of service, together with the
fact that the servants were usually still young when freed, made it
inevitable that in time the freedmen would outnumber those in service.
The size of the annual immigration could in no wise alter this
situation, for the greater the influx of servants, the greater would be
the resulting graduation into the class of freedmen.

The average number of headrights, as we have seen, was probably not less
than 1750 a year. If it is assumed that 1500 of these were servants,
five per cent of whom served for life and 20 per cent died before the
expiration of their terms, no less than 1125 would remain to become
freedmen. While the number of those under indenture remained practically
stationary, the size of the freedman class grew larger with the passing
of the years.

Placing the average term at five years, then, and the average mortality
at twenty per cent, there would be in service at any given time some
6,000 men and women. In fact, Sir William Berkeley, in his famous report
of 1671, estimated the number of servants in the colony at this
figure.[3-7] On the other hand an annual accession of 1125 to the class
of freedmen would in five years amount to 5,625, in ten years to 11,250,
in fifteen to 16,875, in twenty to 22,500. At the end of half a century
no less than 56,250 persons would have emerged from servitude to become
free citizens. Although there is every reason to believe that these
figures are substantially correct,[3-8] their accuracy or lack of
accuracy in no way affect the principle involved. From its very nature
it was impossible that the system of indentured servants should long
remain the chief factor in the industrial life of the colony or supply
most of the labor.

It is true, of course, that the number of those completing their terms
of indenture is not an absolute gauge, at any given date, of the size of
the freedman class. To determine this it would be necessary to know the
average span of life of the freedman, a thing certainly not worked out
at the time and impossible of accomplishment now. We may assume,
however, that it was relatively long. The newcomer who had lived through
the first terrible year in the tobacco fields had been thoroughly
tested, "seasoned" as the planters called it, and was reasonably certain
of reaching a mature age. Moreover, the servants were almost universally
of very tender years. Seldom indeed would a dealer accept one over
twenty-eight, and the aver