Slavery in America

By 1860 Slaves would out number whites in many areas of the South.

Slaves performed a variety of work on plantations, which were complex and diversified communities. Some slaves worked in their owners' homes as cooks, butlers, and nurses; others worked as skilled artisans like blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, and weavers.

Most slaves labored in the fields. These period engravings depict black men and women working in gangs to produce cotton. Slaves worked long hours, from early morning until evening, using the plow and hoe as their basic tools.

Most slave labor was used in planting, cultivating, and harvesting cotton, hemp, rice, tobacco, or sugar cane. On a typical plantation, slaves worked ten or more hours a day, "from day clean to first dark," six days a week, with only the Sabbath off. At planting or harvesting time, planters required slaves to stay in the fields 15 or 16 hours a day. When they were not raising a cash crop, slaves grew other crops, such as corn or potatoes; cared for livestock; and cleared fields, cut wood, repaired buildings and fences. On cotton, sugar, and tobacco plantations, slaves worked together in gangs under the supervision of a supervisor or a driver.

labor from virtually the entire slave community, young, old, healthy, and physically impaired. Children as young as three or four were put to work, usually in special "trash gangs" weeding fields, carrying drinking water, picking up trash, and helping in the kitchen. Young children also fed chickens and livestock, gathered wood chips for fuel, and drove cows to pasture. Between the ages of seven and twelve, boys and girls were put to work in intensive field work. Older or physically handicapped slaves were put to work in cloth houses, spinning cotton, weaving cloth, and making clothes.

preparing cotton for sale required the work of many slaves.

Hog Jowl and Turnip Greens "This is an old Virginia dish, and much used in the spring of the year. The jowl [pig's jaw], which must have been well smoked, must be washed clean, and boiled for three hours. Put in the turnip greens, and boil half an hour; if you boil too long, it will turn yellow. It is also good broiled for breakfast with pepper and butter over it.

Wild game, hickory nuts, black-eyed peas, baked potatoes, and greens added variety and nutrients to their diet. As ex-slave Aaron Carter reminisced to a government oral historian in the 1930s, "Dere wuz greens, bacon, peas, rice, milk, butter, loads of fish, possum, rabbits, birds -- jes' eberythin'."

A slaves diet varied depending on where they lived. Typically, it consisted of the parts of the animal the owners did not want and vegtebles the slaves raised themselves. If they were lucky a slave could get close to 2,000 calories a day but often they got much less than that.

Slave Quarters were small and provided only the bare essentials.

Slave clothes were often made of cotton or burlap. Sometimes owners would give the slaves their unwanted or old clothes to wear. Due to the nature of their work, clothes often “went to pieces” on a regular basis

Plantation owners and overseers used heavy iron shackles to punish and humiliate defiant slaves, both men and women and especially those who tried to run away. Slaves who had been sold were also shackled while being moved to another location. Arm and leg shackles were the most common type of restraints, but stocks, neck collars, and the ball and chain were also used. This pair of iron leg shackles is typical of the kind used on Southern plantations during the mid-nineteenth century

Slaves were a valuable commodity in the South. Many owners rented slaves on a yearly basis to municipalities, businesses, or private individuals who could not afford their own. In Charleston, South Carolina, rented slaves worked as railroad porters, fruit sellers, and domestic servants. In compliance with city law, they wore numbered copper tags for identification. Slaveholders had to purchase these tags from the city for a fee of two to seven dollars. The tags are pierced at the top, suggesting that slaves wore them on a string or chain around their necks.

Large sums of money were often offered for the return of runaway slaves.

Punishments could take many forms but the most common and the most feared was the whip.

Escape was often the only way slaves could escape bondage. However, because of the investment they represented and to discourage other slaves from running away, slave trackers who would relentlessly pursue the slaves were hired.

In his attempt to escape, William “Box” Brown came up with the idea of mailing himself to the north. For over a week he was sealed inside a wooden crate, often stored on his head, before he was delivered to a famous abolitionist in Philadelphia.