By 1830 slavery was primarily located in the South. African Americans were forced to work in the field of large cotton plantations and small farms.Their lives were hard, they worked from sunrise to sunset and they didn’t have that much food, cloth and free time. Slaves were considered property therefore slave owners considered that it was okay to brutality punish them, harm them, or even kill them if they considered it necessary. Slaves were daily beaten and tortured. Their status as property was enforced by violence as we can see in the picture above, these are the scars of whipping that were gaving to slaves. One of the reason for such of punishment could be because slaves would try to escape or rebel.
Even though slaves got their freedom after the Civil War and during Reconstruction, things were not as easy for them as they thought it would be They did not have a place where to stay, money or food to eat. This was one of the factors that made many of the African Americans to stayed at the farms and keep working for the people who used to own them. White farmers took advantage of the free African Americans and paid them with little money, a shelter, and barely some food. However, not every free slave stayed at the farm where they were considered a property, most of them moved to the north and to the west looking for better life and opportunity. Racism and discrimination is still present in America now as it is in our history and this probably will never change.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html
spwarnz • Feb 4, 2016 at 11:09 am
No person would wish to be a slave, but the slaves were active agents in their own lives. And though their lives were circumscribed in many ways, they made the best of their circumstances. slaves were important because it meant that plantations could plant large amounts of crop and own workers without having to pay them a big cash crop in the south was cotton and back then all farming took alot of effort because there wasnt a plow yet or anything just people. But the way they were treated is wrong and disgusting and for that reason slavery was bad and morally wrong. But life is life and slaves went though the pain and finally retrieved freedom.