What was life like for slaves working on a cotton plantation?
History homework is bugging me :L
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Slaves in the field worked up to 14 hours per day, if the moon was full it meant you worked until you dropped because there was enough light to see, this was particularly the case during the harvest season. Slaves lived in log cabins, small in size (regardless the size of the family) were terribly hot during the summer and cold during winter. Small children and infants were required to stay behind when the 'Mum's' went to work. The procedure of breastfeeding arrangement in terms of transporting the infant to Mum on the field was usually arranged by a child not much older than ten or twelve to load the infant onto a cart (as in horse drawn cart) and he/she would have more than a few to take care off. Not surprisingly therefore, accidents often resulted in severe injury and even death because of the inexperience of the child operating the transport. Slaves received no medical treatment or rarely. The slave-masters may have considered medical help for a valuable slave which was almost always a male with solid build who performed well, but then again, they were usually the last to get sick and often deserved little help as you could expect them to be the 'bullies' in the park.
Punishment was brutal under the reign of slave-overseers and plantation owners. Slaves would be tortured with branding irons and sadism was not uncommon meaning that stock-whips were used to whip a man to his death, or let him live if chosen, however, most of them did not survive the wounds. Another favorite was to put an 'iron ring' around their neck which had three bars of a certain length, it was a bit like standing up inside a small dome tent with your head sticking out. Now, just picture the tent material not being there, it meant that the victim could never lay down to sleep. If the victim was lucky they would release him from this thing after a few days, if not, they could carry on with this for a couple of weeks or even longer and in the case they wanted to show supremacy to terrorize everybody else, let him rot altogether leaving the victim begging for his death. Beating a slave to death was more or less considered normal because no plantation owner would ever see the day he was charged with murder. A lot of slaves would receive broken bones and rarely were they healed. Its the sort of treatment they could expect if the slaves were short on their ration for a days work. Some of the worst tortures involved burning the victims slow, in extreme cases, the victim would be hanged (by body not neck) so he was slightly off the ground, a fire would be kindled over his head with a piece of meat or fat of same. As the fire burned the residual would drop on the man below, put short he was burned slow. Slaves were terrified and rarely dared to do wrong, plantation owners son's above all had to set examples to show their manliness so to speak and at times sought to torture a slave for even the slightest infringement. These were the days when it was considered out of context and totally immoral for plantation owners and their son's to rape a black girl. And according to history that obviously never happened, so to have a better understanding on this subject it may pay to read the novels instead which obviously means you get a story but not fact, nevertheless, many a novel has been written which indicates that rape was an ongoing issue being committed by plantation owners and their overseers.