The Daily Life Of A Slave

l. The slaves lived in the house with their master and his family. The slaves also worked along side the master, his family, and the other slaves on the small farms. Most had two slaves per household on the rare occasion there some estates that had 50 or 60.

Children who are selected by their owners live and work in the house as attendants and other small jobs. Although they were under the watchful eye of other slaves, the child would still look up to their owners and fear their wrath. Some children would not see their parents after they start working in the house. The long hours adults worked meant that many did not see their parents even if they

The film 12 Years is an accurate and verifiable account of the common slave experience in the United States in the antebellum South. 12 Years a Slave is set in the mid to late 1800s and tells a true life story of the life of Solomon Northup a free Black man sold south into slavery. He was the son of an emancipated slave. Northup was from upstate New York, and was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Northup lived, worked, and was married in upstate New York, where his family resided. He was a multifaceted laborer and also an accomplished violin player. He was subjected to the cruelty for the next twelve years while he survived as the human property of several different slave masters, He continually struggled to survive and maintain some of his dignity. Then in the 12th year of the disheartening ordeal, a chance meeting with an abolitionist from Canada he was was finally freed and is taken home. After being unsuccessful in prosecuting his kidnappers, Northup continues upriver to New York, where he is finally reunited with his family and where he meets his grandson, Solomon Northup Staunton, for the first time. In the end, Northup gives one final, powerful argument against the evils of the slave industry, pointing not to rhetoric or debates, but lifting up his own life story as a vivid commentary for viewers to consider. The main idea of the book was to share with the reader and give

On the plantation the slaves were provided small housing. Each hut was cramped and sometimes held ten people. They had little furniture, and the beds were usually made of rags and straw. Weekly food ration were distributed every Saturday including: corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour. Each day the

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.

Life of a slave was not an easy one. Slaves were often chained when they weren’t working so they wouldn’t attempt to escape. Tobacco was a major crop in the upper South so tobacco farms solely relied on slaves to plant and harvest the crops; likewise for cotton plantations in the Deep South. Plantation owners would hire overseers to manage the slaves in the fields. Women, children, or

Those who were forced into Slavery in America had many jobs and tasks to accomplish throughout the years. According to Heather Williams in her book American Slavery, in the beginning stages of American development slaves “built the roads, cleared land, cut down trees to produce lumber for buildings and wood for fires, and they burned the lime used in outhouses for burial”. On top of already being overworked, slaves had to maintain livestock including producing dairy products, grow crops so the people in their colony could have food to eat, and take care of issues inside their owner’s home such as cooking, knitting and cleaning. Depending on what environment they lived in, slaves were also forced to fish, or work in a printing press. Those who worked in

Some of the chores they would get would be to clean, cook, or care for the slave owners children.”the lighter the slave was, higher chance that they would be sent inside to do domestic hores.

Frederick Douglass has woven many themes into his narrative, all being tied with a common thread of man’s inhumanity towards man. Children were uprooted from the arms of their mothers, "before the child has reached it’s twelfth month, it’s mother is taken from it" (48) and sold to other slave holders. Brutal whippings occurred for even the smallest imagined offense, "a mere look, word, or motion" (118), women were treated as no better than common concubines and the slaves were forced into living quarters, "on one common bed… cold, damp floor" (55) worse than some of the farm animals. The slaves were not allowed even the most meager portion of food, "eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn meal" (54) to last a month. Clothes were scarce and illness was never tolerated. It was unthinkable for the slaves to practice any type of religion, hold any gatherings, become literate to any degree, "unlawful… unsafe, to teach a slave to read" (78) or even make the simple decision of when to eat and sleep.

Slaves were always in the fields whether it was picking cotton, to producing tobacco they did everything. If the slaves ever messed up they would get beat, their owner would beat them and leave bruises, and scars on them. The owners were brutal they made the slaves get up early and go to bed very late. The slaves averaged about 4 hours of sleep a night. Slaves tried to escape and run away by getting to the Underground Railroad and hiding in houses but some of this was impossible to do.

The daily life of the 4 million slaves in the nation with 500,000 of them being in Georgia, usually started with them waking up in small and crowded hut that was not made out of good building materials. Slaves’ food was made up of cornbread, molasses, and fatback most of the time. Slaves usually only had one set of clothing and fieldworkers were often barefoot. There was also a social ladder in slavery with field hands at the bottom, and above that slave drivers, then household maids, cooks, ladies maids and dressers. then coach drivers and doormen, and at the very top of the social ladder, the butler or manservant. Being demoted to a field hand was a common punishment in the South. The slave class system parallels the white social system,

Work assignments in urban areas often provided slaves with geographic mobility as they went about their daily chores whether it was hustling to get to a factory; daily trips to the market; or running errands for their owner around the city. Their obligations presented, even if brief, interactions with free blacks in which they heard the latest news about the anti-slavery movement and projected rebellions. If a slave was permitted to have a day of rest on Sunday and holidays, slaves granted with traveling passes journeyed to other parts of the city and to nearby plantations to visit family members where they spread the latest news and gossip. Most attended church services which also provided opportunities for slaves to meet new friends,

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

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).

The most common use of a slave was to have the around the house to do common tasks