Thank you for that trove of infomation! >The indentured laborer thing seems like pure semantics It is more insidious than that. There were degrees of indenture. The race-baiters are deliberately obscuring the crucial distinction between a voluntary contract to pay off debt through labor where the law protected both parties, and involuntary indenture which bound the indentured party under much more severe terms. In fact, given the degree of abuse cited in your comment above, it looks like slaves in the Americas were only nominally under the Common Law institution of indenture, and the owners treated their slaves as de facto chattel. Conditions may have been better in the 13 colonies due to close contact with Britain.