An indentured servant is a person who usually comes from another country to the U.S. and agrees to work as a servent for a certian amount of years. These "servants" would be from either England or Germany. The English servents would usually be young single males ranging in age from 15 to 24. People were sent to England called "agents." These agents would go to the bay and start finding poor young men and offering them a full paid trip to the United States if they would come work for them, usually for 4-7 years. The amount of years would depend on skill. If you had a skill that was truely valued such as being a carpenter, you would serve less time as a slave. Although, if your skill wasn't as important, you would serve longer and often be worked to death. Most of these slaves were brought to Chesepeake Bay, Virginia. Some of the servants from the bay were sometimes kidnapped or were passed out on a ship after being drunk. The servants that were brought over from Germany were often brought to Pennsylvania or New Jersey because there were no agents available in Germany. This would cause people to become more desperate because they did not have many choices. Families would often agree to go to America to work. The downside of this was that when they arrived in America, they were usually sold to the highest bidder. This caused families to split apart from each other.

In 1700 a law is passed explaining that convicts must be sent to Chesepeake Bay. Indentured Servitude declined because more people could afford the trip to the U.S. from either England or Germany. The decline of indentured servents caused the rise slave labor. The numbers inclined from 1700 went from 20,000 slaves in the U.S. to 2,000,000 slaves in 1830. In 1717, 30,000 convicts were sent to Chesepeake because of long contracts and no freedom dues. After the Revolutionary war began U.S. prison labor. Early 19th Century there was a push for urban prisons due to increase of the crime and poverty in urban areas. They called the prisons "correctional facilities." People figured the inmates could rehabilitate themselves through prayer and work. The products made by the inmates were sold for a cheap price causing skilled workers near the area to riot.

A majority of the slaves were owned by the same 3-5% slave owneres. Fifty percent of the slaves lived on large plantations where there were more slaves surrounding them. The other fifty percent of the slaves lived in small houses with only 1-2 other slaves. Slaves in Jamacia used basic supply and demand to get paid and trade for other materials. These slaves used sugar cain as a major crop. In Chesepeake there was less demand on the materials so they used the money or materials more to feed thier families. Slaves on the islands work with sugar cain and the slaves in the south worked in cotton fields. Around this time, Ely Whitney invents "the cotton gin" which produces 50 times more cotton then the usual. Seventy-Five percent of all slaves in the U.S. work with cotton.

The slaves were taken advantage of and often worked to death. To prevent this, the servants resisted by working slower and faked an illness. This is actually where the blacks began to get stereotyped as sickly and lazy. The majority of the blacks in the North worked in households, because there was no plantation labor in the North. Fifty percent of freed slaves still ended up living in white house holds and being paid servants due to lack of money.