Slavery in America
Israelite slaves on a southern plantation
Israelites
had no say in where they went and were often kidnapped from villages
and shipped to the Southern colonies and other areas of the Atlantic.
They were sold like cattle on auction blocks as buyers size-up and
evaluated potential slaves for the task that awaited them.
During slavery in the deep South slaves were flogged and sometimes killed in a most gruesome way to leave a sign to other slaves of what would happen to them if they were to flee the plantation.
If a slave was caught trying to learn to read they were severely punished. Some slaves would have their fingers or tongues cut off. This was to discourage others from perusing the idea of reading and writing. The people of the South were terrified of slaves learning to read and write. That type of knowledge could empower the slaves to revolt against them being that blacks out-numbered the whites 20 to 1 during these times.
The South had a major crop that required several thousand or even million people to harvest. The main crop was cotton and since slavery was banned everywhere else, it spread throughout the Southern part of the U.S., causing there to be millions of Israelite slaves.
In the late 18th century the slaves of the South fueled an economic engine based on tobacco. After years of over-planting and subsequent depletion of the soil's nutrients, the tobacco fields were becoming less productive and less profitable. Many (including Thomas Jefferson) thought that, as a consequence, slavery would waste away and become extinct.
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During slavery in the deep South slaves were flogged and sometimes killed in a most gruesome way to leave a sign to other slaves of what would happen to them if they were to flee the plantation.
If a slave was caught trying to learn to read they were severely punished. Some slaves would have their fingers or tongues cut off. This was to discourage others from perusing the idea of reading and writing. The people of the South were terrified of slaves learning to read and write. That type of knowledge could empower the slaves to revolt against them being that blacks out-numbered the whites 20 to 1 during these times.
The South had a major crop that required several thousand or even million people to harvest. The main crop was cotton and since slavery was banned everywhere else, it spread throughout the Southern part of the U.S., causing there to be millions of Israelite slaves.
In the late 18th century the slaves of the South fueled an economic engine based on tobacco. After years of over-planting and subsequent depletion of the soil's nutrients, the tobacco fields were becoming less productive and less profitable. Many (including Thomas Jefferson) thought that, as a consequence, slavery would waste away and become extinct.
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Eli Whitney
Eil Whitney, inventor of the Cotton Gin Machine, gave new life to slave labor
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Eli Whitney (a Northerner) changed all this in 1792 when he invented the cotton gin. The problem this new machine addressed was the inherent difficulty in separating the lint of a cotton plant from its seed. It took a slave an average of 10 tedious hours to produce one pound of clean cotton. Whitney's inspiration was to construct an "engine" that mechanically separated seed from lint by turning a crank. With it, a slave could produce up to 1,000 pounds of cotton per day. By 1850, the South was exporting over one million tons of cotton annually to the hungry textile mills of England. Cotton was king in the South and its increased labor demands invigorated the institution of slavery. By the beginning of the Civil War over 3 million Israelite slaves tilled the South's soil.
As cotton gained economic supremacy in the South, the North was transforming itself into an urbanized, industrial society with economic interests at variance with those of the South.
This dramatic increase in cotton production was accompanied by a massive increase in the slave population. It rose from 697,897 in 1790 to nearly 4 million in 1860, growing fastest in the cotton producing states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Both Mississippi and South Carolina had more slave than free inhabitants by 1860. Most southern whites did not own slaves-only about 400,000 out of 9 million in 1860. Of those who did own slaves, half owned fewer than five slaves in 1860. Very few slaveholders owned 20 or more slaves (usually 20 slaves defined one as a planter), only about 12 percent. And only 1 percent of the slaveholders owned more than 50 slaves. On the other hand, 56 percent of all slaves lived and worked on plantations of more than 20 slaves, meaning that while the typical slaveholder owned only a handful of slaves, the typical slave lived on a plantation of some size.
As the institution of slavery grew and prospered in the new century, slaveholders in the new cotton producing states simply adopted the already existing laws for treating and handling slaves established prior to 1776 in the old tobacco regions.. All of the slave-holding states adopted slave codes and laws that defined slaves as chattel property-human being with no human rights recognized in law. Numerous local ordinances at the county and town level created laws for disciplining slaves. Everywhere in the South, slaveholders used the law to regulate and police slave trading, to regulate the activities of slaves off the plantation, and to define precisely what the enslaved were allowed to do and not to do. These laws governed practically all aspects of human life and activity for the enslaved. Although modeled after the Virginia slave codes, most of the newly settled southern states adopted slave codes more severe than those of the upper-South. Mississippi's slave codes of 1818 and 1848, for example, were the harshest and most specific codes of any southern state.
