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More handpicked essays just for you.
The life of a slave
Gender differences in slavery
Slave women and their slave masters
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My life as a field slave Being a slave in North Carolina is difficult. I am a field slave so I work from sunrise until sunset. I have 2 kids, a boy and a girl. Even my small children were not offered any time off these long work hours. We have one day off a week to do personal chores which is Sunday. I was offered Christmas off from work which gives me time to take care my garden at home. As slaves we get treated poorly. Many slave owners did not provide good clothing for their slaves or the slave’s family. My owner rarely gave me meat or fish and I am only given rags as clothing. Many slaves, like myself, live in small stick houses with dirt floors. My house has cracks in the walls that let in cold air and a just a hole that is my window. Many slave owners were not concerned about our health. They were more worried about how much profit we make them. We were allowed to get married only knowing that our owner had the right to sell me or my husband any time they wanted. Having children while being a field slave is definently hard. When you are pregnant you must work until you are in labor. My two kids work for my owner and once they are eighteen they can be sol when my owner wishes. When I work out in the field I have an overseer, my overseer watches me and has permission to whip me if I slow down on any of my jobs. We have no …show more content…
I am being sold like some kind of animal. I also have to remember that I am not being sold because I am a bad slave, but because my owner is dying and wants me to make sure I get put in good hands before she leaves. I am more grateful than other slaves that get killed because no one wants them. It is going to be hard to adapt to a new owner's rules after twelve years with different rules. He is bringing me to his house. I wish he would give me a second to say goodbye to my old owner. I yelled out at my owner “I am so grateful for my 12 years with you! I will surely miss you!” This brought her to
Being a slave in the North and South were very different. The Northern states had factories and small farms, so most of the slave did house work. The Southern states had big plantations and needed slaves to pick the cotton so their masters can make their
1. The insight that each of these sources offers into slave life in the antebellum South is how slaves lived, worked, and were treated by their masters. The narratives talk about their nature of work, culture, and family in their passages. For example, in Solomon Northup 's passage he describes how he worked in the cotton field. Northup said that "An ordinary day 's work is considered two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if he or she brings less quantity than that," (214). Northup explains how much cotton slaves had to bring from the cotton field and if a slave brought less or more weight than their previous weight ins then the slave is whipped because they were either slacking or have no been working to their
Slaves lived terrible lives; always being told what to do and how to live, what to
Slaves during the mid-1800s were considered chattel and did not have rights to anything that opposed their masters’ wishes. “Although the slaves’ rights could never be completely denied, it had to be minimized for the institution of slavery to function” (McLaurin, 118). Female slaves, however, usually played a different role for the family they were serving than male slaves. Housework and helping with the children were often duties that slaveholders designated to their female slaves. Condoned by society, many male slaveholders used their female property as concubines, although the act was usually kept covert. These issues, aided by their lack of power, made the lives of female slaves
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slavery was cruelty at its best. Slavery is described as long work days, a lack of respect for a human being, and the inability for a man or a woman to have gainful employment. The slaves were victimized the most for obvious reasons. Next on the list would be the families of both the slave and slave owners. At the bottom of the list would be the slave owners. Slavery does in fact victimize slaves, slave owner and their families by repeating the same cycle every generation.
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
Beginning with the arrival of the first Africans at Point Comfort in 1619, an initially unplanned system of hereditary bondage for blacks gradually developed. Over the course of 150 years, slavery became entrenched in Virginia society, increasingly supported by a series of restrictive laws and reinforced by the teachings of the community and family. In the south it was illegal for slaves to receive an education, to many, to vote, to own property, to testify in court were even to burn their freedom through their work and the have 15 minutes break a day and to eat, slaves were given megger rations mostly of corn meal pork and the last season’s, and every year slaves received one new said winter and summer clothes and a new blanket, most slaves share their small cabins with 10 to 12 people and slept on straw piled on a dirt floor. The lives of slaves who work on tobacco plantations were filled with hardship, suffering and poverty.
Slavery in the eighteenth century was worst for African Americans. Observers of slaves suggested that slave characteristics like: clumsiness, untidiness, littleness, destructiveness, and inability to learn the white people were “better.” Despite white society's belief that slaves were nothing more than laborers when in fact they were a part of an elaborate and well defined social structure that gave them identity and sustained them in their silent protest.
