Essay on The Start of Slavery

In Marie Schwartz’s book Born in Bondage, describes the life as a child during the antebellum era. The most evident struggle of these children is who to have the most loyalty to. Who should the child listen to when it comes to its survival? Should the child be loyal to the Master or its parents? This was the struggle between the will of the Owner and the wants of the parents. The struggle to gain the loyalty of the child typically would go to the parents except in a few cases where the child was raised away from its parents and in the owner’s house. Who has the most influence in the child’s life was a major source of conflict between slave parents and slave owners. This competition for their loyalty created its own problems for the child such as not knowing who to trust more. For the most part one group would exert more influence than the other. While the child’s parents tended to be the group that would exert the most influence, the owners in certain instances would and could exert more influence than the other. One of these circumstances was when the child was raised by its owners.

Slaves were not well cared for. They received the bare minimum for food, clothing, and sleeping arrangements. For example, where Frederick Douglass was a slave: “The men and woman slaves received, as

Most slaves lived in slave cabins with dirt floors. Slaves usually got real cheap clothing that was plain and dirty. Some slaves sewed different patches of cloth on their clothes to show their true colors. Some slaves were allowed to plant their own gardens and raise their own chickens to make their own food.

Most slaves lived in one-room cabins. The cabins were made of logs and were not well built. As a result, some roofs could not stop rain or snow. When the rain and snow came in, the dirt floor of the cabin turned into mud. Slaves didn’t have any furniture. They slept on a pile of rags or straw. Some were given a blanket; many were not. Eating food sometimes not suitable for an animal to eat. Slaves received only enough food to keep them alive. Most plantation owners gave a ration of food at the beginning of the week. It consisted of corn, fat, and possibly a bit of bacon, Slaves might also receive bread, flour, some vegetables, and some buttermilk. Because this diet was low in vitamins and minerals, many slaves became ill. Some could grow their own vegetables or do some fishing on Sundays. Many died from illness or from the combination of malnutrition and intense

A Slave life was hectic most slaves were poorly fed, housed, and clothed. They were fed from the left overs of their masters. The slaves of planters got clothes twice a year and shoes once a year. By that time is wasn’t that bad getting clothes and shoes because they were even lucky to have shoes. Their masters would barley dress them, leaving them to work out side on the plantations with nothing but bare meat. Especially when gotten into trouble, they would be outside freezing. slave families had gardens and sometimes could and hunt. The food that they would hunt with would be there dinner, but they had to share with their family. In one room of a slave "household" there was about 10 people in one

Most slave owners agreed that ideally slave unions should be among the slaves on the same plantation and that marriage should be a way of breeding and promoting morality. The master would most often officiate at the wedding. They were then sent off to their quarters for a couple hours alone together. It was not unusual, and indeed expected, for slave women to have a child every year. Indeed it was not unheard of for slave women to have 25 children in the span of their lives, usually beginning to give birth at 12 or 13 years of age. These children rarely lived with their parents past the age of eight or nine. At this time they were either sold to another plantation or moved into the women's or men's quarters. Some states had laws forbidding taking children nine or under from their mothers, but this law was often ignored and rarely enforced. All in all, the lack of recognized marriage ties and the constant separation of families through sale, made the slave family a temporary and fly-by-night affair, destined for broken hearts and the auction block.

Well, they would do crop work, Also they would clean up, work around the house for their master/owners. Slaves would also cook for their masters, sometimes if their masters didn't like what they had prepared for them then they would get whipped and set back to the kitchen to remake the meal.Even if it took all day! The book says, “They would cook for their masters, whatever they asked for” (Worth page 312).

Slaves working in the plantations were over-worked, harshly and cruelly mistreated, and abused. Moreover, slaves were put to work under horrible conditions, but some masters had a little bit of consideration and treat them well because they thought that a healthy slave was more productive than a sick and weak slave. Each slave had a different task. Slaves who worked in the cotton fields were under the supervision of a white overseer or a black slavedriver. These slaves had the toughest task because they worked sunup to sundown and sometimes mistreated and abused while working. Other slaves had a little bit of freedom and they worked on the rice plantation or as domestic slaves. Although their task require less effort, their masters created

Conclusion I was surprised that despite the inconsistencies and the disparity of slave life. Slavery in America was able to demonstrate an unwavering understanding of the value of family. Whatever advantages slave unions held for an owner, for the enslaved man, woman, or child, the family was an incomparable source of solace and strength and a primary means of

They live in wood cabins that are on bare ground without any furniture, they have to use rags as a bed. Slaves are well fed with a weekly amount of cornmeal, bacon, and molasses, but their clothes aren’t as nice. Clothes are specially made for them with coarse fabric, Frederick Douglass also told us that they receive a yearly amount of clothes, “two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers… one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes.” children that can’t work because of their age receive “two coarse linen shirts per

A slave is a person who was owned by another person or at the time an “owner”, most slaves worked from sunrise to sunset, these are just some of the jobs women did during that time, cooking, laundry, gardening, building, repairing tools and child-rearing(the process of raising a child or children). Slaves often slept in a kitchen or outhouse/shed, on Sundays, end of work days or Christmas the slaves could check up on their personal needs such as Health, Shape, Pain factor, Bruising/scars and other important things. When the slaves had down time they often went and visited friends/family, a slave was not normally educated, which meant if they ran away, they would need to be careful, because their farms normally would be surrounded by forest.

Sometimes the children would be split up and sold, separated from their parents and other sibling’s. Many slaves did not get proper medical treatment. Children working the field or just playing with other children would catch lice and disease like the flu or the common cold. They often could not go to the doctor if they wanted to because they could not afford to. So, they would have

Slavery is a very big part in America’s history. Slaves had a lot of difficulties and struggles. Slavery in the American south includes having struggles with no education and not treated fairly.

In addition, slaves had to produce for themselves. Plantation owners were quite interested in reducing cost and they did so at the expense of many slaves. They overworked slaves tremendously and even made them produce their own foods to cut down on export expenditures. However, slaves had to do this in their own "free time" which was on Saturdays. Quite disgruntled, slaves had to work everyday, and on their day of rest, they were forced to work extra hard to produce for themselves. "The planters perceived it in their interests to spend as little money, time, or energy as possible on slave maintenance" (Tomich, 304).

Slaves were distributed in an area of a house or a plantation. On some owners of the slaves they provided them housing but most of them didn’t care about their slaves. Sometimes slaves just sleep in a dark cabin with no windows that almost suffocated them. Dirt, hard and cold floor are the most common type of bed of slaves. Is that even a bed? But slaves DO called it a bed. Living condition was narrow with sometimes as many as ten people sharing.