Slavery has a long history and in large part on the dark side.

Since the time

of the oldest civilizations in the territory of the land of Egypt and
Mesopotamia, the peoples most powerful they have dominated the weakest
with which they neighbors. That was the beginning of one of the saddest file
in the history of the injustice of man.
Until the American War (1861-1864), holders of slaves and their properties
consist of the South African slaves were a ordinary landscape in the early
American Society. It is already known that George Washington, the first
American president, had the slaves inherited from his father, the owner of a
plantation of tobacco from Colony Virginia. A fifth of the population of the
American colonies under the care of the British crown was made up of
slaves. The promotion of the freedoms and equalities in the USA was
accompanied at the beginning of the increase of slavery.
Just like it says the American historian Edmund S. Morgan, in his work
entitled American Slavery, American Freedom slavery has not been
considered neither necessary nor profitable in the first years of the existence
of colonies American. The servants employed by officials were in the first
phase those who satisfy the different work in the inside of the colonies.
Slavery in America has begun, initially, through the deportation in Colony
Virginia of different individuals who have violated the law in the metropolis.
In general the criminals in England could be punished by 3 modes: scourging
and sending back to where the money came from, enrolling in forced military
expeditions and deportation in the colonies.
Once inside the colonies, these were deported to provide different work for
Colonists, in return for which were poorly remunerated. The historian
Edmund Morgan maintains that the officials in Virginia have found a quick
methods to cheat on this category of workers, come, and appoint a
punishment. The colonists in Virginia they artificially created a deficit of land,

in such a way that the workers which were to become people free to no
longer have where to live and to return to their servitude. They also took as
they have the least much of the profit of the workers, by a number of
different methods of extort money as well as provided and the various fees
and charges that had to reach in the hand of the British morgue and the civil
servants. As a result, the risk of a rebellion within the colony was very high.
The ambition of the owners of the land to make profits as quickly and as
easily set up with quick steps, slavery in the state of Virginia. Those who
served for a much longer time to the fields of tobacco in Virginia have
gradually became the subjects of some penalties and more harsh in the
event of escape. In Virginia, from 1620, such workers have come to be sold
and buy that goods. Once the slavery has come to be accepted as a system,
nor the central authority does not want to give up the advantages which
came from its maintenance (cover the needs of the labor force the overshot
and free market).
The period between the late sixteenth century and the late eighteenth
century marks the rise and fall of a harsh system known as slavery.Womens
slaves specifically had two different work areas : either work on the field or
took care of the house . House slaves had an advantage over the field
slaves , house slaves worked have better living condition, instead the field
slaves worked more hours under the hot sun. The majority of female slaves
were sexually abused or raped by their white master .It was common and
widely accepted in the white and black communities that female slaves were
sexually abused by their masters in the form as sex was a
punishment.Colonial laws against rape did not applied in the black
community so they were unable to defend themselves from this unfortunate
situation . Celia an eighteen years slave who was repeatedly raped by her
master had to stick to violence in order to defend herself.One night as her
master was approaching her to take advantage of her , she killed him in self
defence. Unfortunately because was not consider a crime for masters to rape

their slaves,Celia was sentenced to death by hanging in 1854.The white

masters control the female slaves in every way . total control over
reproducting system which provide a supply of slave babies . Between house
slaves and field slaves women mostly prefer to be house slaves , field slaves
was consider to be a lower status then house slaves , they were fed less
worked more and carried less by their master.It was considered a punish for
a house slave to be sent on field since it would be a sign that they done
something terribly wrong.
No matter where they lived, slaves endured hard and demeaning lives, but
labor in the southern colonies was most severe. The southern colonies were
slave societies, "socially, economically, and politically dependent on slave
labor, had a large enslaved population, and allowed masters extensive power
over their slaves unchecked by the law." Plantations were the economic
power structure of the South, and male and female slave labor was its
foundation. Early on, slaves in the South worked primarily in agriculture, on
farms and plantations growing indigo, rice, and tobacco; cotton became a
major crop after the 1790s. Female slaves worked in a wide variety of
capacities. They were expected to do field work as well as have children, and
in this way increase the slave population. In the years before the American
Revolution, the female slave population grew mainly as a result of natural
increase and not importation. "Once slaveholders realized that the
reproductive function of the female slave could yield a profit, the
manipulation of procreative sexual relations became an integral part of the
sexual exploitation of female slaves." Many slave women raised their
children without much assistance from males. Enslaved women were
counted on not only to do their house and field work, but also to bear,
nourish, and rear the children whom slaveholders sought to continually
replenish their labor force. As houseslaves, women were domestic servants:
cooking, sewing, acting as maids, and rearing the planter's children. Later on

they were used in many factories, instrumental in the development of the

United States, where they were kept at lower maintenance costs.

