Daily Life Under Slavery in Antebellum America

Introduction: The Institution of Slavery

The ethically repugnant institution of slavery in pre-Civil War America manifested itself in the cruel conditions of daily life for thousands of African Americans. Nothing can quite capture the actual suffering endured by the thousands of enslaved people who toiled on American plantations before the Civil War. Daily life consisted of up to eighteen hours of work with only monotonous gruel for sustenance, sporadic and often deadly floggings, whippings, and beatings, and restless sleep in tiny multi-family dirt-floor dwellings. On Southern plantations, enslaved people were routinely and unexpectedly beaten, torn from their families, and kept deliberately illiterate out of the fear that learning to read would instigate rebellions and escape attempts.

When Black Americans did begin to study the Christian Bible, those teachings did indeed lead to mass movements of attempted liberation. These failed miserably and ended in systematic killings. To make up for their losses, slave owners bred human children as if they were farm animals, often forcing mothers to begin giving birth as early as age thirteen. While house slaves enjoyed a slightly better life than their field-working counterparts, life inside plantation homes was akin to, or worse than, life in prison. Moreover, because slavery was legally permitted and morally justified by the vast majority of Southern whites whose livelihoods depended on it, Black Americans had absolutely no legal or political outlets. Rape, physical assault, and murder went not only unpunished — they were practically expected from the owners of enslaved people. Enslaved people were treated as subhuman, their race deemed by their oppressors to make them unworthy of full human life. Enslaved people attempted to create African communities on their plantations through religious rituals, music, and kinship bonds; however, the solace afforded by these practices remained insufficient against the constant physical, emotional, and mental oppression of the institution.

Labor and Working Conditions

During harvest time, enslaved people toiled in the fields for up to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. Even during the remainder of the year, daily work routines were inhumane. Enslaved workers were pushed well beyond their physical capabilities, even though they were assigned tasks according to their particular strengths. Women well into their pregnancies worked alongside their male counterparts in plantation fields, plowing or hoeing; there was virtually no sex differentiation when it came to field work. The practice of "hard driving" enslaved workers went hand-in-hand with physical punishments intended to spur men and women to work faster. Children as young as six years old were forced to carry water or weed the fields.

Crops like cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco thrived on slave labor, which was considerably cheaper than hiring paid workers. Work on the fields never ceased throughout the year, in large part due to the mild Southern climate; there was, essentially, no respite from labor during the course of an enslaved person's life.

Punishment and Physical Abuse

Each plantation or region in the South had different labor codes for enslaved people, but they all permitted gross physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Mutilation, branding, chaining, whipping, drowning, and murder were common practices employed to maximize productivity or to express complete dominance over the enslaved population. Whippings were unpredictably delivered and often escalated far beyond their original intent. On September 15, 1844, the St. Louis Republican reported a story about an eight-year-old enslaved girl who was brutalized by her master: "The flesh on the back and limbs was beaten to a jelly — one shoulder-bone was laid bare — there were several cuts, apparently from a club, on the head — and around the neck was the indentation of a cord, by which it is supposed she had been confined to a tree."

Stories like these were not uncommon; in fact, they were so much a part of life in the South that beatings mostly went unnoticed and especially unpunished. Because enslaved people were not permitted to testify in court, they had no legal recourse to protect them from physical violence or murder. They were frequently drowned, hanged, beaten to death, or burned at the stake. Enslaved women were commonly raped by their white masters or other white male family members; children born from those unions were, of course, born into slavery.

Conclusion: The Legacy of Bondage

The ultimate physical manifestation of the dehumanizing practice of slavery was in the routine punishments delivered to enslaved people. Slave owners hired men called overseers to be responsible for whipping and flogging. Their work most commonly involved whipping at will to frighten enslaved workers into laboring harder. Around twenty lashes was the norm, but some accounts describe as many as two hundred lashes delivered at one time ("Whipping of Slaves"). The bodies of enslaved people were systematically mutilated through branding or other means; in some instances, enslaved workers were actually smoked alongside tobacco in smokehouses. Masters sometimes salted lash wounds to intensify suffering. Enslaved workers still had to labor in spite of the intense pain from their punishments. Combined with malnutrition and disease, the conditions of enslaved life were deadly. With absolutely no legal recourse, enslaved people had no choice but to submit to these tortures, and no enslaved person was permitted to own a weapon.

The Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers, was the only religious organization to oppose slavery in the United States from its earliest history. Until the abolitionist movement blossomed in the North, slavery remained an accepted way of life across the country. Even poor whites who did not own enslaved people supported the institution: racism permitted them to feel superior to at least some other group, and slavery was also integral to the Southern economy and lifestyle. When Northerners and abolitionist groups began to openly question and challenge the validity of slavery, thousands of enslaved people still continued to suffer on a daily basis — eating from troughs, working fifteen or more hours a day in any weather, all year round, being torn from family and friends to be sold at will, and being randomly beaten, assaulted, and raped. This was the day-to-day existence for thousands of people. Considered subhuman, African enslaved people toiled on Southern plantations for centuries, sustaining an economy built entirely on their suffering. No accumulation of rationalizations can obscure the hypocrisy and abject evil of the institution, which was only abolished one hundred and fifty years ago.

Works Cited

"Antebellum Slavery: Health." Plantation Slave Life. cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/slavery/antebellum_slavery/plantation_slave_life/health.htm.

Burton, Annie. Excerpt from Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days. 1909. Cited at "Slave Marriages." Encyclopaedia of Slavery. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASmarriage.htm.

Douglass, Frederick. Excerpt from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845. Cited at "Slave Songs." Encyclopaedia of Slavery. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASsongs.htm.

Excerpt from an article printed in the St. Louis Republican. 15 Sept. 1844. Cited at "The Whipping of Slaves." Encyclopaedia of Slavery. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASwhipping.htm.

Frederic, Francis. Excerpt from Fifty Years of Slavery. 1863. Cited at "Food and Clothing." Encyclopaedia of Slavery. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASfood.htm.

"House Slaves." Encyclopaedia of Slavery. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASdomestic.htm.

Perez, Susel. "Slave Religion." Antebellum Slavery: Plantation Slave Life. cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/slavery/antebellum_slavery/plantation_slave_life/diet_religion/religion.htm.

"Spirituals: Expressions of Slave Life." afroamhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa092300a.htm.

"Whipping of Slaves." Encyclopaedia of Slavery. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASwhipping.htm.