Besides being a piece of property, the American slave was transformed into part of the plantation machine, a part of the ever-growing investment in the master' mushrooming wealth.
The development of slavery in America resulted from the working of economic forces and not from climatic or geographic conditions.

When the first twenty Africans reached Virginia in 1619, the colony was comprised of small plantations dependent on free white labor.

While some historians believe that these immigrants were held in slavery from the beginning, most think they were given the status of indentured servants.

English law contained no such category as slavery, and the institution did not receive legal justification in the colony until early in the 1660s.
Although the fact of slavery had undoubtedly preceded its legal definition, there was a period of forty years within which the Africans had some room for personal freedom and individual opportunity.

Rumors of deplorable working conditions and of indefinite servitude were reaching England and discouraging the flow of free white labor.