The Ottoman slavery passed to a new phase by the second half of the nineteenth century with the general prohibition of the slave trade in Africans. Following the end of Tanzimat period, the abolition process gained momentum with the reissue of the ban by the law of 1877. Due to the diplomatic pressure coming from Great Britain that forced the Ottoman state to handle the subject of African enslavement on humanitarian ground, the control over slave trade was increased, and thus manumission of slaves became a prevalent practice for legal authorities. On the other hand, the British abolitionist pressure led Ottoman elites who were already encountered with the Tanzimat ideals such as freedom and equality for all, to a discussion on the morality of the enslavement practices. Within this context of socio-political change, enslavement practices took a new turn and “free” forms of labor became a more preferable way to meet the labor need in domestic servitude in Ottoman elite households. The main tendency of the scholarly analyses regarding this transformation assert that the slavery was substituted by the practice of evlatlıks – adopted children and beslemes - fostering girls- who were recruited to households at young ages to serve in domestic services. This paper aims to lay out a discussion on the notion of “free labor” by delineating the meaning and role of evlatlıks and beslemes, from the perspectives of both laborers and households in the late nineteenth century. Additionally, relying upon the archival records and literary examples of the period including memoirs and novels, this paper challenges the idea that the practice of beslemes and evlatlıks took the place of domestic slaves in the transitory period after the ban on slave trade. It argues that the two categories were associated with white female laborers and thus implied an ambiguous line between concubinage and domestics; whereas African domestic laborers were rendered invisible figures of domestic realm. In fact, African female labor continued to occupy the “servant” position in menial jobs within domestic servitude in post- manumission period. Finally the paper attempts to problematize the imprint of slavery in blackness suggesting the lens of race for a reading on the transformation of labor structure in domestic servitude. Thus, it contributes to the discussion on the prevalent role of domestic sphere in reproducing gendered as well as racialized social hierarchies in the late Ottoman period.