As historian Deborah Gray White explains, "Black in a white society, slave in

a free society, woman in a society ruled by men, female slaves had the least
formal power and were perhaps the most vulnerable group of Americans."
The mother-daughter relationship was often the most enduring and
cherished within the African-American complex of relations.] Relatively few
women were runaways, and when they did run, they sometimes escaped
with their children. Historian Martha Saxton writes about enslaved mothers'
experiences in St. Louis in the antebellum period: "In Marion County, north of
St. Louis, a slave trader bought three small children from an owner, but the
children's mother killed them all and herself rather than let them be taken
away. A St. Louis trader took a crying baby from its mother, both on their way
to be sold, and made a gift of it to a white woman standing nearby because
its noise was bothering him."
Little girls as young as seven were frequently sold away from their mothers:
"Mary Bell was hired out by the year to take care of three children starting
when she was seven. John Mullanphy noted that he had living with him a
four-year-old mulatto girl, whom he willed to the Sisters of Charity in the
event of his death. George Morton sold his daughter Ellen 'a certain Mulatto
girl a slave about fourteen years of age named Sally, being the child of a
certain Negro woman named Ann'." n 1854 Georgia was the first and only
state to pass a law that put conditions of sales that separated mothers and
their children. Children under five could not be sold away from their mothers,
"unless such division cannot in any wise be [e]ffected without such
separation.'"

Slave girls in North America often worked within the domestic sphere,
providing household help. White families sought the help of a "girl", an "allpurpose tool" in family life. Although the word "girl" applied to any working
female without children, slaves were preferred because in the long run they
cost less. These enslaved girls were usually very young, anywhere from nine
years of age to their mid-teens. Heavy household work was assigned to the
"girl" and was therefore stigmatized as "negroes" work. A "girl" was an
essential source of help to white families, rural and urban, middle class and
aspiring. She provided freedom for daughters to devote themselves to their
self-development and relieved mothers from exhausting labor, while
requiring no financial or emotional maintenance, "no empathy."
In antebellum America, as in the past (from the initial African-European
contact in North America), black women were deemed to be governed by
their libidos and portrayed as "Jezebel character[s]...in every way the
counterimage of the mid-nineteenth-century ideal of the Victorian lady."
Enslaved women in every state of the antebellum union considered freedom,
but it was a livelier hope in the North than in most of the South. Many slaves
sought their freedom through self-purchase, the legal system and as
runaways, sometimes resulting in the separation of children and parents.
"Unfinished childhoods and brutal separations punctuated the lives of most
African American girls, and mothers dreamed of freedom that would not
impose more losses on their daughters."
Slavery is a system of forced labor that has existed throughout the
world for thousands of years. In America slavery begin in the 17th century,
when people in Africa were overpowered and forced to leave their native
land, their culture and their families behind. The Europeans and others did
not simply marched into Africa and take people of. There were battles, there
were wars that were lost by the British by the French. There were males and
females leading forces against the enslavers. Europeans tried to enslave
another threatening the enemies with terrifying new weapons. The slave

traders selected strong healthy males and females between the ages of 18
and 35, although children were often captured as well. The African captives
were chained together at the ankle or wrist. Once bound the captives
embarked on a grueling march sometimes as long as six hundred miles of to
the coast where Europeans ships awaited them. The Atlantic crossing took
from four to eight weeks. Men, women and children were crowded . The idea
was so demoralizing that the Africans often sank into a deep depression .
Some chose death rather than to endure the degradation.They tried to
escape the ship by leaping off and the get drowned.
The first slaves in the American colonies, a cargo about 20 Africans arrived at
Jamestown Virginia in 1619. The number of enslaved Africans increased each
year. By 1763 the colonial population included an estimated 230,000 Africans
most of them slaves in the south. A slave was someone who could be forced
to work from age of 8,6 or 4 even. Long hours at task thats someone else
decided. A slave was a person who had no right to a vacation, a slave could
have no propriety, a slave could not marry.
By the late 18th century the textile industry had entered a period of rapid
development in both England and in the northern United States. This growth
created a tremendous demand for selling cotton.In 1793 , Eli Whitney
developed a machine that cleaned cotton five time faster than manual
methods . As a result more slaves were needed to pick the cotton. By 1860
there would be four million African slaves in the United States. This
enormous population of slaves was owned by a small group but the
wealthiest and most powerful whites in American society. The slaves were
prohibited from participating in lawsuits, from owning property or farms and
from possessing alcohol. Most states did not recognize slave marriages and
often prohibited slaves from learning to read and write. The treatment slaves
received from their masters vary tremendously. Some owners were brutal
sadist who work their slaves and threaten them with corporal discipline so
painful . And if you were ordered to do a task that you knew would be
dangerous to you, you had to do it.So even if its tempting to put poverty and

