Slavery was not a static institution, but rather one that continuously changed, having to be renegotiated from place to place and time-to-time. The institution of slavery in colonial America, mainly informed by labor struggles, implied a socioeconomic divide between societies with slaves and slave societies. In the former, slaves, multilingual and worldly-wise Atlantic Creoles were marginal to the regions economy, and slavery was one form of inferior labor among many. Conversely, in slave societies, slavery existed at the center of the economy, with a tyrannical and patriarchal master-slave relationship playing as the model for social relationships as a whole, thus negatively effecting family structure (Berlin 9-10). Slavery, never reaching stable maturity, progressively degraded the lives of enslaved people in the Chesapeake region. The establishment of the Plantation generation in the Chesapeake region caused a shift from the Charter generation society with slaves into domineering slave societies. Due to the fluidity of colonial slavery, the congenial circumstances of the charter generation–equitable social order, compatibly to conventional English practices, bearable race relations and ill-defined slave laws - vanished with the rise of plantation slavery. .
The first age of slavery in North America, featured societies with slaves characterizing the Charter Generation. During the Charter Generation images of slavery were dominated by the first generation of colonial slaves- the worldly Atlantic Creole, the man of some African heritage and considerable exposure and familiarity of Western culture (Franklin 71). The intermediary role that creoles played in the translation of one culture to another is crucial to the growth of the African slave trade in the Chesapeake. The early 17th century, society with slaves, allowed slaves some opportunity to lead a decent life. Through a rather impartial social order, slaves filled no vital and unique economic niche, and there was relatively easy socializing between the races, free and enslaved, among the laboring classes.