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Eli Whitney (a Northerner) changed all this in 1792 when he invented the cotton gin. The problem this new machine addressed was the inherent difficulty in separating the lint of a cotton plant from its seed. It took a slave an average of 10 tedious hours to produce one pound of clean cotton. Whitney's inspiration was to construct an "engine" that mechanically separated seed from lint by turning a crank. With it, a slave could produce up to 1,000 pounds of cotton per day. By 1850, the South was exporting over one million tons of cotton annually to the hungry textile mills of England. Cotton was king in the South and its increased labor demands invigorated the institution of slavery. By the beginning of the Civil War over 3 million Israelite slaves tilled the South's soil.
As cotton gained economic supremacy in the South, the North was transforming itself into an urbanized, industrial society with economic interests at variance with those of the South.
This dramatic increase in cotton production was accompanied by a massive increase in the slave population. It rose from 697,897 in 1790 to nearly 4 million in 1860, growing fastest in the cotton producing states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Both Mississippi and South Carolina had more slave than free inhabitants by 1860. Most southern whites did not own slaves-only about 400,000 out of 9 million in 1860. Of those who did own slaves, half owned fewer than five slaves in 1860. Very few slaveholders owned 20 or more slaves (usually 20 slaves defined one as a planter), only about 12 percent. And only 1 percent of the slaveholders owned more than 50 slaves. On the other hand, 56 percent of all slaves lived and worked on plantations of more than 20 slaves, meaning that while the typical slaveholder owned only a handful of slaves, the typical slave lived on a plantation of some size.
As the institution of slavery grew and prospered in the new century, slaveholders in the new cotton producing states simply adopted the already existing laws for treating and handling slaves established prior to 1776 in the old tobacco regions.. All of the slave-holding states adopted slave codes and laws that defined slaves as chattel property-human being with no human rights recognized in law. Numerous local ordinances at the county and town level created laws for disciplining slaves. Everywhere in the South, slaveholders used the law to regulate and police slave trading, to regulate the activities of slaves off the plantation, and to define precisely what the enslaved were allowed to do and not to do. These laws governed practically all aspects of human life and activity for the enslaved. Although modeled after the Virginia slave codes, most of the newly settled southern states adopted slave codes more severe than those of the upper-South. Mississippi's slave codes of 1818 and 1848, for example, were the harshest and most specific codes of any southern state.
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It
was in this atmosphere that writer Frederick Olmsted made a number of
trips through the South in the 1850s publishing his observations in the
New York Daily Times (soon to become the New York Times) and later as
three books. Although Olmsted abhorred slavery, his accounts were
objective and accepted by most Southern critics as accurate depictions
of plantation life.
Writer, Frederick Olmsted
Frederick Olmsted writes:
"The plows at work, both with single and double mule teams, were generally held by women, and very well held, too. I watched with some interest for any indication that their sex unfitted them for the occupation. Twenty of them were plowing together, with double teams and heavy plows. They were superintended by a Negro man who carried a whip, which he frequently cracked at them, permitting no dawdling or delay at the turning; and they twitched their plows around on the head-land, jerking their reins, and yelling to their mules, with apparent ease, energy, and rapidity.
Throughout the Southwest the Negroes, as a rule, appeared to be worked much harder than in the Eastern and Northern Slave States... They are constantly and steadily driven up to their work, and the stupid, plodding, machine-like manner in which they labor, is painful to witness. This was especially the case with the hoe-gangs. One of them numbered nearly two hundred hands (for the force of two plantations was working together), moving across the field in parallel lines, with a considerable degree of precision. I repeatedly rode through the lines at a canter, without producing the smallest change or interruption in the dogged action of the laborers, or causing one of them, so far as I could see, to lift an eye from the ground... I think it told a more painful story than any I had ever heard, of the cruelty of slavery. It was emphasized by a tall and powerful Negro who walked to and fro in the rear of the line, frequently cracking his whip, and calling out in the surliest manner, to one and another, 'Shove your hoe, there! Shove your hoe!' But I never saw him strike anyone with the whip."