The living conditions of Douglass and his fellow slave mates were not the first priority for the slave owners and masters. The slaves slept on what is described as the cold, damp floor every night and had no separate quarters (Douglass 23). Douglass recalls having huge cracks in his feet due to the fridged temperatures in the winter and having nowhere to escape from the elements. Not only did they have to sleep in the cold, they were made to work out in the field with clothing similar to what they wore in the summer months. Masters allotted their slaves a limited amount of food per week and to share between all of them. That small amount of food did not support the nutrition that a hard working slave needed.
By 1860, nearly 3,950,528 slaves resided in the United States (1860 census). Contrary to popular belief, not all slaves worked in hot and humid fields. Some slaves worked as skilled laborers in cities or towns. The slaves belonged to different social or slave classes depending on their location. The treatment of the slaves was also a variable that changed greatly, depending on the following locations: city, town or rural.
Frederick Douglass, the author of the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, said “I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (Douglass, p.71). Modern people can fairly and easily understand the negative effects of slavery upon slave. People have the idea of slaves that they are not allow to learn which makes them unable to read and write and also they don’t have enough time to take a rest and recover their injuries. However, the negative effects upon slaveholder are less obvious to modern people. People usually think about the positive effects of slavery upon slaveholder, such as getting inexpensive labor. In the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass also shows modern readers some brutalizing impact upon the owner of the slaves. He talks about Thomas Auld and Edward Covey who are his masters and also talks about Sophia Auld who is his mistress. We will talk about those three characters in the book which will help us to find out if there were the negative influences upon the owner of the slaves or not. Also, we will talk about the power that the slaveholders got from controlling their slaves and the fear that the slaveholders maybe had to understand how they were changed.
Even though I was a slave, my “family” or masters treated me like one of their own children. I was born on May 8, 1753 in Senegal, West Africa. I really had no relationship with my parents. When I was eight I was kidnapped and put on a slave ship that was on its way to Boston. On these ships, we were packed in like sardines. Soon after I arrived in Boston John Wheatley bought me as a servant for his wife, Susanna. Since he owned many slaves I was somewhat scared because of the hard work that he might have me doing. Being a servant for the Wheatleys was actually great even though I still didn’t have my freedom.
Ever since I can remember, I have been working as a slave. Everyday has been a challenge. I would either be working on fields, picked cotton, or blacksmithing. If my chores were not completed a guard would take me to my owner. He would abuse me for 2 continuous hours. Somehow he found joy in abusing his slaves. On top of that you would not get food for your next meal. It is terrible here, I wanna escape so bad. All of my family except my great grandma have been killed from starvation. I want to join them, but starving is a slow, painful death. Many people have begged for the guards to shoot them, but they guards just tell them to get back to work.
Within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” Douglass discusses the deplorable conditions in which he and his fellow slaves suffered from. While on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, slaves were given a “monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn” (Douglass 224). Their annual clothing rations weren’t any better; considering the type of field work they did, what little clothing they were given quickly deteriorated. The lack of food and clothing matched the terrible living conditions. After working on the field all day, with very little rest the night before, they must sleep on the hard uncomfortably cramped floor with only a single blanket as protection from the cold. Coupled with the overseer’s irresponsible and abusive use of power, it is astonishing how three to four hundred slaves did not rebel. Slave-owners recognized that in able to restrict and control slaves more than physical violence was needed. Therefore in able to mold slaves into the submissive and subservient property they desired, slave-owners manipulated them by twisting religion, instilling fear, breaking familial ties, making them dependent, providing them with an incorrect view of freedom, as well as refusing them education.
The word “slavery” brings back horrific memories of human beings. Bought and sold as property, and dehumanized with the risk and implementation of violence, at times nearly inhumane. The majority of people in the United States assumes and assures that slavery was eliminated during the nineteenth century with the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth; rather, slavery and the global slave trade continue to thrive till this day. In fact, it is likely that more individuals are becoming victims of human trafficking across borders against their will compared to the vast number of slaves that we know in earlier times. Slavery is no longer about legal ownership asserted, but instead legal ownership avoided, the thought provoking idea that with old slavery, slaves were maintained, compared to modern day slavery in which slaves are nearly disposable, under the same institutionalized systems in which violence and economic control over the disadvantaged is the common way of life. Modern day slavery is insidious to the public but still detrimental if not more than old American slavery.