Living Conditions of Slaves
Directions: Read the following passage and complete questions from section 20.5
Most masters viewed their slaves as they did their land—things to be “worn out, not improved.” They provided only what was needed to keep their slaves healthy enough to work. Slaves lived crowded together in rough cabins. One recalled,
We lodged in log huts, and on bare ground. Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children . . . We had neither bedsteads, nor furniture of any description. Our beds were collections of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners.
Slaves seldom went hungry. “Not to give a slave enough to eat,” reported Frederick Douglass, “is regarded as . . . meanness [stinginess] even among slaveholders.” Slaves received rations of cornmeal, bacon, and molasses. Many kept gardens or hunted and fished to vary their diets. The owner described below fed his slaves well:
Marse [master] Alec had plenty for his slaves to eat. There was
meat, bread, collard greens, snap beans, ’taters, peas, all sorts of
dried fruit, and just lots of milk and butter.
Slaves wore clothing made of coarse homespun linen or rough “Negro cloth.” Northern textile mills made this cloth especially for slave clothes. Douglass reported that a field hand received a yearly allowance of “two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers . . . one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse Negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes.” Children too young to work received “two coarse linen shirts per year. When these failed them, they went naked” until the next year.
While slaves were poorly housed and clothed compared to most white Southerners, they were more likely to receive medical care. Slaveholders often hired doctors to treat sick or injured slaves. Given doctors’ limited medical knowledge, this care probably did little to improve slaves’ health.
Directions:
Click on the link below and choose one of the four Africans who were kidnapped, tricked, or sold into slavery. Once you have completed your chosen slave's story, answer the following questions.
Choose your destiny
1. What was your slave's African name? What was their slave name?
2. What was life like for the African before the were put on the ship?
3. Where were they kept before they were put on the ship to go across the ocean?
4. What was the trip on the ocean like for the african?
5. Describe what happened to and around the African once they reached their final destination.
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