Colonial Americ When Slavery Got Mean - 1599 Words

Dori Phelps COUN 535: Introduction to Counseling Dr. Deborah G. Haskins, LCPC, NCGC-II September 21, 2015 â€Å"Colonial America: When Slavery Got Mean† Colonial America: When Slavery Got Mean The practice of one person legally owning another is older than this great nation. Using people of color as chattel, a bad habit picked up from our mother country Britain, who got the idea from the Portuguese around the 1400’s (Carey, 2000), was an international affair. There were different types of bondage back then, some even amicable. In â€Å"The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis (1984),† David Galenson writes how the indentured servant labor force was a barter system whereby a person of little means might sign on to work on a farm, mine, or even received passage on a ship for a period of time or till the debt is paid and then that person was free to go live her life as a free citizen. With the discovery of the new world, British companies had to invest money up front to get the laborer physically to the work site of the Americas. Galenson poses the use of indentured servants initially in colonial America was out of the pres sing and lucrative need for a workforce to tame [the ill-gotten and continue the ongoing capture and occupation of] the now the United States. By as early as 1617, there was a definite belief in the importance of the laborer in the settlement of the Americas and getting laborers to the colonies from Great Britain was quite the