Dorothy Snider writes, in Her book Slavery in America, "Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all fire, and every noble sentiment?" The 17th century shows a deterioration of status for blacks in America. .
When blacks first arrived in the colonies, their status was of a mixed nature. There were some blacks that worked as indentured servants, some were slaves, and some were free and owned property and laborers of their own. However, history tends to over elaborate this point for some reason or the other. These free blacks were few and their social status was one that was lower than whites. .
As the population of European indentured servitude began to decrease, there was a need for a stable work force. Africans became the sole labor force for the white English planters. Africans began being associated with the status of slaves. Eventually their children too would inherit this status. This began for man clear and unclear reasons. One reason was that the white legislature in the colonies wanted to stress to those white indentured servants, who began to be unified with blacks, that they were higher in class status than blacks. "There is evidence of invidious distinctions between black and white laborers from a relatively early date" (Smith, 50). In order to prevent uprisings by the poor white indentured servants; the white legislature stressed the lower class standing of blacks to pacify them. Also, indentured servants were sending correspondence back to their country telling of the hardships of living in American. This brought a decline in indentured servants from Europe. Africans, however, who were too far from home with out any means of contacting their families or anyone, could not tell their countrymen that they were being treated badly. Also, there was no one coming to the aid of Africans; even the Christian church backed the institution. By the early 1700s the status of blacks became property not people.