![]() Gradually, therefore, a turn to Black slavery occurred, as planters found that slaves were easier to control, cheaper in the long run, and solved the dangerous reliance on white indentured servitude. The roving population of poor white bachelors, constantly increasing (partly because of longer lifespans), posed a threat to the social order. ![]() They lacked land because of pressure from Indians on the borders, competition from other ex-servants, and the rich’s monopoly over ‘safe’ land. The problem was that as indentured servants (usually young men) kept being imported to work on plantations, rising numbers of poor ex-servants who lacked access to land swelled the colony. ![]() Morgan points out that almost up to the end of the seventeenth century in Virginia, social tensions between the ‘rabble’ and the large landowners continually threatened to break out into open conflict, as in Bacon’s Rebellion (1676). ![]() Also, perhaps, at least in Virginia, the limited democracy that existed in the late eighteenth century. ![]()
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