Life On Plantation

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 the plantation. There they were in charge of all the work groups. Overseers were responsible for making slaves work as hard as they could to make a profit and keep the plantation running. Nearly all of them used a whip to control the slaves. Overseer would be supervising the beating of a slave by the other slaves. Punishments like these were meant to ensure a complete obedience. Overseers weren’t meant to kill a slave but if they did little would happen to them. Many slaves were beaten so often that they were permanently scarred. Overseers could be white or black although the majority were black and male.

The slaves had to work very long hours and in the fields. They would be woken as early as 4 a.m, and taken from their smelly and overcrowded barns to the fields. Thirty minutes later, they would start work if they were late they would be whipped. They would have to work all day with maybe only one 15 minute break. Summer temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius, which made working conditions very difficult. Some slaves would be fitted in some sort of piece of equipment so they wouldn’t be able to runaway and so the overseers would know where they were. 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

Farms and plantations

Most of the enslaved Africans ended up working on farms and plantations. New slaves that had just arrived from Africa had to be prepared for a horrible work on the fields. At first farmers and plantation owners gave them easier work than to the slaves that have been there longer, like looking after animals, weeding and gathering stones. This process was known as “seasoning”.

In north America, most farms were small, so there was only a need for 3 to 4 slaves per farm. In the tobacco and wheat growing states of the middle parts, ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Farms and plantations

In north America, most farms were small, so there was only a need for 3 to 4 slaves per farm. In the tobacco and wheat growing states of the middle parts, most farms were not larger than those in the north. But slaves made up a much bigger proportion of the population than in the north, where many people lived in the cities.

In south large rice plantations were worked on by the enslaved Africans, they were the ones who grew the rice. By 1720 there were so many black slaves in the south that they outnumbered the whites. The rice farmers operated a ‘task system’, in which slaves were given a job to complete each day. Only when their task was finished they were allowed to stop working. Masters hardly ever visited their fields, they left overseers to supervise the slaves’ work.

Domestic Slavery

Although most slaves worked on the fields or on the plantations, many also worked in the houses as domestic servants or in towns as skilled craftspeople.

On the plantations everywhere most of the time women worked as domestic servants, washing, cleaning, polishing. Other women had more specialised work such as nurse, cook or dressmaker. All servants must be ready to come to their master and also to their master’s wife, who often were more horrible than their master, whenever they wish to need them. For many female slaves, the worst part of their slavery was the sexual commands of their white masters.

Male slaves were able to find work away from the fields much faster than the women because there was much better variety of jobs to choose from for them. Possible occupations included shoemaker, painter, blacksmith, carpenter, groom, some slaves did several of these jobs.

Men who were skilled workers, had more freedom than all the other workers. They could move around the plantation when doing their tasks and were sometimes allowed to leave it altogether. But this happened mainly when masters hired them out to neighbouring planter for a fee.

Almost all American planters lived on their plantations and thought of them as home. Planters that were very rich lived in a Great House on a home estate while owning some other smaller farms in a neighbourhood. Many wealthy Caribbean planters lived for most of the year in Europe, leaving their plantations in the care of overseers. The planters who did stay they build Great Houses where they enjoyed all the luxuries that money could buy. There was hardly anything to do on the islands so most of the planters lead a life of crude behaviour, drunkenness and sexual excess.

Slave Families

Slaves’ working lives were controlled by the demands of their masters. During their free time, most of them tried to set up family lives to help them bear the hardships of their everyday existence.

In north America slaves had to ask their owners before marrying. Some slaves married people from different estates, which was known as ‘marrying abroad’ some planters disapproved of that kind relationship, because the male slaves hardly ever visited their wives and relatives. Slaves couldn’t leave the plantation without a pass, which meant that they remained under their masters’ control.

When it was easy and cheap to import slaves from Africa, planters in the Caribbean didn’t want their slaves to marry and have children because they didn’t need young children on the plantations and most of them would die within weeks of their birth from lack of food and disease. However in the 18th century planters became worried because the supply of slaves from Africa was about to end and so they began to encourage slaves to have children and marry on their plantation.

In the Caribbean and in North America slave marriages had no legal responsibility and slave families were not formally known.

Even so slaves fought against all the odds to defend the family network. Most planters didn’t think twice about separating members of the family. Male slaves were often hired or sold to a different estate, leaving wives to bring up their children on their own.

Children inherited their mothers’ position as slaves. Some slave children were put out to work in the fields as young as 4yrs of age such as pulling out weeds or picking up rubbish. Older children looked after the younger children while their mothers were busy.

Family life meant a lot to slaves but it often ended in grief. Even though slaves were allowed to marry the marriage was not accepted by white law. Slave families were often split up.

For whites, slaves only got married to produce more slaves, so that they could be used or sold off to someone else. However for some slaves if they had kind masters marriage saved them from misery. Overseers and some white masters took advantage of black slave girls. Their children would also be sold as slaves.

The earliest slaves lived in farm outbuildings, or in dormitories. But as slave families got bigger many planters built a tiny log cabin for each family unit. The accommodation provided for slaves usually consisted of wooden shacks with dirt floors.

By Mohamed Aidarous 8O