In
the 17th century Europeans began to establish settlements in the Americas.
The division of the land into smaller units under private ownership
became known as the plantation system. Starting in Virginia the system
spread to the New England colonies. Crops grown on these plantations
such as tobacco, rice,
sugar cane and cotton
were labour intensive. Slaves were in the fields from sunrise to sunset
and at harvest time they did an eighteen hour day. Women worked the
same hours as the men and pregnant women were expected to continue
until their child was born.
European immigrants had gone to America to own their own land and
were reluctant to work for others. Convicts were sent over from Britain
but there had not been enough to satisfy the tremendous demand for
labour. Planters therefore began to purchase slaves.
At first these came from the West Indies but by the late 18th century
they came directly from Africa and busy
slave-markets were established in Philadelphia,
Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans.
The death-rate amongst slaves was high. To replace their losses, plantation
owners encouraged the slaves to have children. Child-bearing started
around the age of thirteen, and by twenty the women slaves would be
expected to have four or five children. To encourage child-bearing
some population owners promised women slaves their freedom after they
had produced fifteen children.
(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 sucklings 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. They were furnished with plenty of good,
wholesome food by the master, who took special care to see that it
was properly cooked and served to them as often as they desired it.
On very large plantations there were many
such old women, who spent the remainder of their lives caring for
children of younger women.
During the summer, in Virginia and other southern
states, slaves when threatened or after punishment would escape to
the woods or some other hiding place. They were then called runaways,
or runaway Negroes, and when not caught would stay away from home
until driven back by cold weather.
I hope from what I have said about "runaways," that my readers
will not form the opinion that all slave men who imagined themselves
treated harshly ran away, or that they were all too lazy to work in
the hot weather and took to the woods, or that all masters were so
brutal that their slaves were compelled to run away to save life.
There were masters of different dispositions and temperaments. Many
owners treated their slaves so humanely that they never ran away,
although they were sometimes punished; others really felt grieved
for it to be known, that one of their slaves had been compelled to
run away; others allowed the overseer to treat their slaves with such
brutality that they were forced to run away.
(2)
Lewis
Clarke, Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clark (1845)
There are certain
kinds of work which are respectable for Sabbath day. Slaves are often
sent out to salt the cattle, collect and count the pigs and sheep,
mend fences, drive the stock from one pasture to another. Breaking
young horses and mules to send them to market, yoking young oxen and
training them, is proper Sabbath work. Piling and burning brush on
the back part of the lot, grubbing brier patches that are out of the
way, and where they will not be seen. Sometimes corn must be shelled
in the corn-crib; hemp is baled in the hemp-house. The still-house
must be attended on the Sabbath. In these and various other such like
employments, the more avaricious slaveholders keep their slaves busy
a good part of every Sabbath. It is a great day for visiting and eating,
and the house servants often have more to do on that than on any other
day.
(3)
Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
The time came when I must go to work on the plantation. I was less
than seven years old. On the plantation of Colonel Lloyd I was left
to the tender mercies of Aunt Katy, a slavewoman who, ill-tempered
and cruel, was often guilty of starving me and the other children.
One day I had offended Aunt Katy and she adopted her usual mode of
publishing me; namely, making me go all day without food. Sundown
came, but no bread. I was too hungry to sleep, when who but my own
dear mother should come in. She read Aunt Katy a lecture which was
never forgotten. That night I learned as I had never learned before,
that I was not only a child, but somebody's child. My mother had walked
twelve miles to see me, and had the same distance to travel over before
the morning sunrise. I do not remember seeing her again.
(4)
Annie
L. Burton, Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days (1909)
One morning in April, 1865, my master got the news that the Yankees
had left Mobile Bay and crossed the Confederate lines, and that the
Emancipation Proclamation had been signed by President Lincoln. Mistress
suggested that the slaves should not be told of their freedom; but
master said he would tell them, because they would soon find it out,
even if he did not tell them. Mistress, however, said she could keep
my mother's three children, for my mother had now been gone so long.
All
the slaves left the plantation upon the news of their freedom, except
those who were feeble or sickly. With the help of these, the crops
were gathered. My mistress and her daughters had to go to the kitchen
and to the washtub. My little half- brother, Henry, and myself had
to gather chips, and help all we could. My sister, Caroline, who was
twelve years old, could help in the kitchen.
(5)
Austin
Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave (1857)
When
eight years of age, I was taken to the "great house," or
the family mansion of my master, to serve as an errand boy, where
I had to stand in the presence of my master's family all the day,
and a part of the night, ready to do any thing which they commanded
me to perform. My master's family consisted
of himself and wife, and seven children.
His overseer, whose name was Barsly Taylor, had also a wife and five
children. These constituted the white population on the plantation.
Capt. Helm was the owner of about one hundred slaves, which made the
residents on the plantation number about one hundred and sixteen persons
in all. One hundred and seven of them, were required to labor for
the benefit of the remaining nine, who possessed that vast domain;
and one hundred of the number doomed to unrequited toil, under the
lash of a cruel task-master during life, with no hope of release this
side of the grave, and as far as the cruel oppressor is concerned,
shut out from hope beyond it.
