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Untrue Historic “Facts” It’s Time to Erase

Khalid Elhassan September 8, 2020 35 min

Siege of Budapest - World War II — Red Army soldiers marching into a captured Budapest in 1945. Radio Free Europe

16. Some Irish Were Indentured Servants, But That is Not The Same as Slaves

A 1910 photograph of American child laborers, often falsely claimed by purveyors of the “Irish slavery” myth as depicting enslaved Irish children. Public Radio International

Irish immigrants arriving in America often had it rough. However, they were never enslaved. In Colonial America, many poor whites – Irish and others – were indentured servants, either willingly via contract, or reluctantly because of a court sentence. Benjamin Franklin, for example, had been an indentured servant. While indentured servants were exploited, their indenture was for a limited term, typically seven years. Afterward – provided they were white – they could do as they pleased, equal under the law to their former contract holders and everybody else.

Indentured servitude was not the same thing as slavery. American chattel slavery was a unique institution that was based on race, had no end date, and was hereditary. Unlike indentured servitude contract holders, slave masters owned their black slaves outright, same as they owned their barn animals, for their entire lives. Slave status attached to the slaves’ children from birth to death, as well. African Americans were enslaved. Irish Americans were not. The myth that Irish Americans were also slaves is just that: a myth.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.