Life as a slave : What questions do
you want to ask?
• Write down 5 – 10 questions you now want to
find out about life as a slave
• Feed them back to the rest of your table
• Now use a table or other method to make
notes on each aspect of the slaves’ lives.
8 mins
What was it like to live as a
slave?
By the end of this lesson you will all
have found out about:
•Homes
•Food
•Daily life
•Free time
•Family life
Page 46 – 49 of
Rediscovering Britain
•Punishments
Tasks
• In groups / tables you will each receive a pack of information.
• Use the information to make your own notes / mindmap / table of
answers that help you answer the questions you have asked.
• 15 mins
•
•
•
•
Now review what answers you have already got – highlight these in green
What do you still need to find out? – highlight these in red
Swap resources and information
20 mins
• Finally review again, what you have now found out and what you still
need to research
• How are you going to find out / answer any outstanding questions or
note down any new questions?
• Set your own homework task to extend your learning further
• 5 mins
Punishments
Homes
Daily routine
Food
Family Life
Free time
Punishments
Slaves were very valuable and cost a lot of money. They were called property, not citizens,
so they were sold in an auction house. A lot of slave owners felt free to punish their slaves
whenever they did the littlest things, such as sweeping the floor wrong. Punishments
were whipping (often 50 to 100 lashes), branding, ducking under water, getting put in
stocks, slapping, kicking, tarring and feathering, and tying up. Run away slaves were
chased by dogs, and when caught, were hit with paddles or whips or got a body part such
as an ear cut off. Some slaves even died from these punishments. These punishments
originated in England. No punishment was too harsh or too mean. These punishments
were done even after it was against the law in the United States. However, the worst
punishment for many slaves were to be sold away from their family. They were sent far
away and to new places where they were uncomfortable. There were nice slave owners
who did not hurt their slaves, so many slaves did not run away. The nice slave owners
knew that if they were mean, the slaves would run away and the work would not be done
on the plantation. If the work was not done, the plantation did not make money, and the
owner could not buy new slaves. Then, finally, the plantation would fall a-part. This is why
slaves were so valuable and important before the law was made.
Punishments
Some slave owners used to whip their slaves, but others would whip their
slaves and then put them into a tobacco smokehouse. When slave owners
used this form of punishment, it was considered smoking their slaves.
Another punishment was being pushed down a steep hill. Slaves were always
being branded, forcibly submerged under water, put up for sale, kicked, tied
up, and/or tarred and feathered. Since they were trying to get away, slave
owners had them chased by dogs. When and if they were caught they were
hit by paddles, whipped, and/or had a part of their body cut off: this was
considered a death sentence. The only way slaves could avoid severe
punishment was for them to do what they were told to do, when they were
told to do it.
Whipping was mainly used to control the slave’s behaviours. The number of
lashes that a slave received reflected the seriousness of the offense. On some
plantations there were 39 lashes. A specific person, Francis Fredric, ran away
and had freedom for nine weeks; however, when he was caught he received
107 lashes from his owner. For Moses Roper it was different; he received 200
lashes and would have gotten more if the master’s wife had not pleaded for
her husband to stop. It did not matter if the slave was a woman or a man,
they were still whipped.
Punishments
Bridles, necklaces, ankle
shackles etc
These were made of iron and
were incredibly heavy. They
would cause severe chaffing.
Scar tissue from
severe whipping
Punishments
Punishments
Thrashing
Speculum Oris
(Jaw breaker)
Hanging and paddling
Homes
Homes
Homes
The accommodation provided for slaves usually consisted of wooden shacks with dirt
floors. According to Jacob Stroyer they were built to house two families: "Some had
partitions, while others had none. When there were no partitions each family would fit
up its own part as it could; sometimes they got old boards and nailed them up, stuffing
the cracks with rags; when they could not get boards they hung up old clothes."
Another slave, Josiah Henson wrote that "Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a
single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children.
We had neither bedsteads, nor furniture of any description. Our beds were collections of
straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners and boxed in with boards; a single blanket
the only covering."
