S. The lives of the slaves were sharply divided from the whites on the plantation. The slaves lived away from the main house in the slave quarters, and only the house slaves were allowed in the main house. The slaves not only worked in the fields, they had to grow their own gardens for food, and they usually only got Sunday off. During planting and harvest, they worked long hours, from sunrise to sunset, and they faced harsh retribution if they attempted to complain. They were the most harshly treated of any of these groups of slaves, and they suffered the most, too. During the four centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, an estimated eleven million Africans were transported to North and South America" (Notes), and as noted, millions of them died along the way, so it is really not known how many left Africa never to return. Slaves in the New World were seen as inhuman and because they were black, they were treated more like animals than people. It began a form of bigotry and hatred that still exists today.

Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was quite different from the other forms of slavery. This was where the practice of African slavery began, and it was where it was practiced quite differently than other systems. In the Empire, slaves could rise to a very high social status, in fact, many of them were officials in the Ottoman government, who had...

Harem girls are another element of slaves in the society that actually rose to very high positions. Slaves could sometimes gain their freedom, too, which sometimes happened in New World slavery, but not nearly as often.
Like the African system, the sultan kept the spoils of war, and that included captives from battles. These captives were trained to personally serve the sultan and converted to Islam, as well. This was called the Dev-irme system, and it was a form of slavery because the sultan had absolute power over the captives. However, these slaves also enjoyed privileges in society, many of them were in the high offices of the military and the state, and they were paid well, too. The sultan also filled his army with young boys conscripted from their mothers in enemy territory, and this was also part of the Dev-irme system, and in this, it was similar to the African system where the captives of war became slaves to the victors. The Ottomans also had agreements where a term of slavery would end, and the slave was then free, leaving them freedmen and able to enjoy the lifestyle of a free and equal person. Slaves could be black or white, and it is estimated that one-fifth of the Ottoman population was slaves at one point.