indentured servants had an obligation to feed, clothe, and educate them. While indentured servitude was substantially different from slavery, it was sufficiently similar to allow the initial transition to chattel slavery without creating a social uproar. However, historically slavery was different than servitude, in that it was a perpetual and hereditary condition that deprived the slave of his humanity (Jordan, p. 32). It was this notion, that the slave was less than a human being, that led to the utter depravity of the slave system, the horrors of the Jim Crow south, and the continued attitudes of white racial superiority that mar much of American life.

However, it is important to understand that these English attitudes were imported into other wilderness areas as well. When confronted with the Aborigines in Australia, Englishmen treated them in a way that was similar to how African-Americans were treated in...
[ View Full Essay]