Homes
House slaves usually lived better than field slaves. They usually had better food and were sometimes given the family's
cast-off clothing. William Wells Brown, a slave from Lexington, Kentucky, explained in his autobiography, Narrative of
William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave (1847): "I was a house servant - a situation preferable to that of a field hand, as I
was better fed, better clothed, and not obliged to rise at the ringing of the bell, but about half an hour after."
Not all slave-owners took this view, Harriet Jacobs, a house slave from Edenton, North Carolina, reports that on Sunday
her mistress "would station herself in the kitchen, and wait till it was dished, and then spit in all the kettles and pans"
to make sure that the slaves did not eat what was left over. Jacobs adds: "She did this to prevent the cook and her
children from eking out their meagre fare with the remains of the gravy and other scrapings. The slaves could get
nothing to eat except what she chose to give them. Provisions were weighed out by the pound and ounce, three times
a day. I can assure you she gave them no chance to eat wheat bread from her flour barrel. She knew how many biscuits
a quart of flour would make, and exactly what size they ought to be."
Their living accommodation was also better than those of other slaves. In some cases the slaves were treated like the
slave-owners children. However, Lewis Clarke believed that some house slaves were worse off than field slaves: "There
were four house-slaves in this family, including myself, and though we had not, in all respects, so hard work as the field
hands, yet in many things our condition was much worse. We were constantly exposed to the whims and passions of
every member of the family; from the least to the greatest their anger was wreaked upon us. Nor was our life an easy
one, in the hours of our toil or in the amount of labor performed. We were always required to sit up until all the family
had retired; then we must be up at early dawn in summer, and before day in winter."
When this happened close bonds of affection and friendship usually developed. Even though it was illegal, some house
slaves were educated by the women in the family. Trusted house slaves who had provided good service over a long
period of time were sometimes promised their freedom when their master's died. However, there are many cases
where this promise was not kept.
Gad Heuman and James Walvin, the authors of Slave Work (2003): "The domestic life of whites was dominated by slave
domestics. Visitors, again, were struck by the huge numbers of black servants working in and around the homes of
white people in the slave colonies. Nannies and nurses, cooks, and washers, gardeners and cleaners, each and every
conceivable domestic role was undertaken by slaves. Overwhelmingly women, slave domestics faced different
problems from their contemporaries in the fields. Though perhaps better-off materially, domestic slaves often had
uncomfortable relations with their white owners. They faced all the potential aggravations of close proximity, from
sexual threats through to white women's dissatisfaction and anger."
Food
Field slaves lived mostly on a diet of cornmeal, salt herring, and pork. They had two meals a
day. There was breakfast at twelve and dinner much later. Solom Northrup, a slave from a
Louisiana plantation said when describing his meals given to him by the planter: "All that is
allowed them is corn and bacon which is given out in the corncrib and smoke-house every
Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly allowance, three and a half pounds of
bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of a meal. That is all- no tea, coffee, sugar, and with
the exception of a very scanty sprinkling now and then, no salt....."
Francis Henderson from Washington D.C. also said something similar. " Our allowance was
given weekly- a peck of sifted cornmeal, a dozen and a half herrings, and two and a half
pounds of pork. Some of the boys would eat this up in three days... I never sat down at a
table to eat except for at harvest time, all the time I was a slave."
Sometimes, when they were desperate for food the slaves stole animals at a high risk of
being caught and punished. They were also allowed to keep small gardens called 'truck
patches' to provide a little bit more food. Most slaves went hungry because of their small
rations. Some planters allowed the slaves a gun to shoot their own food. They also fished.
House slaves were given the leftovers from the big house meals.
At Christmas, slaves were sometimes given a couple days to a week off. Some plantations
provided extra rations. Some were even lucky enough to receive small valuables or amounts
of money.
Food
Name: Chittlins
Description: Cleaned
and boiled pig
intestines
Display approximating the ration of food (cornmeal, fish,
and pork) given to each adult slave per week.
Sometimes they were given pots and pans for cooking, but more often they had to make
their own. The long hours they had to work in the fields meant that they had little free time
for making things to improve their living conditions. Some slaves used a hollowed out
pumpkin shell called a calabash, to cook their food in.
