1. Daily Life of a Slave
April 26, 2010

2. Plantation Slaves lived and worked on large farms called plantations
Plantations grew crops such as cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar

3. The Cotton Gin
The invention of cotton gin caused there to be an increased need for slaves

4. Work of a Field Slave A field slave worked from sunrise to sunset
Field workers lived in tiny huts with dirt for a floor
The field slaves were driven all day long by a white overseer with a whip.

7. Work of a House Slave
Most house slaves were living under better conditions than field workers
House slaves cleaned, cooked, served meals, and took care of the children.
Some house slaves lived in attics, closets, or corners

8. What about the kids? Children 6-10 might be water carriers.
Children were put to weeding.

9. Mistreatment
Treatments were given such as mutilation, branding, chaining, and murder
Whippings, beatings, drownings, and hangings were as unpredictable and gruesome.

10. Punishments
Other items used for punishments included stocks, chains, collars, and irons.

11. Slave Collars

12. Black Codes
Laws defining the status of slaves and the rights of masters
It was illegal to teach a slave to read

13. Examples of Slave Codes (Don’t Copy)
State laws to limit movement of slaves and define them as property
Cannot own a gun
Marriages not legally recognized
No alcohol
Passes to leave plantation
Illegal to teach slaves to read or write
Legalized homicide as “punishment”

14. Free Blacks Non-slaves in the South ( in small numbers)
Mainly manual labor

15. Mulatto
A child of a slave and a white person

16. Slave Life (don’t copy)
Mortality rates were 3 times higher
Life expectancy
Blacks 20’s
Whites 40’s
25% sick

17. Slave Population, 1820–1860
Slavery spread southwestward from the upper South and the eastern seaboard following the spread of cotton cultivation.

18. The Words of Fountain Hughes, Former Slave
Born 1848
Interviewed by Hermond Norwood, Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949
My name is Fountain Hughes. I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. My grandfather belong to Thomas Jefferson.

19. Life as a Slave: Fountain Hughes (continued)
We had no home, you know. We was jus' turned out like a lot of cattle. You know how they turn cattle out in a pasture? Well after freedom, you know, colored people didn' have nothing.
Didn' allow you to look at no book. An' there was some free-born colored people, why they had a little education, but there was very few of them, where we was.
Now I couldn' go from here across the street, or I couldn' go through nobody's house out I have a note, or something from my master. An' if I had that pass, that was what we call a pass, if I had that pass, I could go wherever he sent me.

20. His account
• John Rolfe wrote in his day book in 1619 – “came in a Dutch man-of-war 20 Negars” What we know about them: One man, Anthony Johnson – A. In John Rolfe casually noted that "came in a dutch man of warre tht ld t t N " that sold us twenty Negars"