Slavery in the South
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Through most of the colonial period, the establishment of European colonies in the New World brought an expansion of slavery. From the 1500s to the mid 1800s, the Europeans shipped more than 12 million slaves from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. The enslavement of blacks in the American Colonies began during the 1600s when the need for labor on large plantations was growing. Since these plantations grew cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar and other major crops, they required many laborers to work long hours in the fields. Around 1750, about 200,000 slaves lived and worked in the South and by 1860, there were approximately 4 million slaves living and working in the South, which made up nearly a third of the regions total population. These slaves came mainly from the West African coastal area that encompassed a great diversity of soils, climate and ethnic groups. The Africans who came from this region had considerable knowledge and skills that the American plantation owners in the South viewed as highly desirable which accounted for the largest importation of slaves. Only 12% of slave-owners operated plantations that had 20 or more slaves but more than half of the total slave population worked on these plantations. Throughout the history of the United States, the enslavement of the people of Africa has made a dramatic impact on the economic development of the U.S. through the things they endured, including how they lived, how they were treated, and their daily lives in the work place.
Once in the possession of an owner, a slave was provided housing, food and clothing but depending on the slaveholder, the quality of these items varied by the responsibilities of the slave. For example, slaves who worked on the plantations in the fields would live in a crowded dormitory with close to 50 other slaves, were given less rations of food by their master and their clothing was very poor quality. Whereas, slaves who worked as a house servant either lived in a room of the owners house or very close to the house, which consisted of one or two rooms that would hold somewhere in between 8 and 24 people, and were given more rations of food and nicer quality clothing. The buildings that slaves were housed in varied in plan and construction details but for the most part they were generally small, cramped quarters that resembled more of a prison cell than an actual home. They were built of logs, with no windows or porches, no trees outside and the ground was wood too although you could find some quarters where they just had the bare ground for the floor. Even though the construction of the buildings were mainly made of logs, some slaveholders who wanted to make a more sophisticated impression to their neighbors, used brick and stone masonry techniques for their buildings and were mainly built for slaves living close to a plantation owners brick mansion. According to Foster Weathersby, a slave from Mississippi, he recounts that his small cottage was built side by side to several other cottages, which gave the slaves an opportunity to get together in the evening to sing and talk of the future. Although the slaves were given a place to stay, they were not given much food as a general rule. Masters gave their slaves corn or wheat and occasionally small portions of meat as part of their weekly food rations and some were even allowed to have gardens and animals. Slaves raised most of the plantations livestock and cultivated gardens of potatoes, pumpkins, watermelons, and other fruits and vegetables in their off time. They herded, raised, slaughtered and processed the meat to make small meals for themselves and their families. While masters provided only the most elementary materials needed of their slaves such as a roof over their heads and simple food, they also issued very basic clothing. According to former Georgia slave George Womble, “Clothes were given once a year. An issue for the men usually consisted of one or two pairs of pants and some shirts, underwear, woolen socks and a pair of heavy brogans. The women were given one or two dresses that had been made of the same material as that of the mens pants.” Since most accounts show that enslaved people only had one or two changes of clothing, slaves had to cut and sew their own clothing either as part of their regular work or in their spare time. Field workers often looked more similar to each other in appearance than did house slaves who were dressed in clothing that reflected their duties as cooks, nursemaids, scullery maids, housemaids or personal servants. While they could make clothes for themselves, shoes were not a cheap commodity and hundreds of slaves would walk around barefoot for most of their lives. Slaveholders who wanted to display their wealth and power would sometimes provide better housing, clothing and food for their slaves.
Life for every young and adult enslaved person revolved around work and it began when they were young children and continued into old age. The most common job for a slave was either to work on the plantation as a field hand or work as servants in their owners home as a house slave. Other slaves became skilled craft workers such as blacksmiths, bricklayers, cabinetmakers or carpenters while many slaves worked in factories. Some slaves became construction workers on canals and railroads, worked as dockworkers, lumberjacks, office workers or riverboat pilots. The fate of most field hands was hard, unrelenting labor, day in and day out of planting and picking cotton or other major crops. About 1.8 million slaves worked on cotton plantations alone and worked longer than any other kind of slave, generally from sunrise to sunset, but many other field hands had even worse conditions to live under. Although most plantation owners owned fewer than 20 enslaved workers to pick and plant their cotton, the plantations that actually produced the bulk of the Souths cotton were considerable in size and owned 20 or more enslaved workers. Every day the enslaved men and women started and ended their day with the clang of a bell or the sound of a horn. They were assigned a daily task that was to be completed in an efficient manner. Slaveholders adopted different types of work strategies for creating efficient workforces like the task system and the gang system. The gang system required slaves to work cooperatively in groups and together complete large daily jobs like hoeing an entire field to prepare it for planting. Under the task system, slaves would be assigned a daily task and theoretically when it was completed, they were free to do personal tasks. This system favored younger, stronger slaves who were able to do hard work efficiently. Slaveholders believed the task system encouraged slaves to be self-directed and make them more motivated to complete their work. Sometimes the work systems didnt always keep the slaves motivated