Most plantation owners did not spend more money on food for their slaves than they had to
and so the slaves lived on a diet of fatty meat and cornbread.
Free time
Most slaves had to work from sunrise to sunset. Some owners made their slaves work
every day, others allowed slaves one day a month off and some allowed their slaves to
have Sundays as a rest-day.
Slaves would spend their free time mending their huts, making pots and pans and relaxing.
Some plantation owners allowed their slaves a small plot of land to grow things to
supplement their diet.
Slaves were not allowed to read or write, but some were allowed to go to church.
Spare time depended on what sort of people owned them. Some slaves were worked so
hard that all they were able to do was rest. yet others had enough time and energy to lead
some sort of social life amongst other slaves. They held religious ceremonies, danced,
sung, drank (if they could get any), sold goods at market, told stories and spent time with
their families.
Some slaves would dance and sing when they had
the opportunity too.
Some practiced religions from their days in Africa,
but had to do so carefully in case the Planter found
out.
Daily Life of a Plantation Slave
What would it be like to be owned by another person as anything else is owned? Slaves were owned by
other people. To buy a slave was very costly just as something in a store might be. There are two types
of slaves, field workers and house slaves or servants. Most people would think that being a house slave
would be easier, but being on task at all times, or being a cook for a whole plantation was not easy.
Field Workers
Being a field slave was not at all easy. A field slave worked from sunrise to sunset, but during harvest,
they worked an eighteen-hour day. A field worker was out in the field when the first sign of light shone
until it was too dark to see. Women field workers worked the same hours as men. Pregnant women
were expected to work until the child was born, and after the child's birth the woman worked in the
field with the child on her back. Field workers lived in tiny huts with dirt for a floor. These small huts
were no protection against the cold winter winds. Slaves slept on rough blankets inside the hut. On
Saturday nights slaves from different plantations usually came together to have a meeting. After a day
on a cotton plantation the slaves got in a line to have their cotton weighed and receive their daily food.
The minimum amount of cotton to be picked in one day was 200 pounds. The field slaves were driven
all day long by a white overseer with a whip. At about the age of twelve a child's work became almost
the same as an adult's. Slaves got Sundays off and maybe parts of Saturday unless it was during
harvest. On very hot days slaves might be given one to two hours off at midday. Slaves sometimes
hunted and fished during their free time. A field worker's day was filled with hard work.
Daily Life of a Plantation Slave
House Slaves
Most house slaves were living under better conditions than field workers. However, house
slaves did not get Sunday off and usually attended church with the master and mistress.
House slaves cleaned, cooked, served meals, and took care of the children. Some house
slaves lived in attics, closets, or corners in the big house even if their families lived in the
quarters.
A cook's day was long and hard. A cook got up early in the morning to cook breakfast, and
the day ended with cleaning up after dinner and gathering firewood for the next day. These
slaves sometimes stole food from the owner. A house slave had a better opportunity to
learn how to read and write. They often listened in on their owner's conversations so they
were able to warn field slaves of the owner auctioning certain slaves and other important
things. House slaves did many other things such as: waited on tables, washed, ironed, took
up and put down carpets, hauled the large steaming pots for the preservation of fruits,
lifted the barrels with cucumbers soaking in brine, opened up the barrels of flour, swept
floors, dusted furniture, hoed and weeded gardens, and collected the chicken eggs. They
also took care of the infants allowing the mistress to do whatever she wanted. These slaves
also weaved, quilted and spun linens. Although house slaves had more privileges, being a
house slave was not much, if any easier than being a field worker.
Daily Life of a Plantation Slave
6.00am wake up
6.30am take breakfast with you to plantation
unit
9.00am break
9.05am back to work
9.00pm home
11.30pm sleep
Daily Life of a Plantation Slave
"The daily life of a slave was incredibly busy and exhausting. There were
generally two kinds of slaves. There were slaves who worked in house called
house slaves and slaves who worked in the fields called field slaves. The day
began very early for both of them. If a person was a field slave, they were
expected to be up at or before dawn and perform their duties until the sun set. It
didn't matter . if you were a man or woman, you worked no matter what. Field
slaves picked crops and did outside work that went along with it. House slaves
were also up before sunrise to prepare breakfast for the family. They cleaned the
house, ironed clothing, took care of the children, swept, dusted, mopped floors,
prepared all meals and did anything else the master of the house told them too.
