 Slaves were like property to the slave owners, and they worked without pay. They worked day and night and had to sleep in a small, one room cabin.  Sometimes the slave owners would beat them if the were slow with work or were to weak. It was a very, very hard life as a slave.

The African people were taken from their homes and put on a ship to be auctioned off. They didn’t have any space and they had to relieve themselves where they were sitting. They had to eat rotten food and drink dirty water and because of that most of them died.

 The Emancipation Proclamation was a document that Abraham Lincoln signed stating that slaves where free and slavery was illegal. But because of that the Civil war was made. The south side (or the soldiers in gray) wanted slavery to stay and the north side (in blue) wanted to end slavery. Soon we won and the slaves were free.