Oscar Handlin says that “Through the first three-quarters of the 17th century, the Negroes, even in the South, were not numerous…They came into a society in which a large part of the White population was to some degree unfree…The Negroes lack of freedom was not unusual.
These Black newcomers, like so many others, were accepted, bought and held, as kinds of servants.”He goes on to say that the desire for cheap labor caused the elite merchants and land owners to enslave not only the negroes but their own White kindred as well Blacks were much more expensive than Whites therefore, Whites were mistreated more often than blacks During the Colonial period, Whites did the harder work, such as digging ditches, clearing land, and felling trees The frontier demands for this kind of heavy manual labor was satisfied primarily by White slaves
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