Most of these slaves worked a minimum of 16 hour days and when harvest time
came along, they would work 18 hours a day. They might get Sunday off if they
were lucky. Being a slave was hard and dirty work."
Daily Life of a Plantation Slave
By 1860, almost 1/3 of the population was made up of slaves in the south. Most slaves worked on cotton
plantations. The men and women planted, harvested, and removed weeds and other unwanted plants from
the land. Teenagers worked in the fields, too. Work for children wasn’t too hard. They pulled out weeds,
picked insects off of the crops, and took water to other workers.
Slaves’ lives didn’t matter to anyone. An owner of a slave could do anything to them. They thought of slaves
as items you buy instead of human beings. If a slave didn’t work hard, their owner usually didn’t treat their
slave well. Some owners treated their slaves well, so they would do good work because slaves were very
expensive.
Some people did not treat slaves well. They sometimes beat slaves, and they also punished them very badly.
The main reason for this is because the owners had complete power over their slaves, and they thought their
slaves would work harder if they were afraid of being punished by their owners. The slaves worked very hard,
but the owners did not pay them. The owners considered them to be property (not people) that they could
treat as badly as they wanted.
It was hard to keep a family together for slaves. This was because when slaves got sold, they would most
likely get split up and would have to go to different plantations to work. Once a family member was sold away
to another plantation, they sometimes would never see their family again. Many slaves wanted to visit their
families, but they were too far away or they may not have even known where their family was. Some baby
slaves didn’t even know their family because some of them were sold right after they were born.
To keep the slaves under control, the people of the south made laws about what slaves could and could not
do. The slaves could not do the following:
•go outside after dark
•gather in groups of three or more
•leave their owner’s property without a written pass
•own weapons
•learn to read or write
The branding iron was
heated in a fire until it
glowed red hot.
A slave being branded with a
burning hot branding iron. This
would permanently scar the
skin and be incredibly painful.
Slave families
The plantation owners in America had complete freedom to buy and sell slaves. State laws gave slave
marriages no legal protection and in these transactions husbands could be separated from their wives
and children from their mothers. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass claimed that in the part
of Maryland where he was born: "to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently,
before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a
considerable distance off."
Lewis Clarke, who was a slave in Madison County, Kentucky, claims that there were often economic
reasons for breaking up families. "The death of a large owner is the occasion usually of many families
being broken up. Bankruptcy is another cause of separation, and the hard-heartedness of a majority of
slaveholders another and a more fruitful cause than either or all the rest. Generally there is but little
more scruple about separating families than there is with a man who keeps sheep in selling off the lambs
in the fall.“
Elizabeth Keckley recalls that "when I was about seven years old I witnessed, for the first time, the sale of
a human being." Keckley points out in Thirty Years a Slave (1868): "We were living at Prince Edward, in
Virginia, and master had just purchased his hogs for the winter, for which he was unable to pay in full. To
escape from his embarrassment it was necessary to sell one of the slaves. Little Joe, the son of the cook,
was selected as the victim. His mother was ordered to dress him up in his Sunday clothes, and send him
to the house. He came in with a bright face, was placed in the scales, and was sold, like the hogs, at so
much per pound. His mother was kept in ignorance of the transaction, but her suspicions were aroused.
When her son started for Petersburgh in the wagon, the truth began to dawn upon her mind, and she
pleaded piteously that her boy should not be taken from her; but master quieted her by telling her that
he was simply going to town with the wagon, and would be back in the morning.“
Slave families
Slave women and their children
being separated at auction.
Slave families
The owner of Harriet Jacobs used the threat of selling her children as a means of controlling her
behaviour. In her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs described how one mother, who
had just witnessed seven of her children being sold at a slave-market: "She begged the trader to tell
her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would
sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in the
street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and
exclaimed, 'Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?' I had no words wherewith to comfort her."
