Rare Glimpses of Slave Life

The institution of slavery shaped the economic, social, and political history of the United States. Tensions between supporters and opponents of slavery simmered for decades with ever-increasing intensity, before boiling over into a devastating four-year civil war. This book examines the series of compromises aimed at diffusing sectional conflict during the first half of the nineteenth century, the development of political strategies, the outbreak of armed hostilities, and the eventual secession of eleven Southern states in a bid to perpetuate the institution of slavery.

The end of the American Civil War brought with it an end to the unjust system of chattel slavery in the South. This raised challenging questions: How should the freedmen be integrated into American society? And how should rebellious states regain their former position within the federal government? Between 1865 and 1877, the United States passed through a turbulent period known as Reconstruction. Thanks to the passage of Constitutional amendments, black Americans received greater rights; however, white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan fought to restrict black civil rights as much as possible.

Slavery was introduced to North America in the sixteenth century, as Spanish and Portuguese settlers relied on slave labor to extract the resources of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Brazil, and other colonies. When the British established North American colonies in the early seventeenth century, slavery gradually became prevalent. This book will examine how slaves were treated in colonial America, and how laws and attitudes about the institution of slavery changed prior to the American Revolution and the establishment of the United States.

Every aspect of slave women's lives-from the clothes they wore, the food they ate, and even the people they married-was controlled by their owners. Even worse, slave-owners could, and often did, sexually abuse their female slaves. Children who resulted from these unions were automatically considered slaves and lived in abject conditions. But slave women and children endured their terrible circumstances, and often fought back in subtle ways against the unjust system of chattel slavery.

Long before 1776, when the thirteen British colonies declared themselves an independent nation ruled by principles like liberty, equality, and justice for all, enslaved people risked their lives to fight for these same rights in America. Opposition to slavery existed as long as slavery itself. Though rebellions were often put down with brutal tactics, they occurred everywhere: on large plantations and small farms, in major cities and small villages, on land and at sea, and in the North as well as the South.

Slaves escaped from bondage any way they could, risking punishment and even death to seize the opportunity for freedom. Their best hope was to leave the United States for Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean. Freedom-seeking slaves often received help from abolitionists, who believed slavery was evil. Whites and free black abolitionists worked together to help slaves reach safety through the Underground Railroad, and tried to restrict slavery through state and national legislation. Finally, all slavery was ended through passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

Until 1865, millions of slaves worked on plantations and small farms throughout the southern United States. The most common image is of slaves forced into difficult labor on cotton or tobacco fields. However, some plantation slaves were proficient craftsmen, trained in metalworking, carpentry, or other specialized skills. Others were house servants, who cooked and cleaned for their white masters. This book will give readers a better understanding of the daily lives of plantation slaves, along with the oppression and challenges that they faced.