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Aspects of Domestic Slavery Essay

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1) Working on plantations

2) Family Life and Living Conditions

3) Religion and Music

4) Slave Laws, Punishments

and Discipline

Working on the Plantations

Plantations were large farming areas where tobacco, rice and cotton were grown, most of which would be sold. Most black people would be slaves on these plantations. Slavery for the plantation owners was cheap and very useful. Life for slaves on the plantations wasn't very pleasant. Lots of white people believed that black slaves were ideal to work in hot conditions on the field since they've lived under the same climates in Africa where it was also very hot.

An OVERSEER had slaves under his control and he ran …show more content…

Anyone who did not seem to work hard enough would be beaten. As well as whips, overseers would be carrying guns and knives and often had vicious dogs. When it came too dark to continue working they would have to go back to their barns. There they would have to light a fire and make their own meal. This was their usual way of life except on Sundays. Then they could have a rest & worship their Gods. Here's a story on life of one of the slaves.

(1) Henry Clay Bruce, Twenty-Nine Years a Slave (1895)

During the crop season in Virginia, slave men and women worked in the fields daily, and such females as had suckling were allowed to come to them three times a day between sun rise and sun set, for the purpose of nursing their babes, who were left in the care of an old woman, who was assigned to the care of these children because she was too old or too feeble for field work. Such old women usually had to care for, and prepare the meals of all children under working age. The master, who took special care to see that it was properly cooked and served to them as often as they desired it, furnished them with plenty of good, wholesome food. On very large plantations there were many such old women, who spent the remainder of their lives caring for children of younger women.

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