Slave families were sometimes taken to the slave-market to be sold off to different people.
Mary Prince explained what happened to her when she was a child: "At length the vendue master,
who was to offer us for sale like sheep or cattle, arrived, and asked my mother which was the eldest.
She said nothing, but pointed to me. He took me by the hand, and led me out into the middle of the
street, and, turning me slowly round, exposed me to the view of those who attended the vendue. I
was soon surrounded by strange men, who examined and handled me in the same manner that a
butcher would a calf or a lamb he was about to purchase, and who talked about my shape and size in
like words - as if I could no more understand their meaning than the dumb beasts. I was then put up
to sale. The bidding commenced at a few pounds, and gradually rose to fifty-seven, when I was
knocked down to the highest bidder; and the people who stood by said that I had fetched a great sum
for so young a slave. I then saw my sisters led forth, and sold to different owners: so that we had not
the sad satisfaction of being partners in bondage. When the sale was over, my mother hugged and
kissed us, and mourned over us, begging of us to keep up a good heart, and do our duty to our new
masters. It was a sad parting; one went one way, one another, and our poor mammy went home with
nothing."
Slave families
As a child, Henry Bibb saw his brothers and sisters sold to different slave owners. Bibb was
hired out to various slave holders and had little contact with his mother. He later
recalled: "A slave may be bought and sold in the market like an ox. He is liable to be sold off
to a distant land from his family. He is bound in chains hand and foot; and his sufferings are
aggravated a hundred fold, by the terrible thought, that he is not allowed to struggle
against misfortune, corporal punishment, insults and outrages committed upon himself and
family; and he is not allowed to help himself, to resist or escape the blow, which he sees
impending over him. I was a slave, a prisoner for life; I could possess nothing, nor acquire
anything but what must belong to my keeper. No one can imagine my feelings in my
reflecting moments, but he who has himself been a slave.“
Moses Grandy was born a slave in Camden County. His wife was sold by his master while he
was working in the fields. He rushed home to find that his master had placed her in a
wagon: "He drew out a pistol, and said that if I went near the wagon on which she was, he
would shoot me. I asked for leave to shake hands with her, which he refused, but said I
might stand at a distance and talk with her. My heart was so full, that I could say very little. I
asked leave to give her a dram: he told Mr. Burgess, the man who was with him, to get
down and carry it to her. I gave her the little money I had in my pocket, and bid her
farewell. I have never seen or heard of her from that day to this. I loved her as I loved my
life."
Slave families
In 1848 Henry Box Brown, a slave in Richmond, discovered that his wife and three
children were sold to a slave trader who sent them to North Carolina. Brown later
recalled: "I had not been many hours at my work, when I was informed that my wife and
children were taken from their home, sent to the auction mart and sold, and then lay in
prison ready to start away the next day for North Carolina with the man who had
purchased them. I cannot express, in language, what were my feelings on this occasion. I
received a message, that if I wished to see my wife and children, and bid them the last
farewell, I could do so, by taking my stand on the street where they were all to pass on
their way for North Carolina. I quickly availed myself of this information, and placed
myself by the side of a street, and soon had the melancholy satisfaction of witnessing
the approach of a gang of slaves, amounting to three hundred and fifty in number,
marching under the direction of a Methodist minister, by whom they were purchased,
and amongst which slaves were my wife and children.“
A study of slave records by the Freedmen's Bureau of 2,888 slave marriages in
Mississippi (1,225), Tennessee (1,123) and Louisiana (540), revealed that over 32 per
cent of marriages were dissolved by masters as a result of slaves being sold away from
the family home.
Cotton Fields
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxmbie8dfkI
Early in the Morning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=
YTkxHboqRR8&feature=endscreen
Workin’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfQNd
wgvJMw
Banana boat song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMigXn
XMhQ4
Your booklet
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well as a suitable title
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• Information pages covering the 6 criteria;
make sure there is a nice balance of images
and text
• Include plenty of colour and tidy presentation