The_World_of_Slavery

Slavery effects in the South- Ashley Stencel

// What Slavery was like in the south..... // Slavery was a big thing in the south. Being sold south wasn't just an ordinary threat. Especially being sold **DEEPER ** into the south. It meant chances of freedom were just that farther away. Slaves never wanted to face that horror. But many did. The south was cruel and masters never cared about their slaves. Slaves in the lower south often had terrible living conditions, were not well fed and weren't cared for. But to the owners it was better to have slaves on the cotton field than having them build a well structured shelter. It was also better to the owners to have a whole field have cotton than have a little garden for the slaves to grow food supplies. Even the upper-south often allowed slaves to have small gardens. Masters were also often paying overseers to supervise the slaves while the master was absent. Which was often. Overseers were payed by not how well conditioned the slave was, but by how much cotton was produced. In the upper-south slaves worked from dawn to night. Since men seemed to be the strongest, plantations had more men. Also since female had the problems during maturity. In the cotton and sugar south, Slaves worked in gangs that were supervised by black drivers and overseers. The pace for all the work was set by overseers. If a slave was lagging behind, they would feel the sting from the whip that overseers carried with them.

// How Slaves got to Freedom........ //  If slaves wanted freedom, they would have to run away. They couldn't just walk up to their evil master and politely say "Excuse me sir. May I please have my freedom. I do not like working for you and I would like to get money and raise a family with a woman I love and get a real job. So do you think you could make me a free man." A likely answer from a master. "NO!" A master also would probably whip and torture the slave. So that was not how it would've worked back then. Instead the slave would wait till the night came and would sing-a-song telling someone that he/she was leaving. Then they would use the underground railroad leading them to freedom in the North. When the Fugitive Slave act happened ,however, they had to go to Canada where it did not apply. The Fugitive Slave act allowed slave owners and Bounty Hunters to take freedmen and former slaves back to the south. Harriet Tubman decided that the only way her people would truly safe was to take the underground railroad to the next level and go all the way to Canada. The underground railroad wasn't a railroad actually. It was just a set of stations that led to the North/Canada that got it's name from a master that said 'his slave disappeared as if he went on a underground railroad.'

// How Slavery was apart of the Souths Economy........ //  Slavery was only big because of the economy it brought to the south. With out slaves, they wouldn't have anyone to work on the fields bringing the fact of...NO MONEY. Even back then money was a big deal. It always was and probably always will be. So slaves were the money bringers. Best part to the masters was they wouldn't have to share there money with the people who did all the work. The slaves. Yes it was very unfair. The slaves did all the hard work with their masters just sitting on their lazy behinds, and then the master gets all the money and the slave gets a crumb of food. Now how is that fair? It's not. Slaves did everything that seemed to be the work no one wanted to do. Some did machinery, others did mining, most did the farm work, and then the cleaning service that most woman did, and the reproducing. Some slaves were blacksmiths later on during the Civil War. So slaves were big part of the Economy in the south. It's a shame that the South depended so much on slavery.