The Lives of Slaves on Plantations vs. the Lives of Slaves in Big Cities

The majority of the slaves were employed in agricultural areas in the South. By the mid-19th century, a large number of slaves worked in urban areas as well, and about 5% worked in more industrial occupations. The hours of the slave workers were long. The average life expectancy of African slaves was at least 12% lower than whit Americans in 1850 and the infant mortality rate was 25% higher for slaves. Oftentimes slave marriages and families dissolved due to separation. This concept is horrible when you take under consideration that family was the entire basis of African culture.

A lot were american-born. At this point in time many had american-born Parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. Black life took of a variety of forms slave and free, rural and urban, and Plantation and farm and it was different from place to place. But mainly for the most part, African Americans were confined to the “Long Park along the North American coast region from New England to the Mississippi Valley and the majority was crowded into a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic Tidewater and the Appalachian

Life for African American Slaves in the United States greatly differed from that of a typical white citizen. Beginning in 1619, slaves were being forced to the United States from their homeland of Africa where they would be bought and owned by a white man. Many were auctioned off and separated from their families to work on farms on arrival to America. Slaves were brought in for many years from Africa, but in 1808 international slave trade was no longer legal. Domestic slave trade, however, continued and thrived because many slaves were having children and raising families in captivity. There were many restrictions placed on what slaves were allowed to do. In

Slavery in colonial America was a hard way of life. Slaves varied in ages and gender. Slaves were assigned a task or tasks that had to be completed during the day. The male slaves would participate in the hard labor such as working on the farm. The female slaves would generally work in the household, sent on errands or spent most of their time with the house owner. Female slaves were forced into sexual relationships for reproduction. Reproduction would either be forced between one African slave and another or between the slave and the house owner. Slaves were also treated like livestock and being bought, sold and traded among owners. For the enslaved people they had to endure being separated from their families when captured or when sold at the slave market. Their new

African Americans were plantation workers and were taken as slaves. As they were taken they had to go through the Middle Passage and sold at an auction. The Middle Passage is when slaves were being forced to go from Africa to the west Indies, and then being sold. The trip there was very harsh and unsanitary.

Slaves suffered within a system characterized by undernourishment, overwork, harsh punishment, ill health, and despair. The purpose of this paper is to address the significant problems slavery caused the world in which talk of rights and liberties were increasingly popularized. Slavery divested lives of many African Americans who were sold into enslavement for many years.

One of the most common moral defenses of slavery was that slaves were being kept in better conditions than they would be if they had legitimate, paying jobs. For example, once slaves had grown too old to complete hard labor in the fields, they could be brought into the house, where they could be more comfortable working less strenuous jobs. Whereas a paid field worker would be fired once they grew too old to work. What this defense didn 't take into account was the horrible conditions that many slaves lived in their entire lives, and the physical, mental and emotional toll that these conditions took. For example, many slave owners allowed their overseers to hit workers who they believed were disobedient, or who just weren 't working fast enough. Female slaves were routinely sexually abused, and were punished for attempting to protect themselves. This kind of physical abuse would create an atmosphere of fear

To begin, African Americans would be bought to plantation owners or Englishmen whose sole purpose was to do labor for them with no compensation, and brutal beatings that they would endure. In most situations,

Around 1790, there were 700,000 slaves in the United States. And by 1860, the number of slaves moved up to 4 million (lecture). The reason why the numbers had changed so drastically was because of the cotton boom. The cotton growing was concentrated on plantations rather than the small farms. Around 75% of slaves lived in groups of around 10 or more slaves, which made changes in the African American slave communities and culture (lecture). With the slave communities developing, they were very unstable. Around 1 million slaves migrated from the upper to lower south, which split the communities and families apart. Since the slave communities were growing, Southern African American communities were

In 1830 slavery was originally sited in the South, where it lives in various structures. African Americans were imprisoned on diminutive farms, big plantations, in cities and towns, within homes, outside the fields, and in industry and transportation. Even if slavery had such a great series of faces, the fundamental concepts were always similar. Slaves were considered possessions, and they were possessions for the reason that they were black. Their rank as property was inflicted by aggression actual or threatened. People, black and white, lived jointly within these limits, and their lives as one took a lot of forms (Solomon, 1855).

Plantation owners thought that this extreme discipline would make the slaves too scared to rebel. In South Carolina it was said that "a slave owner would put nails in a barrel sticking out on the inside of the barrel, then put the slave in and roll him/her down a very long and steep hill. Another punishment slave owners used was to whip their slaves. Other slave owners in Virginia smoked their slaves. This involved whipping them and putting them in a tobacco smokehouse".("life of a slave" thinkquest) Other punishments were getting beaten with various objects such as a chair, broom, tongs, shovel, shears, knife handles, the heavy end of a woman’s shoe, and an oak club.("life of a slave" thinkquest) Although slaves lived terrible lives, they found hope in religion. Many converted to Christianity which did not please many whites.

These slave owners would threatened them until they would say something and if they did not they would be wiped. People got whipped because they tried to run away and they would just get caught and taken back to the plantation to be beaten by their masters. These individuals were faced in many different situations where they were tortured with crazy, hurtful

The slave’s life depended on their owners. Most owners treated their slaves well by making sure they had decent food, clean houses, and warm clothes to wear. Other planters spent little time caring about these things. They were determining to get the most work possible from their slaves. Slaves worked from sunup to sundown, at least sixteen hours a day. They sometimes suffered whippings and other cruel punishments. Owners thought of them as valuable property, that way the owners wanted to keep their human property healthy and as productive as they can. Keeping slaves families together was very difficult to do because slaves were considered as

One of the most important descriptions involved the cruel treatment of the slaves in general because the Southerners thought the slaves as their own properties. From Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Tom met Prue who was a slave from down the street and felt miserable about her life because her master did not want to feed her baby resulting in the death of her baby. After few days later, Tom eventually heard that Prue’s master had whipped her to death by his members of the St. Clare household: “What now? Why those folks have whipped Prue to death!” said Ophelia (Stowe, 250). St. Clare explained that since the slaves were considered as one of the properties, people had the rights to control and destroy at their slaves at will: “It’s commonly supposed that the property interest

in the Caribbean, and eventually reached the southern coasts of America. The African natives were of all ages and sexes. Women usually worked in the homes cooking and cleaning, while men were sent out into the plantations to farm. Young girls would usually help in the house also and young boys would help in the farm by bailing hay and loading wagons with crops. They were shipped from Africa by the Europeans, "The Triangular Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade". This was an organized route where