What did slaves do?

Besides planting and harvesting, there were numerous other types of labor required on plantations and farms. Enslaved people had to clear new land, dig ditches, cut and haul wood, slaughter livestock, and make repairs to buildings and tools.

What activities did slaves do?

Large plantations had field hands and house servants. House servants performed tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and driving, while the field hands labored for up to 20 hours a day clearing land, planting seed, and harvesting crops.

What was the main job of slaves?

The vast majority of enslaved Africans employed in plantation agriculture were field hands. Even on plantations, however, they worked in other capacities. Some were domestics and worked as butlers, waiters, maids, seamstresses, and launderers. Others were assigned as carriage drivers, hostlers, and stable boys.

What did slaves do in their daily life?

Slave life varied greatly depending on many factors. Life on the fields meant working sunup to sundown six days a week and having food sometimes not suitable for an animal to eat. Plantation slaves lived in small shacks with a dirt floor and little or no furniture.

What jobs did slaves work?

Hired slaves performed all kinds of labor: women worked domestic jobs such as laundering and wet-nursing, while men labored on roads, canals, and railroads. Others worked in industries such as mining coal, smelting iron, and processing tobacco. Skilled slaves might work as carpenters or blacksmiths.

Life Aboard a Slave Ship | History

What did slaves do to get punished?

Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding, rape, and imprisonment. Punishment was often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was performed to re-assert the dominance of the master (or overseer) over the slave.

What are the 3 types of slaves?

Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone. The three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labour, and forced labour.

What were slaves not allowed to do?

There were numerous restrictions to enforce social control: slaves could not be away from their owner's premises without permission; they could not assemble unless a white person was present; they could not own firearms; they could not be taught to read or write, nor could they transmit or possess “inflammatory” ...

How much sleep did slaves get?

Sixteen to eighteen hours of work was the norm on most West Indian plantations, and during the season of sugarcane harvest, most slaves only got four hours of sleep.

How did slaves keep clean?

One respondent claimed dirt floors were the “style” upon his plantation, and enslaved people kept them “clean an' white” with consistent sweeping. Though their cabins presented difficulties in matters of cleanliness, enslaved people persistently cleaned their cabins and garnered a sense of pride in their work.

How long did slaves live?

Some estimates placed the average longevity of Blacks at 21.4 years of age in 1850, with the average longevity for Whites at age 25.5. The combination of lower living standards, greater exposure, heavier labor, and poorer medical care gave slaves a higher mortality rate than whites.

What did slaves drink?

in which slaves obtained alcohol outside of the special occasions on which their masters allowed them to drink it. Some female house slaves were assigned to brew cider, beer, and/or brandy on their plantations.

What did slaves do on their day of rest?

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 non-forced working time mending their huts, making pots and pans and relaxing.

When did slaves eat?

Recalled a former enslaved man: "The peas, the beans, the turnips, the potatoes, all seasoned up with meats and sometimes a ham bone, was cooked in a big iron kettle and when meal time come they all gathered around the pot for a-plenty of helpings!" This took place at noon, or whenever the field slaves were given a ...

How did slaves cook their food?

Slaves could roast potatoes in hot ashes while wrapped in leaves, like they would with cornbread or ash-cake, or cook them over the fire with other foods. Nellie Smith, a former slave from Georgia, remembered her grandmother would bake potatoes alongside a roast.

Did slaves get days off?

Slaves were generally allowed a day off on Sunday, and on infrequent holidays such as Christmas or the Fourth of July. During their few hours of free time, most slaves performed their own personal work.

What did slaves do in winter?

In his 1845 Narrative, Douglass wrote that slaves celebrated the winter holidays by engaging in activities such as "playing ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whiskey" (p.

What age did slaves start working?

Between the ages of seven and twelve, boys and girls were put to work in intensive field work. Older or physically handicapped slaves were put to work in cloth houses, spinning cotton, weaving cloth, and making clothes.

What did slaves fear more than punishment?

What did slaves fear more than physical punishment? Separation from their families.

What happened to slaves if they were caught reading?

In most southern states, anyone caught teaching a slave to read would be fined, imprisoned, or whipped. The slaves themselves often suffered severe punishment for the crime of literacy, from savage beatings to the amputation of fingers and toes.

Were slaves allowed to be educated?

During the era of slavery in the United States, the education of enslaved African Americans, except for religious instruction, was discouraged, and eventually made illegal in most of the Southern states.

Who ended slavery?

On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The necessary number of states (three-fourths) ratified it by December 6, 1865.

How much did slaves get paid a day?

Let us say that the slave, He/she, began working in 1811 at age 11 and worked until 1861, giving a total of 50 years labor. For that time, the slave earned $0.80 per day, 6 days per week. This equals $4.80 per week, times 52 weeks per year, which equals pay of $249.60 per year.

Are slaves legal?

Slavery is still constitutionally legal in the United States. It was mostly abolished after the 13th Amendment was ratified following the Civil War in 1865, but not completely. Lawmakers at the time left a certain population unprotected from the brutal, inhumane practice — those who commit crimes.

How many times were slaves whipped?

Sometimes slaves are kept in the stocks two or three weeks, and whipped twice a week, and fed on gruel, because they run away or steal. Slaves have to go to the fields after being whipped, when their skin is so cut up that they have to keep all the time pulling their clothes away from the raw flesh.