(6)
Moses
Roper, Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper (1838)
Mr. Gooch, the cotton planter, he purchased me at a town called Liberty
Hill, about three miles from his home. As soon as he got home, he
immediately put me on his cotton plantation to work, and put me under
overseers, gave me allowance of meat and bread with the other slaves,
which was not half enough for me to live upon, and very laborious
work. Here my heart was almost broke with grief at leaving my fellow
slaves. Mr. Gooch did not mind my grief, for he flogged me nearly
every day, and very severely. Mr. Gooch bought me for his son-in-law,
Mr. Hammans, about five miles from his residence. This man had but
two slaves besides myself; he treated me very kindly for a week or
two, but in summer, when cotton was ready to hoe, he gave me task
work connected with this department, which I could not get done, not
having worked on cotton farms before. When I failed in my task, he
commenced flogging me, and set me to work without any shirt in the
cotton field, in a very hot sun, in the month of July. In August,
Mr. Condell, his overseer, gave me a task at pulling fodder.
Having finished my task before night, I left the
field; the rain came on, which soaked the fodder. On discovering this,
he threatened to flog me for not getting in the fodder before the
rain came. This was the first time I attempted to run away, knowing
that I should get a flogging. I was then between thirteen and fourteen
years of age. I ran away to the woods half naked; I was caught by
a slave-holder, who put me in Lancaster jail. When they put slaves
in jail, they advertise for their masters
to own them; but if the master does not claim his slave in six months
from the time of imprisonment, the slave is sold for jail fees.
When the slave runs away, the master
always adopts a more rigorous system of flogging; this was the case
in the present instance. After this, having determined from my youth
to gain my freedom, I made several attempts, was caught and got a
severe flogging of one hundred lashes each time. Mr. Hammans was a
very severe and cruel master, and his wife still worse; she used to
tie me up and flog me while naked.
(7)
Report
on the work of the Freemen's Bureau
that was signed by General Oliver Howard
and Salmon P. Chase (August, 1867)
The
abolition of slavery and the establishment of freedom are not the
one and the same thing. The emancipated negroes were not yet really
freemen. Their chains had indeed been sundered by the sword, but the
broken links still hung upon their limbs. The question, "What
shall be done with the negro? agitated the whole country. Some were
in favour of an immediate recognition of their equal and political
rights, and of conceding to them at once all the prerogatives of citizenship.
But only a few advocated a policy so radical, and, at the same time,
generally considered revolutionary, while many, even of those who
really wished well to the negro, doubted his capacity for citizenship,
his willingness to labour for his own support, and the possibility
of his forming, as a freeman, an integral part of the Republic.
The idea of admitting the freedmen to an equal participation in civil
and political rights was not entertained in any part of the South.
In most of the States they were not allowed to sit on juries, or even
to testify in any case in which white men were parties. They were
forbidden to own or bear firearms, and thus were rendered defenceless
against assault. Vagrant laws were passed, often relating only to
the negro, or, where applicable in terms of both white and black,
seldom or never enforced except against the latter.
In some States any court - that is, any local Justice of the Peace
- could bind out to a white person any negro under age, without his
own consent or that of his parents? The freedmen were subjected to
the punishments formerly inflicted upon slaves. Whipping especially,
when in some States disfranchised the party subjected to it, and rendered
him for ever infamous before the law, was made the penalty for the
most trifling misdemeanor.
These legal disabilities were not the only obstacles placed in the
path of the freed people. Their attempts at education provoked the
most intense and bitter hostility, as evincing a desire to render
themselves equal to the whites. Their churches and schoolhouses were
in many places destroyed by mobs. In parts of the country remote from
observation, the violence and cruelty engendered by slavery found
free scope for exercise upon the defenceless negro. In a single district,
in a single month, forty-nine cases of violence, ranging from assault
and battery to murder, in which whites were the aggressors and blacks
the sufferers, were reported.
General Howard issued his first order defining the general policy
of the Bureau on the 19th day of May 1865, at once appointed his Assistant
Commissioners, and entered upon the work assigned to him. In this
work he was greatly embarrassed by the lack of any governmental appropriations
for his Bureau, by the opposition in the South to any measures looking
towards the elevation of the freed people, and by the very widespread
distrust in the North of their capacity for improvement.
What is to be the effect of emancipation upon the industry of the
community at large, upon the amount of production, upon the intelligence
and morals of the people, upon commerce, trade, manufactures, agriculture
and population, can as yet be only a matter of conjecture; and yet
such and so marked even in these respects have been the results already,
that probably few, if any, of the intelligent portion of the Southern
people would desire to see slavery re-established. Wherever the planter
has honestly and intelligently accommodated himself to the system
of free-labour, freedom has reaped a larger harvest than ever was
garnered by slavery.
But the effect upon the freed people is no longer a matter of question.
They have refuted slavery's accusation of idleness and incapacity.
They have not only worked faithfully and well under white employers,
but, when facilities have been accorded them, have proved themselves
capable of independent and even self-organized labour. They are not
generally extravagant or wasteful. The church and the schoolhouse
are alike crowded with eager, expectant people, the rapidity of whose
development under these fostering influences has amazed both foes
and friends, and contributed more, perhaps, than any other cause to
mitigate the prejudice which survived slavery, and make the work of
enfranchisement complete.
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