"The plows at work, both with single and double mule teams, were generally held by women, and very well held, too. I watched with some interest for any indication that their sex unfitted them for the occupation. Twenty of them were plowing together, with double teams and heavy plows. They were superintended by a Negro man who carried a whip, which he frequently cracked at them, permitting no dawdling or delay at the turning; and they twitched their plows around on the head-land, jerking their reins, and yelling to their mules, with apparent ease, energy, and rapidity.
Throughout the Southwest the Negroes, as a rule, appeared to be worked much harder than in the Eastern and Northern Slave States... They are constantly and steadily driven up to their work, and the stupid, plodding, machine-like manner in which they labor, is painful to witness. This was especially the case with the hoe-gangs. One of them numbered nearly two hundred hands (for the force of two plantations was working together), moving across the field in parallel lines, with a considerable degree of precision. I repeatedly rode through the lines at a canter, without producing the smallest change or interruption in the dogged action of the laborers, or causing one of them, so far as I could see, to lift an eye from the ground... I think it told a more painful story than any I had ever heard, of the cruelty of slavery. It was emphasized by a tall and powerful Negro who walked to and fro in the rear of the line, frequently cracking his whip, and calling out in the surliest manner, to one and another, 'Shove your hoe, there! Shove your hoe!' But I never saw him strike anyone with the whip."
Hoe-gangs moving across the field in parallel lines, with precision.
Frederick Olmsted, continues:
"I happened to see the severest corporeal punishment of a Negro that I witnessed at the South while visiting this estate... The manner of the overseer, who inflicted the punishment, and his subsequent conversation with me about it, indicated that it was by no means unusual in severity.
I had accidentally encountered him, and he was showing me his plantation. In going from one side of it to the other, we had twice crossed a deep gully, at the bottom of which was a thick covert of brushwood. We were crossing it a third time, and had nearly passed through the brush, when the overseer suddenly stopped his horse exclaiming, 'What's that? Hallo! Who are you, there?'
It was a girl lying at full length on the ground at the bottom of the gully, evidently intending to hide herself from us in the bushes.
'Who are you, there?'
'Sam's Sall, sir.'
'What are you skulking there for?'
The girl half rose, but gave no answer.
'Have you been here all day?'
'No, sir.'
'How did you get here?'
The girl made no reply.
'Where have you been all day?'
The answer was unintelligible.
After some further questioning, she said her father accidentally locked her in, when he went out in the morning.
'How did you manage to get out?'
'Pushed a plank off, sir, and crawled out.'
The overseer was silent for a moment, looking at the girl, and then said, 'That won't do; come out here.' The girl arose at once, and walked towards him. She was about eighteen years of age. A bunch of keys hung at her waist, which the overseer espied, and he said, 'Your father locked you in; but you have got the keys.' After a little hesitation, she replied that these were the keys of some other locks; her father had the door-key.
Whether her story was true or false, could have been ascertained in two minutes by riding on to the gang with which her father was at work, but the overseer had made up his mind.
'That won't do,' said he; 'get down.' The girl knelt on the ground; he got off his horse, and holding him with his left hand, struck her thirty or forty blows across the shoulder with his tough, flexible, 'raw-hide' whip (a terrible instrument for the purpose). They were well laid on, at arm's length, but with no appearance of angry excitement on the part of the overseer. At every stroke the girl winced and exclaimed, ''Yes, sir!' or 'Ah, sir!' or 'Please, sir!' not groaning or screaming. At length he stopped and said, 'Now tell me the truth.' The girl repeated the same story. ''You have not got enough yet,' said he; 'pull up your clothes-lie down.'
The girl without any hesitation, without a word or look of remonstrance or entreaty, drew closely all her garments under her shoulders, and lay down upon the ground with her face toward the overseer, who continued to flog her with the raw-hide, across her Slave quarters naked loins and thighs, with as much strength as before. She now shrunk away from him, not rising, but writhing, groveling, and screaming, 'Oh, don't, sir! Oh, please stop, master! Please, sir! Please, sir! Oh, that's enough, master! Oh, Lord! Oh, master, master! Oh, God, master, do stop! Oh, God, master! Oh, God, master!'
A young gentleman of fifteen was with us; he had ridden in front, and now turning on his horse, looked back with an expression only of impatience at the delay. It was the first time I had ever seen a woman flogged. I had seen a man cudgeled and beaten, in the heat of passion, before, but never flogged with a hundredth part of the severity used in this case.
