Essay on American Slavery - 2920 Words

American Slavery Between 1830 and 1860, a time of increasing national divisions over slavery, numerous accounts of slave life were published. These accounts of life under slavery almost invariably had either abolitionist or pro slavery agendas. Slaves in the ante-bellum South lived under a wide variety of circumstances, and held a variety of positions, including household servant, wagon driver, iron foundry workers and skilled artisan. Nine out of ten slaves however, worked as farm laborers, growing cotton, tobacco, rice, and other products. About half of these laborers worked on large plantations of twenty slaves or more, while the others worked on smaller and poorer farms, often alongside their master. Patterns of life on†¦show more content†¦Then he must work all day, cold or hot, from week’s end to week’s end. Slaves have one pair of shoes for the year; if these become worn out in two months, they get no more that year, but must go barefooted the rest of the year, through cold and heat. The shoes are very poor ones, made by one of the slaves, and do not last more than two or three months. They get one pair of stockings for the year. They have one suit of clothes for the year. This is very poor, and made by the slaves themselves on the plantation. It will not last more than three months, and then the slave gets no more from the slave holder, if he go naked. This suit consists of one shirt, one pair of pants, one pair of socks, one pair of shoes, and no vest at all. The slave has a hat given to him once in two years. â€Å"No beds are given to the slaves to sleep on; if they have any they found it themselves.† â€Å" A physician in Alabama wrote in the Southern Cultivator in 1850: One of the most prolific sources of disease among Negroes is the condition of there houses.... Small, low, tight and filthy; there houses can be but laboratories of disease. (Rogers 8) †Every Saturday night , the slaves receive two pounds of bacon, and one peck and a half of corn meal, to last the men through the week. The women have one half pound of meat, and one peck of corn meal. The children, one half peck of each. When this mere food is gone they have noShow MoreRelatedAmerican Slavery, American Freedom Essay1174 Words   |  5 PagesEdmund S. Morgan’s famous novel American Slavery, American Freedom was published by Norton in 1975, and since then has been a compelling scholarship in which he portrays how the first stages of America began to develop and prosper. 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From the beginning, the Virginia Company was incorporated on a disastrous union of these two forces. The failure toRead MoreAmerican Slavery Essay983 Words   |  4 PagesSlavery, especially in America, has been an age old topic of riveting discussions. Specialist and other researchers have been digging around for countless years looking for answers to the many questions that such an activity provided. They have looked into the economics of slavery, slave demography, slave culture, slave treatment, and slave-owner ideology (p. ix). Despite slavery being a global issue, the main focus is always on American slavery. Peter Kolchin effectively illustrates in his bookRead MoreSlavery : The African American Slavery2189 Words   |  9 PagesA PUSH - Steiker Period 6 Slavery 1775 - 1830 â€Å"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves, † said George Gordon Byron. Though slavery has never had a universal definition, one might describe it as the dependent labour by one person performed to another who is not of his or her family. It was thought to have come about after a dramatic labour shortage in particular areas or countries. In America, slavery has always been a highly debatedRead MoreSlavery And The Making Of American Capitalism1153 Words   |  5 PagesJose Arciga Robert Dean History 110 11.10.15 Essay Prompt The Half Has Never Been Told :Slavery and the making of American Capitalism Back when America was being shaped, tobacco was the main slave produced trade in the colonies. Plantations all across the south had a majority of the slaves from Africa brought here on ships. Forced to work for their slave owners. Tobacco wasn t the only booming business. Cotton soon came into the picture, the north was a more industrial economy, while the south