what is it like to be a slave

O Lord, O my Lord!
O my great Lord continue me from sinking downward.
— From a slave song

No issue has more than scarred our land nor had more than long-term effects than slavery. When nosotros celebrate American freedom, we must also be mindful of the long and painful struggle to share in those freedoms that faced and go on to face generations of African Americans. To empathize the present, nosotros must look to the past.

A painting depicts George Washington and workers on his plantation. (Wikimedia Eatables)

Buying and Selling Slaves

Earlier the Ceremonious War, nearly iv million black slaves toiled in the American South. Modem scholars have assembled a great deal of evidence showing that few slaves accepted their lack of freedom or enjoyed life on the plantation. As ane ex-slave put it, "No twenty-four hours dawns for the slave, nor is it looked for. It is all dark — dark forever." For many, the long night of slavery only ended in death.

In 1841, a bounty hunter kidnapped Solomon Northup, a gratuitous black human being from Saratoga, New York, on the pretext that he was a delinquent slave from Georgia. When the bounty hunter sold him into slavery, Northup lost his family, his domicile, his freedom, and even his proper noun.

Solomon Northup was taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he was put into a "slave pen" with other men, women, and children waiting to exist sold. In "Twelve Years a Slave," a narrative that Northup wrote later he regained his freedom, the citizen of New York described what it was similar to be treated as human being property:

Freeman [the while slave banker] would make us hold up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel of our heads and arms and bodies, plough the states about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth.... Sometimes a man or woman was taken back lo the small house in the 1000, stripped, and inspected more minutely. Scars upon a slave's back were considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and hurt his auction.

By law, slaves were the personal property of their owners in all Southern states except Louisiana. The slave primary held absolute authority over his human holding as the Louisiana police fabricated articulate: "The primary may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor; [the slave] tin practice nothing, possess nothing, nor larn anything but what must belong to his master."

Slaves had no constitutional rights; they could not testify in court confronting a white person; they could not leave the plantation without permission. Slaves often found themselves rented out, used as prizes in lotteries, or as wagers in carte games and horse races.

Separation from family and friends was probably the greatest fear a black person in slavery faced. When a master died, his slaves were frequently sold for the benefit of his heirs. Solomon Northup himself witnessed a sorrowful separation in the New Orleans slave pen when a slave heir-apparent purchased a female parent, but not her footling girl:

The child, sensible of some impending danger, instinctively fastened her hands effectually her mother's neck, and nestled her little caput upon her bosom. Freeman [the slave broker] sternly ordered [the mother] to be repose, but she did not heed him. He defenseless her by the arm and pulled her rudely, merely she clung closer to the child. Then with a volley of great oaths he struck her such a heartless accident, that she staggered backward, and was like to fall. Oh! How piteously then did she beseech and beg and pray that they not be separated.

Perhaps out of pity, the buyer did offering to purchase the lilliputian daughter. But the slave broker refused, proverb at that place would be "piles of coin to exist fabricated of her" when she got older.

Slave Labor

Of all the crops grown in the South before the Civil War including saccharide, rice, and corn, cotton was the chief coin-maker. Millions of acres had been turned to cotton production following the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. As more and more cotton lands came under cultivation, particularly in Mississippi and Texas, the demand for slaves boomed. By 1860, a mature male slave would cost between $ane,000 and $two,000. A mature female would sell for a few hundred dollars less.

Slaves worked at all sorts of jobs throughout the slaveholding S, simply the bulk were field hands on relatively large plantations. Men, women, and children served as field easily. The owner decided when slave children would go into the fields, usually betwixt the ages of x and 12.

The cotton picking flavour first in August was a fourth dimension of hard piece of work and fearfulness among the slaves. In his book, Solomon Northup described picking cotton on a plantation along the Red River in Louisiana:

An ordinary 24-hour interval'due south work is ii hundred pounds.... The hands are required to be in the cotton wool field every bit shortly equally if is low-cal in the morning, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given them at noon to eat their allowance of cold salary, they are non permitted to be a moment idle until it is too night to see.... The 24-hour interval's work over in the field, the baskets are "toted," or in other words, carried to the gin house, where the cotton fiber is weighed. No matter how drawn and weary he may be ... a slave never approaches the gin-house with his basket of cotton merely with fear. If it falls brusque of weight ... he knows that he must [exist whipped]. And if he has exceeded it by 10 or 20 pounds, in all probability his main will mensurate the side by side twenty-four hour period'southward task accordingly.

Just when the slaves finally finished working for their principal could they render to their own crude cabins to tend to their own family unit needs.

An analogy of slave's life from a song volume published in 1881. (Wikimedia Commons)

'The Quarters'

Slave families lived in crowded cabins called "the quarters." Usually bare and simple, these shelters were common cold in winter, hot in summertime, and leaky when information technology rained. Slave nutrient was adequate merely monotonous, consisting mainly of corn staff of life, salt pork (or salary), and molasses. The master too usually provided a winter and a summer set of clothes, oftentimes the cast-offs of white people. Sickness was mutual and the infant death rate doubled that of white babies.