slavery together they were very different.And the difference is that slave
workers had no rights.A slave had no protection from this treatment because
the law considered a slave another mans property not human being.When a
slave suffered a whipping he could neither fight back and not take his master
to court.Slaves developed and independent culture unknown to their masters
.Many slaves found strength to endure oppression to their religion which
blended Christianity with African.
Historian Ira Berlin distinguished between "slave societies" and "societies
with slaves." New England was considered to be a society with slaves,
dependent on maritime trade and diversified agriculture, in contrast to the
slave societies of the south, which were "socially, economically, and
politically dependent on slave labor, had a large enslaved population, and
allowed masters extensive power over their slaves unchecked by the
law." New England had a small slave population and masters thought of
themselves as patriarchs with the duty to protect, guide, and care for their
slaves.Enslaved women in New England had greater opportunity to seek
freedom than in other regions because of "the New England legal system,
the frequency of manumission by owners, and chances for hiring out,
especially among enslaved men, who seized the opportunity to earn enough
money to purchase a wife and children."
Enslaved women largely occupied traditional "women's work" roles and were
often hired out by the day. They worked mainly as maids, in the kitchen, the
barn, and the garden. They did menial and servile tasks: polished family
silver or furniture, helped with clothes and hair, drew baths, barbered the
men, and completed menial domestic chores like sweeping, emptying
chamber pots, carrying gallons of water a day, washing the dishes, brewing,
looking after young children and the elderly, cooking and baking, milking the
cows, feeding the chickens, spinning, knitting, carding, sewing, and
laundering.] Their daily work was less demanding than the field labor of

enslaved women in other regions. Nonetheless enslaved women in New

England worked hard, often under poor living conditions and malnutrition.
"As a result of heavy work, poor housing conditions, and inadequate diet, the
average black woman did not live past forty.
Enslaved women were given to white women as gifts from their husbands,
and as wedding and Christmas gifts. The idea that New England masters
treated their slaves with greater kindness in comparison to southern slaveowners is a myth. They had little mobility freedom and lacked access to
education and any training. "The record of slaves who were branded by their
owners, had their ears nailed, fled, committed suicide, suffered the
dissolution of their families, or were sold secretly to new owners in Barbados
in the last days of the Revolutionary War before they become worthless
seems sufficient to refute the myth of kindly masters. They lashed out at
their slaves when they were angry, filled with rage, or had convenient access
to horsewhip. Female slaves were sometimes forced by their masters into
sexual relationships with enslaved men for the purpose of forced breeding. It
was also not uncommon for enslaved women to be raped and in some cases
impregnated by their masters
The period between the late sixteenth century and the late eighteenth
century marks the rise and fall of a harsh system known as slavery.Womens
slaves specifically had two different work areas : either work on the field or
took care of the house . House slaves had an advantage over the field
slaves , house slaves worked have better living condition, instead the field
slaves worked more hours under the hot sun. The majority of female slaves
were sexually abused or raped by their white master .It was common and
widely accepted in the white and black communities that female slaves were
sexually abused by their masters in the form as sex was a
punishment.Colonial laws against rape did not applied in the black
community so they were unable to defend themselves from this unfortunate

situation . Celia an eighteen years slave who was repeatedly raped by her
master had to stick to violence in order to defend herself.One night as her
master was approaching her to take advantage of her , she killed him in self
defence. Unfortunately because was not consider a crime for masters to rape
their slaves,Celia was sentenced to death by hanging in 1854.The white
masters control the female slaves in every way . total control over
reproducting system which provide a supply of slave babies . Between house
slaves and field slaves women mostly prefer to be house slaves , field slaves
was consider to be a lower status then house slaves , they were fed less
worked more and carried less by their master . It was considered a punish for
a house slave to be sent on field since it would be a sign that they done
something terribly wrong.
Beginning in1700 people began trading slaves, now people began to just
enslave other races who they felt were inferior to them. The slave traders
realized they could make quick and easy money simply by kidnapping people
and selling them to people who dont want to work. Buying slaves was far
more cheaper and cost-efficient than paying someone by the day or hour.
The number of indentured slaves was decreasing so they needed a new
wave of cost-efficient labor. They begin enslaving people first with prisoners
and late with people who were thought to be worthless. The slave trading
was big in countries like Portugal ,Britain and United States. The slaves
slowly begin to die because of the disease and war. Due to the fact that the
natives were dying , they needed new slave. They headed to Africa were
they found Africans that were better at working in the heat. So the slave
trade in America has begun. The triangle was the route that was taken by
slave traders ,it got its name because of the three key stops. After leaving
port from New England the slave ship headed to Africa.Once in Africa they
stopped and turned gold spices or alcohol for slaves. Imagine being taken
from your home ,forced to walk miles , strip from your clothes and your
dignity.Life as a slave wasnt easy , most people were kidnapped and brought

