[Sidenote: Slavery]
The cultivation of tobacco upon large estates caused a great demand for
cheap labour, and this was supplied partly by bringing negro slaves from
Africa, partly by bringing criminals from English jails. The latter were
sold into slavery for a limited term of years, and were known as
"indentured white servants." So great was the demand for labour that it
became customary to kidnap poor friendless wretches on the streets of
seaport towns in England and ship them off to Virginia to be sold into
servitude. At first these white servants were more numerous than the
negroes, but before the end of the seventeenth century the blacks had
come to be much the more numerous.
[Sidenote: Social position of settlers.]
In this rural community the owners of plantations came from the same
classes of society as the settlers of New England; they were for the
most part country squires and yeomen. But while in New England there
was no lower class or society sharply marked off from the upper, on
the other hand in Virginia there was an insurmountable distinction
between the owners of plantations and the so-called "mean whites" or
"white trash.
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