Slavery in American Society: Impact and Evolution Slavery in American Society Controversies over slavery have been established in many societies around the world for centuries. In past generations, even if slavery existed and was tolerated, it was certainly very ethically questionable. Today the morality of such an act would not only be unimaginable, but it would also be morally wrong. As things change throughout history, we try not only to explain why things happen, but also to understand why they happen. For this reason, we will take a deeper look at how slavery has evolved throughout history in American society, as well as the impacts it has had. Some of the earliest documents on slavery date back to 1760 BC; Within such societies, slavery operated in a system of social stratification (Slavery in the United States, 2011), which meant inequality between different groups of people in a population (Sajjadi, 2008). After the founding of Jamestown in 1607 as the first permanent English Chesapeake colony in the New World based on agriculture; Tobacco became the main crop of the colonies, requiring time and intense labor (Slavery in colonial America, 2011). Because of the lighthouse system established in Maryland in the 1640s, tobacco farmers looked primarily to England for labor, as any farmer could obtain workers and land by importing English labor. Farmers could then use those profits to buy passage for more workers, thus gaining more land. Indentured servants, mostly male laborers and some women immigrated to colonial America and contracted to work for four to seven years in exchange for their passage (Norton, 41). Once services ended after the allotted period of time, the... middle of paper......http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Colonial_America>"Indentured Servants." Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 11 April 2011. Web. 14 April. 2011.Boddy-Evans, Alistair. “The Transatlantic Slave Trade.” review of the triangular trade with reference to maps and statistics n. page Network. April 14, 2011. .Becker, Eddie. "Timeline on the History of Slavery." http://innercity.org/holt/slavechron.html. Np, 1999. Web. April 14, 2011. “American Civil War.” Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 April 2011. Web. 14 April. 2011.Norton, Beth, et al. One people and one nation. 8th. 1. Mason, OH: 2009. 41-42, 65-67,161,173. Press.