into slavery . Others were born into slavery and were worked to their death.If
you were born into slavery you werent put to work until around age of five
when you could work and take commands . Once you started working , you
had to work long hard hours with little food. If you were a woman you may
get a job working in the house. Being inside the house also had
disadvantages , if you were a woman there was a chance that you could be
raped by your slave owner . If you tried to take a short break you were being
taught a lesson.
No matter where they lived, slaves endured hard and demeaning lives, but
labor in the southern colonies was most severe. The southern colonies were
slave societies, "socially, economically, and politically dependent on slave
labor, had a large enslaved population, and allowed masters extensive power
over their slaves unchecked by the law." Plantations were the economic
power structure of the South, and male and female slave labor was its
foundation. Early on, slaves in the South worked primarily in agriculture, on
farms and plantations growing indigo, rice, and tobacco; cotton became a
major crop after the 1790s. Female slaves worked in a wide variety of
capacities. They were expected to do field work as well as have children, and
in this way increase the slave population. In the years before the American
Revolution, the female slave population grew mainly as a result of natural
increase and not importation. "Once slaveholders realized that the
reproductive function of the female slave could yield a profit, the
manipulation of procreative sexual relations became an integral part of the
sexual exploitation of female slaves." Many slave women raised their
children without much assistance from males. Enslaved women were
counted on not only to do their house and field work, but also to bear,
nourish, and rear the children whom slaveholders sought to continually
replenish their labor force. As houseslaves, women were domestic servants:
cooking, sewing, acting as maids, and rearing the planter's children. Later on

they were used in many factories, instrumental in the development of the

United States, where they were kept at lower maintenance costs.
Slave girls in North America often worked within the domestic sphere,
providing household help. White families sought the help of a "girl", an "allpurpose tool" in family life. Although the word "girl" applied to any working
female without children, slaves were preferred because in the long run they
cost less. These enslaved girls were usually very young, anywhere from nine
years of age to their mid-teens. Heavy household work was assigned to the
"girl" and was therefore stigmatized as "negroes" work. A "girl" was an
essential source of help to white families, rural and urban, middle class and
aspiring. She provided freedom for daughters to devote themselves to their
self-development and relieved mothers from exhausting labor, while
requiring no financial or emotional maintenance, "no empathy."
In antebellum America, as in the past (from the initial African-European
contact in North America), black women were deemed to be governed by
their libidos and portrayed as "Jezebel character[s]...in every way the
counterimage of the mid-nineteenth-century ideal of the Victorian lady."
Enslaved women in every state of the antebellum union considered freedom,
but it was a livelier hope in the North than in most of the South. Many slaves
sought their freedom through self-purchase, the legal system of freedom
suits and as runaways, sometimes resulting in the separation of children and
parents. "Unfinished childhoods and brutal separations punctuated the lives
of most African American girls, and mothers dreamed of freedom that would
not impose more losses on their daughters."
After the Revolution, Southern plantation owners imported a massive number
of new slaves from Africa and the Caribbean until the banning of the trade in
1808. More importantly, more than one million slaves were transported in a
forced migration in the domestic slave trade, from the Upper South to the

Deep South, most by slave traders - either overland where they were held for
days in chained coffles, or by the coastwise trade and ships. The majority of
slaves in the Deep South, men and women, worked on cotton plantations.
Cotton was the leading cash crop during this time, but slaves also worked on
rice, corn, sugarcane, and tobacco plantations, clearing new land, digging
ditches, cutting and hauling wood, slaughtering livestock, and making repairs
to buildings and tools. Black women also cared for their children and
managed the bulk of the housework and domestic chores. Living with the
dual burdens of racism and sexism, enslaved women in the South held roles
within the family and community that contrasted sharply with more
traditional or upper class American women's roles.
Young girls generally started working well before boys, with many working
before age seven. Although field work was traditionally considered to be
"men's work," different estimates conclude that between 63-80 percent of
women worked in the fields. Adult female work depended greatly upon
plantation size. On small farms, women and men performed similar tasks,
while on larger plantations, males were given more physically demanding
work. Few of the chores performed by enslaved women took them off the
plantation. Therefore they were less mobile than enslaved men, who often
assisted their masters in the transportation of crops, supplies, and other
materials, and were often hired out as artisans and craftsmen. Women also
worked in the domestic sphere as servants, cooks, seamstresses, and nurses.
Although a female slave's labor in the field superseded childrearing in
importance, the responsibilities of childbearing and childcare greatly
circumscribed the life of an enslaved woman. This also explains why female
slaves were less likely to run away than men.