[18] Hurd, _The Law of Freedom and Bondage_, I, 290; Turner, _The Free Negro in Penn._, p. 92. [19] "On the 1st of March, 1780, before the war of the Revolution was closed, the Assembly of Pennsylvania passed an act declaring that negro and mulatto children whose mothers were slaves, and who were born after the passage of the act, should be free, and that slavery as to them should be forever abolished. But it was declared that such children should be held as servants, under the same terms as indentured servants, until the age of twenty-eight, when they should be free...." Watson, _Annals of Philadelphia and Penn. in Olden Times_, pp. 468-469. [20] _Ibid._, pp. 93, 94, 98, 101. [21] Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, p. 32. [22] _Ibid._, p. 36. [23] R. I., _Col. Rec._, I, p. 243. [24] Du Bois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, p. 34. [25] Hurd, _Law of Freedom and Bondage_, I, p. 270; Steiner, _Hist. of Slavery in Conn._, p. 12. [26] Conn., _Col. Rec._, XV, p. 40. [27] Stroud, _Laws Relating to Slavery_, p. 11, note; Hurd, _Law of Freedom and Bondage_, p. 271. THE TRANSITION FROM WHITE SERVITUDE TO SLAVERY Let us now direct our attention to the change from servitude to slavery. It is well to note here, however, that white servitude did not embrace the chief features of slavery. Nieboer defines a slave as "a man who is the property or possession of another man, and forced to work for him." Again, "slavery is the fact that one man is the property or possession of another."[1] White servitude lacked the final and formal feature of "property," namely complete "possession," and consequently never included either perpetual service or the transmission of servile condition to offspring, although during the first half of its development in the colonies, servitude tended to assume the character of slavery.[2][3]