The lives of blackness people under slavery in the South were controlled by a spider web of customs, rules, and laws known equally "slave codes." Slaves could not travel without a written pass. They were forbidden to learn how to read and write. They could be searched at any time. They could not purchase or sell things without a allow. They could not own livestock. They were bailiwick to a curfew every night.

Marriage amid slaves had no legal standing and always required the approval of the primary. Generally, slaves could marry others living at their plantation, or at neighboring ones. Solomon Northup discovered the post-obit rules during his enslavement in Louisiana:

Either party can have equally many husbands or wives every bit the owner will permit, and either is at liberty to discard the other at pleasure. The law in relation to divorce, or to bigamy, so forth, is not applicable to property, of course. If the wife does not vest on the same plantation with the married man, the latter is permitted to visit her on Saturday nights, if the distance is not too far.

Slave Resistance

In "Twelve Years a Slave," Northup reported one instance in which a immature slave woman named Patsey was brutally whipped for visiting a neighboring plantation without permission:

The painful cries and shrieks of the tortured Patsey, mingling with the loud and angry curses of Epps [the slave main whipping her] loaded the air. She was terribly lacerated — I may say, without exaggeration, literally flayed. The lash was moisture with blood....

13th Subpoena (1865)

Neither slavery non involuntary servitude, except every bit a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist inside the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

How did the slaves react to the whippings, the countless labor for others' profit, the lack of freedom? Some like Nat Turner rebelled. In 1831, he led a slave defection that left virtually 60 white persons dead in Virginia. Such insurrections were relatively rare in the South. White people outnumbered slaves in nearly places, possessed firearms, and could telephone call on the power of the government to suppress rebellions. Nevertheless, slaves everywhere establish other ways to resist their bondage. They sabotaged tools and crops, pretended illness, and stole food from the master's ain kitchen. The nearly constructive way that a slave could retaliate against an owner was to run away. It is estimated that threescore,000 black people fled slavery before the Civil War.

Solomon Northup attempted to run away but failed. Then, in 1852, a white carpenter with abolitionist sentiments met Northup and learned about his kidnapping. The carpenter wrote several letters to New York land officials on behalf of Northup. In response, the governor of New York sent an agent carrying documents proving that Northup was a free black homo. Afterward a court hearing in January 1853, a Louisiana judge released Northup from his chains. He finally returned domicile to his married woman and children.

When Solomon Northup wrote the narrative of his experiences in 1853, he left little dubiousness nigh his feelings toward slave owners: "A mean solar day may come — it will come... — a terrible mean solar day of vengeance, when the master in his turn volition cry in vain for mercy."

For Discussion and Writing

1. In 1850, a Southern slave owner might have said something similar this: "Our slaves are like children who need to be cared for and disciplined. They are content and are really improve off than free white laborers working in northern factories." How do y'all think Solomon Northup would have responded to these remarks?
2. What was the legal status of slaves and their families?
3. The 13th Subpoena was finally ratified in 1865, long subsequently most other nations in the world had abolished slavery. Why exercise you think slavery lasted and so long in the American South?
4. Today practices such as slavery seem to the states unjust and unthinkable. When students of the future read about our globe in their history books, volition they be horrified by any of the weather condition nosotros find acceptable? What causes public opinion to change?

For Farther Reading

Boles, John B. Black Southerners, 1619–1869. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1984.

Stampp, Kenneth K. The Peculiar Institution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.

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A C T I V I T Y

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Runaway Slaves

1. In this activity and based on the reading, the course will create narratives of six slaves who have run away from unlike southern plantations in 1850. After forming pocket-size groups, assign each grouping 1 of the following profiles. Each should work cooperatively to write a narrative of ane of the post-obit runaway slaves:

Jackson, age 25, a field worker with many scars on his back.

Polly, age 18, a field worker who is 8 months pregnant.

Eliza, age 15, a house servant whose mother was sold to another main one year ago.

Thomas, age 12, a stable boy who wants to learn how to read and write.

Hattie, age 45, a cook whose master recently died.

Marcus, historic period seventy, a coachman and butler who has worked for the same family unit all of his life.

2. The post-obit questions are intended to help the groups develop their slave narratives. Every response should be written in first person every bit if the delinquent slave had answered himself or herself.

a.     What is your proper name and how old are you?

b.     What was information technology similar to be sold?

c.     What was your work solar day like?

d.     What was your family life like in the slave quarters?

e.     What was it like to exist punished for violating a slave code regulation?

f.     What was information technology similar to resist your master without his knowing it?

g.     Why did you run abroad?

iii. Someone in each group should at present take on the role of the delinquent slave and read the group's first person narrative to the residuum of the class.

four. After all the narratives have been read, hold a course give-and-take on what seemed to be the worst part of slavery in the American South. This could besides be the field of study of an essay assignment.

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Source: https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/slavery-in-the-american-south

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