Field hands were slaves who labored on plantations. They were commonly used to plant, tend, and harvest cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco.
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Field slaves usually worked in the fields from sunrise to sundown while being monitored by an overseer. The overseer ensured that enslaved people did not escape, slow down or cease their field work until the day was over.[ citation needed ]
Enslavers gave field slaves one outfit annually. During the winter time, enslavers may have given field slaves additional clothing or material to make other cloth to keep warm. [1]
Enslaved children did not go to school and had to work as young as possible. Enslavers gave younger children lighter tasks, like fetching meals and guarding livestock. Enslavers provided enslaved children little to no clothing until they reached puberty. [2]
Enslavers gave enslaved women long dresses to wear in the summer. During the winter, enslaved women made themselves shawls and pantalettes. [3] Enslaved women often wore turbans on their heads, covering their hair.
Enslavers gave enslaved men pants to wear in the summer and long coats in winter. [3]
Enslavers gave field slaves weekly rations of food, including meat, corn, and flour. If enslavers permitted, enslaved people could have a garden to grow themselves fresh vegetables. [1] Otherwise, they could only make a meal from their rations and anything else they could find. [1]
Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most widely used term is gratuitous manumission, "the conferment of freedom on the enslaved by enslavers before the end of the slave system".
Slavery in the colonial history of the United States, from 1526 to 1776, developed from complex factors, and researchers have proposed several theories to explain the development of the institution of slavery and of the slave trade. Slavery strongly correlated with the European colonies' demand for labor, especially for the labor-intensive plantation economies of the sugar colonies in the Caribbean and South America, operated by Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Dutch Republic.
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during early colonial days, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing.
The emancipation of the British West Indies refers to the abolition of slavery in Britain's colonies in the West Indies during the 1830s. The British government passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, which emancipated all slaves in the British West Indies. After emancipation, a system of apprenticeship was established, where emancipated slaves were required by the various colonial assemblies to continue working for their former masters for a period of four to six years in exchange for provisions. The system of apprenticeship was abolished by the various colonial assemblies in 1838, after pressure from the British public, completing the process of emancipation. These were the steps taken by British West Indian planters to solve the labour problems created by the emancipation of the enslaved Africans in 1838.
Slavery in the Spanish American colonies was an economic and social institution which existed throughout the Spanish Empire including Spain itself. In its American territories, early Spanish monarchs put forth laws against enslaving Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Queen Isabella outlawed the enslavement of Native Americans in the Spanish colonies of the New World because she viewed the natives as subjects of the Spanish monarchy. While Spain displayed an early abolitionist stance towards the Indigenous, some instances of illegal Native American slavery continued to be practiced by rogue individuals, particularly until the New Laws of 1543 which expressly prohibited it.
Slavery in the Aztec Empire and surrounding Mexica societies was widespread, with slaves known by the Nahuatl word, traction. Slaves did not inherit their status; people were enslaved as a form of punishment, after capturing in war, or voluntarily to pay off debts. Within Mexica society, slaves constituted an important class.
The history of George Washington and slavery reflects Washington's changing attitude toward enslavement. The preeminent Founding Father of the United States and a hereditary slaveowner, Washington became increasingly uneasy with it. Slavery was then a longstanding institution dating back over a century in Virginia where he lived; it was also longstanding in other American colonies and in world history. Washington's will provided for the immediate emancipation of one of his slaves, and additionally required his remaining 123 slaves to serve his wife and be freed no later than her death, so they ultimately became free one year after his death.
The institution of slavery in North America existed from the earliest years of the colonial history of the United States until 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States except as punishment for a crime. It was also abolished among the sovereign Indian tribes in Indian Territory by new peace treaties which the US required after the Civil War.
Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1516, with members of one tribe enslaving captured members of another. Later, colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions of bandeirantes. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Bible contains many references to slavery, which was a common practice in antiquity. Biblical texts outline sources and the legal status of slaves, economic roles of slavery, types of slavery, and debt slavery, which thoroughly explain the institution of slavery in Israel in antiquity. The Bible stipulates the treatment of slaves, especially in the Old Testament. There are also references to slavery in the New Testament.
Slavery among Native Americans in the United States includes slavery by and slavery of Native Americans roughly within what is currently the United States of America.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 slaves during his adult life. Jefferson freed two slaves while he lived, and five others were freed after his death, including two of his children from his relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. His other two children with Hemings were allowed to escape without pursuit. After his death, the rest of the slaves were sold to pay off his estate's debts.
Slave breeding was the practice in slave states of the United States of slave owners to systematically force the reproduction of slaves to increase their profits. It included coerced sexual relations between male slaves and women or girls, forced pregnancies of female slaves, and favoring women or young girls who could produce a relatively large number of children. The objective was to increase the number of slaves without incurring the cost of purchase, and to fill labor shortages caused by the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.
Slavery in Virginia began with the capture and enslavement of Native Americans during the early days of the English Colony of Virginia and through the late eighteenth century. They primarily worked in tobacco fields. Africans were first brought to colonial Virginia in 1619, when 20 Africans from present-day Angola arrived in Virginia aboard the ship The White Lion.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again.
Slavery in Latin America was an economic and social institution that existed in Latin America from before the colonial era until its legal abolition in the newly independent states during the 19th century. However, it continued illegally in some regions into the 20th century. Slavery in Latin America began in the pre-colonial period when indigenous civilizations, including the Maya and Aztec, enslaved captives taken in war. After the conquest of Latin America by the Spanish and Portuguese, of the nearly 12 million slaves that were shipped across the Atlantic, over 4 million enslaved Africans were brought to Latin America. Roughly 3.5 million of those slaves were brought to Brazil.
Slavery in Cuba was a portion of the larger Atlantic Slave Trade that primarily supported Spanish plantation owners engaged in the sugarcane trade. It was practised on the island of Cuba from the 16th century until it was abolished by Spanish royal decree on October 7, 1886.
Betty was a biracial enslaved woman owned by Martha Washington. She was owned by the Custis Estate and worked at Daniel Parke Custis' plantation, the White House, on the Pamunkey River in New Kent County, Virginia. Custis married Martha Dandridge in 1750 and, when he died in 1757, Betty became one of Martha's dower slaves whom she brought to George Washington's plantation, Mount Vernon, after the Washington marriage in 1759. Betty worked at Mount Vernon until she died.
Marriage of enslaved people in the United States was generally not legal before the American Civil War (1861–1865). Enslaved African Americans were considered chattel legally, and they were denied human or civil rights until the United States abolished slavery with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Both state and federal laws denied, or rarely defined, rights for enslaved people.
It is estimated that about 9 percent of American slaves were disabled on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation due to some type of physical, sensory, psychological, neurological, or developmental condition. This means that roughly 360,000 to 540,000 American slaves had a disability. In the antebellum age, slaves were described as disabled if their injury or condition prevented them from performing labor, such as blindness, deafness, loss of limbs, and even infertility. Since disabled slaves could not fend for themselves or perform the normal types of slave labor, they usually depended on their masters and mothers to take care of them. In terms of labor, disabled slaves usually found themselves working in the kitchen or in nurseries. Since they could not work as fast as able slaves, disabled slaves were often subject to harsh treatment that included weapons. Often, slave owners would sell off their disabled slaves to doctors who would then perform medical experiments on them. After slavery ended, disabled slaves mostly remained on plantations until the government was able to set up hospitals and asylums to house them.