History is not a straw.

"In 1619 the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, and given the same opportunities for freedom dues as whites. However, slave laws were soon passed – in Massachusetts in 1641 and Virginia in 1661 –and any small freedoms that might have existed for blacks were taken away."

https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/indentured-servants-in-the-us/

"In the meantime, servants—whether seasoned or unseasoned—were treated as property subject to overwork and beatings. For instance, in 1624 Alice Proctor, whom Captain John Smith termed a proper and civil gentlewoman, arranged for her runaway maidservant Elizabeth Abbott to be beaten, and the punishment was so severe that Abbott died. George Sandys, the colony’s treasurer, allowed his servants to starve and languish for lack of medical treatment, while in 1649 a mistress was charged with thrashing her “mayd Servant … more Liken a dogge then a Christian,” so that her head was “as soft as a sponge, in one place” and her back was possibly broken. Other female servants were victims of sexual assault. DeVries worried that servants were not treated with appropriate dignity. “I was astonished to observe of the English people, that they lose their servants in gambling with each other,” he wrote. “I told them I had never seen such work in Turk or Barbarian, and that it was not becoming Christians.”"

https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/indentured-servants-in-colonial-virginia/