Indentured servants first arrived in America in the decade following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607. The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labor.

The William Brown House, an elegant Georgian brick building built in the 1760s, sits on the banks of the South River in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Now a museum, the house is the last visible ...

In 1624, Jane Dickenson petitioned the governor of Virginia for relief from bondage. Four years earlier, her husband had signed a contract of indenture to pay for his immigration from England; it ...

We sometimes imagine that such oppressive laws were put quickly into full force by greedy landowners. But that's not the way slavery was established in colonial America. It happened gradually -- one ...

In 1754 a carpenter named Josiah Halstead purchased the Allen House in Shrewsbury. Shortly thereafter he transformed it into a tavern. At some point, Halstead had indentured servants working for him. ...

The racist violence in Charlottesville is an appalling chapter in the very long history of white supremacy in America. Watching marchers with torches and Confederate flags near the site of Thomas ...

Once again, Virginia’s governor caused a nationwide facepalm with race-related comments. This time, Gov. Ralph Northam told “CBS This Morning” that slaves who landed on the shores of Virginia ...

Historians say they were "shocked" and "mystified" when Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam wrongly used the term "indentured servants" Sunday in reference to the first Africans to arrive in English North ...

I have seen the student loan crisis up close from both sides of this polemic. First, as an extremely young student who was “sold” the only way to get an education—in addition to joining the U.S. Army ...

The 13 original colonies of the United States were the foundation of what would become a new nation, born from a blend of ambition, conflict and compromise. These colonies stretched along the Atlantic ...

History’s gears are lubricated by gore. Witness America’s Revolutionary War, whose continuing reverberations have done more ...