Research Paper On Slavery

Slavery
You may think that slavery wasn't a big deal back then, but trust me slavery was a big deal back then and I’m going to tell you some things about it. Most slaves were African Americans and black people. Where they lived was different then the slave holders, they lived in rural areas where they worked mostly on farms and plantations the slaves did a variety of jobs that they were assigned but most of them worked in the fields. The slaveholders demanded that they worked as much as possible, the supervisors known as drivers who were sometimes slaves themselves, made sure that the slaves followed all of the orders. When they worked in the field the owners used the gang-labor system. In this system all field hands worked on the same task
At the time, women who looked after children were called nurses. Some slaves tried to brighten up their clothing by stitching on designs from discarded scraps of material. Many of the slaves did whatever they could to improve their small food rations, some of the planters allowed slave to have their own gardens for vegetables, and chickens for eggs, all of the other slaves were able to add a little variety to their diet by fishing and/or picking wild berries. Some of the planters offered more food or a better living condition to encourage slaves’ obedience, but most slaveholders would punish one slave in front of all the other slaves as a warning to all of them. “The punishments were whipping, putting you in the stocks [wooden frames to lock people in] and making you wear irons and a chain at work. Then they had a collar to put round your neck with two horns, like cows’ horns, so that you could not lie down… Sometimes they dug a hole like a well with a door on top. This they called a dungeon keeping you in it two or three weeks or a month, or sometimes till you died in there” (Harry McMillan). To control the slaves actions, many states passed strict laws and those are called slave codes, some laws prohibited slaves from traveling far from