Idaho Social Studies 5.SS.1.8
The Standard
Explain the history of indentured servitude and the slave trade in the United States.
Idaho Content Standards: K-12 Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students describe how indentured contracts bound people to work for a set time, often to repay travel costs. They explain how Africans were forcibly transported and sold, and how slavery became lifelong and inherited. They explain why the 1808 ban on importing enslaved people did not stop sales within the United States.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can identify indentured servitude and slavery in short source excerpts and explain what each meant for a person's freedom. They can explain why slave sales continued within the United States after 1808.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think indentured servants could leave whenever they wished, or that a contract made their treatment fair. They may mistake slavery for a contract with an end date. Some think the 1808 import ban ended slavery or all slave trading.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: How did a five-year servant contract differ from enslavement, and why did slave sales continue in the United States after 1808?
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs date cards for indentured contracts and forced Atlantic crossings, then add the 1808 import ban and later domestic sales.
Read a short indenture contract and an enslaved person's account, then ask, 'Who controlled each person's work, and for how long?'
Give pairs six fact cards to label as indenture, Atlantic slave trade, or domestic slave trade, and have them underline the deciding clue.
Set a cotton shirt beside an 1850s cotton trade map; ask students to trace cotton from enslaved labor to a textile mill.
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