The Sociology of Slavery 325The majority of the slaves of both sexes were field
hands who labored on the land from dawn to dusk.
Household servants and artisans, indeed any slave
other than small children and the aged and infirm,
might be called on for such labor when needed. Slave
women were expected to cook for their own families
and do other chores after working in the fields.
Children, free and slave, were cared for by slaves,
the former by household servants, the latter usually by
an elderly woman, perhaps with the help of a girl only a
little older than the children. Infants were brought to
their mothers in the fields for nursing several times a day,
for after a month or two at most, slave mothers were
required to go back to work. Slave children were not put
to work until they were six or seven years old, and until
they were about ten they were given only small tasks
such as feeding the chickens or minding a smaller child.
Black and white youngsters played together and were
often cared for by the same nursemaid.
Slave cabins were simple and crude; most con-
sisted of a single room, dark, with a fireplace for cook-
ing and heat. Usually the flooring was raised above
ground level, though some were set on the bare earth.
In 1827 Basil Hall, a British naval officer, reported
that in a large South Carolina plantation, 140 slaves
lived in twenty-eight cottages or huts. These were
“uncommonly neat and comfortable, and might have
shamed those of many countries I have seen.” Yet
Hall dismissed the claims of whites that slaves were
happier than the peasantry of England. Slavery was,
above all, a “humiliation” imposed upon “the whole
mass of the labouring population” of the South.
Harper,The Slave Motherat
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Overseer’s Report from Chicora Wood
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It is difficult to generalize about the peculiar institution
because so much depended on the individual master’s
behavior. Although some ex-slaves told of masters who
refused to whip them, Bennet Barrow of Louisiana, a
harsh master, averaged one whipping a month. “The
great secret of our success,” another planter recalled
years later, “was the great motive power contained in
that little instrument.” Overseers were commonly
instructed to give twenty lashes for ordinary offenses,
such as shirking work or stealing, and thirty-nine for
more serious offenses, such as running away. Sometimes
slaves were whipped to death; by 1821, however, all
southern states had passed laws allowing a master to be
charged with murder if he caused a slave’s death from
excessive punishment. Conviction normally resulted in a
fine. In 1840 a South Carolina woman convicted of
killing a slave was fined $214.28.
Most owners provided adequate clothing, hous-
ing, and food for their slaves. Only a fool or a sadist
would fail to take care of such valuable property.
However, vital statistics indicate that infant mortality
among slaves was twice the white rate, life expectancy
at least five years less.
On balance, it is significant that the United States
was the only nation in the Western Hemisphere where
the slave population grew by natural increase. After
the ending of the slave trade in 1808, the black popu-
lation increased at nearly the same rate as the white.
Put differently, during the entire period from the
founding of Jamestown to the Civil War, only a little
more than half a million slaves were imported into the
country, about 5 percent of the number of Africans
carried by slavers to the New World. Yet in 1860 there
were about 4 million blacks in the United States.The Kingsley plantation, on Fort George Island in Jacksonville, Florida. Zephaniah Kingsley, the owner, bought Anta, a thirteen-year-old slave, in
- Although they were never legally married, Zephaniah described Anta—now Anna—as his wife. He freed her and all five of her children, whom
he recognized as his heirs. Anna managed the plantation until 1821, when Spain transferred Florida to the United States. Unwilling to live under the
harsh slave laws that prevailed in the South, Kingsley emigrated to Haiti with Anna and their children. The slave quarters are shown here as well.