Around 20,000 white slaves came from Great Britain, most came from prisons where they were serving life sentences in some cases for felonies and in other cases as political prisoners. And so they were “slaves for life”. This was referred to as the “convict trade” and convicts were preferred over African slaves since they cost less than a third of what indentured servants or African slaves cost. There simply were enough of them which is why Southern plantation owners resorted to African slaves and indentured servants (keep in mind they were competing with the West Indies for slaves). The British government paid a bonus for each “white slave” shipped to America as it was trying to reduce the cost of maintaining prisoners serving life sentences in British prisons. Here is one example, notice they were given no choice…
The Proclamation of 1625 by James II, made it official policy that all Irish political prisoners be transported to the West Indies and sold to English planters. People brought to the colonies as a result of James II proclamation were slaves.
Once they arrived…
“Upon arrival, they were advertised for sale, inspected, and taken away in chains by new masters.”
In addition, around 300,000 indentured servants were brought to America, this is the group, you are referring to in your response and many were Irish or Scots. Indentured servants served on average a 4–7 year term. As a result of Bacon’s rebellion the whole practice ended.
I did differentiate between white slaves and indentured servants in my response, but we are off on tangent.
The issue was whether slavery “built” America… it did not…
The South was never the economic engine of US growth… it was the industrialized north that took full advantage of the natural resources our country offered (coal, iron ore, lumber, etc) combined with both cheap labor and educated labor provided by more than 1 million immigrants annually.
The South largely sat out this industrialized revolution with the exception of a few cities. You might find this article interesting…
The industrial retardation of southern cities, 1860–1880 — ScienceDirect
The impact of the South dependence on slavery is evidenced that between 1850 to 1880, the South went from having 3 states in the top 10 population- wise to 1 state in the top 10 (Tennessee was 9th) by 1880. Furthermore the share of the US population residing in the South dropped even more precipitately… since even after the emancipation of slaves, the South continued to cling to a more agricultural economy with sharecroppers replacing slaves.
And even though sharecropping cause harvests including cotton to increase, an agricultural economy simply cannot keep pace with an industrial one.
