The Slave Class System

In the South, it was very well known for slaves to be working in plantation fields. The often would work cultivating cotton, tobacco, and sugar. Tobacco was a very popular cash crop, but died out due to the harsh conditions it would give the soil. Moreover, southern states were referred to as Cotton Kingdom. The reason being is because in the southern states, cotton was the major cash crop they grew. In addition, more than 50% of the cotton was grown in the south. Additionally, the culture in the South was quite different compared to the slaves that were in the North. The southern slave states culture was determined by plantation owners and families. The slaves were not authorized to be educated, and only the plantation owners had the right to be educated. They were not allowed to attend school and their culture revolved around the plantations. To add in, their economy revolved around the agricultural plantations. The southern grew cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar cane, and indigo. Many of

The slaves prepared their own food and carried it out into the field in buckets. Slaves were housed in slave cabins. Small, rudely built of logs with clapboard sidings, with clay chinking. The Floors were packed with dirt, and they were leaky and drafty. The combination of wet, dirt, and cold made them diseased infested environments.

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

There was a definite hierarchical society of classes with in the south at this time. Their lives varied depending on their socioeconomic status they found themselves either by birth or by their own success or failures.

Between 1800 and 1865, slaves lived in the Southern States and worked in the tobacco, wheat, rice, corn and cotton plantations. Essentially, slavery was an economic institution with far-reaching benefits to slaveholders, since the value of slave labor was considerably more than the cost of their maintenance. Demands for democratization, respect for human dignity and American Civil War presented a major turning point in the institution of slavery as farmers turned to lesser labor-intensive production methods such as the use of Eli Whitney 's Cotton Gin. This paper analyzes different ways in which institution of Slavery affected the development of American South between 1800 & 1865, and the lives of people living in the region. In doing so the paper considers economic, political, social and cultural implications of the institution.

Field labor was an unavoidable task that was fulfilled by nearly all slaves in the antebellum south. There was no gender discrimination in the fields, female slaves had to perform almost all of the plantation chores. Some of the chores female slaves were obligated to complete were picking, hoeing, plowing, mending fences, burning fields, weeding, planting, and harvesting. The work day was long and grueling, slaves worked from sunrise to the sunset. Working the fields was a strenuous job, however it was not done alone. They acquired the opportunity to work beside other female slaves. The groups of female slaves in the fields were called gangs. The gangs often sang, talked quietly, and passed along confidential information.

On the plantations, slave labor was the primary source of workers. These slaves were brought to the colonies by ship, once they arrived they were sold at auctions. The slave auctions had just men, just women, just children or whole families up for bid. Southern plantations were predominantly black, male slaves. At one point it was believed to be seven male slaves to every one female. The slaves were purchased and then became the property of the

them to Christianity. Slaves had to sit through white sermons on how God did not approve disobedience and that white people were to be obeyed. Around 90% of the 4 million slaves worked on plantations or farms. around 5% of slaves work in factories like the Tredegar Iron work in, Richmond Virginia or in cities. Some urban slaves would live and work away from master but give them a share of their earnings. Slaves were usually work day in and day out they were digging ditches, building railroads, building houses, building boats, and farming on plantations. Slaves usually worked in gangs. South Carolina and Georgia typically work under a task system where they could work at their own pace. Blacks in the south had their own community where they share their own work such as women might watch and take care of kids, healers, and there were preachers. also in this community said they were not allowed to worship and believe what they wanted too they've in invisible society to where they fall in invisible society to wear would worship at

2. Pinedo 2 Slaves being transported to the South were usually ripped from their families and the surroundings they were familiar and comfortable with. These slaves then faced their new life at the plantation, a very different environment from what they were used to. They faced harder work, such as clearing trees and planting crops, than they had back in the ‘old Southern states’. The great demand for slaves on the plantations produced two very distinct types of slaves, rural and urban. Rural slaves, as you might have guessed worked on the plantations usually from dawn till dusk, driven by their overseer. Whereas urban slavery resulted from the lack of white laborers in the mining and lumber industries, because so many whites defected to the cotton industry in hopes of making a larger profit. As a result there was an increased demand for slaves in mills and in ships, so slaves that had learned specialized skills in the plantations, were in high demand in Southern cities. Slave owners hired out their slaves to work wherever their skills were required. This means that the owners left their slaves unsupervised all day, unlike the plantations where they were always under his watchful eye. Many of the slaves who worked in the cities cited them as incredibly different from working on the plantation. In the city a slave was almost a free man compared to the plantations, he got better food, clothes and privileges. Also the acts of cruelty

The existence of the slaves in the south was hard, also a persistent labor forced and abuse. They utilize them as field hand growing sugar, rice, tobacco, and most of the time cotton, but also they place them to work as house servants, artisans, carpenters, or ironworkers and countless of jobs took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, Charleston and South Carolina. Every slave was hold as property with the option of sold them or purchasing them or exchanged each moment their owners said. They had a lot of options to work, but the plantation works were split into pairs, the task system and gang system. The gang system was under the control of masters organizing slaves into categories of twenty-five employees managed through white supervisor or a

Enslaved people were treated extremely harshly by Southern slave owners. Slaves were instructed to do heavy labor, and if they did not worth to their maximum ability they were cruelly treated with whippings, beatings, and they were sometimes even maimed. Slaves barely had enough food, clothing, and shelter to get through

Life for slaves was difficult. Every year they normally received two cotton shirts, one jacket, two pairs of trousers, a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, a coat, and a wool hat. To eat, slaves of the time mostly were given eight pounds of pork or fish, and cornmeal salt herring each month. Slaves were housed in wooden shacks with dirt floors, but sometimes they were made of boards nailed up with cracks stuffed with rags. The beds

Slaves had no rights at all in the south. Many worked as servants and farm laborers. Some practiced skill trade as shoemaking and others worked on cotton plantations as field hands. Men and women did harsh backbreaking labor in the fields. They cleared new land, planted seeds, and harvested crops in all weather. Teenagers worked alongside the adults pulling weeds, picking insects off the crops and carrying water to the other workers. Some slaves became skilled workers such as blacksmiths and carpenters. Some slaves worked in cities but their earnings belonged to their owners. Planters often hired these skilled workers to work on their plantations. Older slaves like women worked as servants in the planter’s house. They cooked, cleaned and did other chores under the supervision of the planter’s wife.

During their few hours of gratuitous time, most slaves did their own personal study. The diet supplied by slaveholders was generally short, and slaves often supplemented it by tending small plots of land or fishing. Many slave owners did not provide enough clothing, and slave mothers often worked to clothe their families at night later on long days of toil. One visitor to colonial North Carolina wrote that slaveholders rarely gave their slaves meat or fish, and that he witnessed many slaves wearing only rags. Although there were exceptions, the prevailing attitude among slave owners was to allot their slaves the bare minimum of food and clothing; anything beyond that was up to the slaves to gain during their very limited time off from employment.

Not only was slavery divided up into different systems, but the roles of the slaves varied greatly. Field slaves were subjected to strenuous labor and strict overseers. They usually worked from dusk until dawn without receiving a day off. On the other hand, household slaves took care of the children, chores, and food and were sometimes seen as part of the family. There is a misconception that household slaves had an easier life than those working in the fields. However, regardless of whether or not someone was a household slave or a field slave, they were slaves nonetheless. The documentary fuels these misconceptions by making things seem right that Washington only worked his slaves six days a week, giving them Sunday off, and was known to have treated them well.