I glanced again at the perfectly passionless but rather grim business-like face of the overseer, and again at the young gentleman, who had turned away; if not indifferent he had evidently not the faintest sympathy with my emotion. Only my horse chafed. I gave him rein and spur and we plunged into the bushes and scrambled fiercely up the steep acclivity. The screaming yells and the whip strokes had ceased when I reached the top of the bank. Choking, sobbing, spasmodic groans only were heard. I rode on to where the road, coming diagonally up the ravine, ran out upon the cotton-field. My young companion met me there, and immediately afterward the overseer. He laughed as he joined us, and said: 'She meant to cheat me out of a day's work, and she has done it, too.' "
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"I happened to see the severest corporeal punishment of a Negro that I witnessed at the South while visiting this estate... The manner of the overseer, who inflicted the punishment, and his subsequent conversation with me about it, indicated that it was by no means unusual in severity.
I had accidentally encountered him, and he was showing me his plantation. In going from one side of it to the other, we had twice crossed a deep gully, at the bottom of which was a thick covert of brushwood. We were crossing it a third time, and had nearly passed through the brush, when the overseer suddenly stopped his horse exclaiming, 'What's that? Hallo! Who are you, there?'
It was a girl lying at full length on the ground at the bottom of the gully, evidently intending to hide herself from us in the bushes.
'Who are you, there?'
'Sam's Sall, sir.'
'What are you skulking there for?'
The girl half rose, but gave no answer.
'Have you been here all day?'
'No, sir.'
'How did you get here?'
The girl made no reply.
'Where have you been all day?'
The answer was unintelligible.
After some further questioning, she said her father accidentally locked her in, when he went out in the morning.
'How did you manage to get out?'
'Pushed a plank off, sir, and crawled out.'
The overseer was silent for a moment, looking at the girl, and then said, 'That won't do; come out here.' The girl arose at once, and walked towards him. She was about eighteen years of age. A bunch of keys hung at her waist, which the overseer espied, and he said, 'Your father locked you in; but you have got the keys.' After a little hesitation, she replied that these were the keys of some other locks; her father had the door-key.
Whether her story was true or false, could have been ascertained in two minutes by riding on to the gang with which her father was at work, but the overseer had made up his mind.
'That won't do,' said he; 'get down.' The girl knelt on the ground; he got off his horse, and holding him with his left hand, struck her thirty or forty blows across the shoulder with his tough, flexible, 'raw-hide' whip (a terrible instrument for the purpose). They were well laid on, at arm's length, but with no appearance of angry excitement on the part of the overseer. At every stroke the girl winced and exclaimed, ''Yes, sir!' or 'Ah, sir!' or 'Please, sir!' not groaning or screaming. At length he stopped and said, 'Now tell me the truth.' The girl repeated the same story. ''You have not got enough yet,' said he; 'pull up your clothes-lie down.'
The girl without any hesitation, without a word or look of remonstrance or entreaty, drew closely all her garments under her shoulders, and lay down upon the ground with her face toward the overseer, who continued to flog her with the raw-hide, across her Slave quarters naked loins and thighs, with as much strength as before. She now shrunk away from him, not rising, but writhing, groveling, and screaming, 'Oh, don't, sir! Oh, please stop, master! Please, sir! Please, sir! Oh, that's enough, master! Oh, Lord! Oh, master, master! Oh, God, master, do stop! Oh, God, master! Oh, God, master!'
A young gentleman of fifteen was with us; he had ridden in front, and now turning on his horse, looked back with an expression only of impatience at the delay. It was the first time I had ever seen a woman flogged. I had seen a man cudgeled and beaten, in the heat of passion, before, but never flogged with a hundredth part of the severity used in this case.
I glanced again at the perfectly passionless but rather grim business-like face of the overseer, and again at the young gentleman, who had turned away; if not indifferent he had evidently not the faintest sympathy with my emotion. Only my horse chafed. I gave him rein and spur and we plunged into the bushes and scrambled fiercely up the steep acclivity. The screaming yells and the whip strokes had ceased when I reached the top of the bank. Choking, sobbing, spasmodic groans only were heard. I rode on to where the road, coming diagonally up the ravine, ran out upon the cotton-field. My young companion met me there, and immediately afterward the overseer. He laughed as he joined us, and said: 'She meant to cheat me out of a day's work, and she has done it, too.' "
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Deuteronomy 28:68
And the Most High shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the
way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and
there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and
no man shall buy (save) you.
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