Slaves: A Evolution of Plantations
The Benefits of Slavery and Plantation Economics
Slave Houses, Hermitage Plantation, Georgia, 1928 Source: Ulrich Phillips, Life and Labour in the Old South (Boston,1929), p. 64 http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/details.php?categorynum=8&categoryName=Plantation%20Scenes,%20Slave%20Settlements%20and%20Houses&theRecord=61&rec
Sugar Plantation and Slave Settlement, St. John, Virgin Islands, 1833 Source: Original painting in Kronborg Castle, Elsinore, Denmark (slide, courtesy of Karen Fog Olwig;) http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/SlaveTrade/collection/large/NW0089.JPG
Caribbean, 18th Cen. "New Perspectives on the Transatlantic Slave Trade," Special Issue, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 58 (2001), between pp. 16 and 17; see caption for original source. http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/details.php?categorynum=1&categoryName=Maps:%20Africa,%20New%20World,%20Slave%20Trade&theRecord=22&recordCou
The Slave Deck on the Bark 'Wildfire,' 1860 Source: Engraved from daguerreotype, published in Harper's Weekly (June 2, 1860), vol. 4, p. 344 ( Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-41678 http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/details.php?categorynum=5&categoryName=Slave%20Ships%20and%20the%20Atlantic%20Crossing%20(Middle%20Passage)&th
Rice Planting, South Carolina, early 1890s Source: Julian Ralph, Dixie; or, Southern Scenes and Sketches (New York, 1896), p. 275 (Special Collections, University of Virginia Library) http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/details.php?categorynum=7&categoryName=New%20World%20Agriculture%20and%20Plantation%20Labor&theRecord=
Cotton Production
Cotton, a commodity that many of us take for granted in our everyday use. We see it in out clothing we wear, the sheets we sleep on, the carpets we walk on, the towels we dry with, but have we giving much thought into how the production of cotton was established? As far back as 1820, Davis noted that the South was established as the “Cotton Kingdom” (Pg. 181) and it was due to three important “economic advantages” (Pg. 181) that this became true. The first, economic advantage was “the elimate and soil of large parts of the South were ideally suited for growing short staple cotton, the indispensable raw material for the early Industrial Revolution” (Davis, Pg. 181). Secondly, the “widespread use of steamboats” (Davis, Pg. 181) up the Mississippi lowered the costs of transporting the cotton. (Davis, Pg. 181). The third advantage, and most important to the economic growth of cotton, the strength and labor of black slaves maintain cotton fields at a high speed (Davis, Pg. 181). It is through several arguments over the years questioning the economics of American slavery that scholars have established that in the South, it was the slaves that “provided a highly mobile and flexible supply of labor” (Davis, 182). It is the increased number of “American Slaves” (Davis, Pg. 182) that “enabled white Southerners to clear and settle the vast Cotton Kingdom” (Davis, Pg., 182).
Cotton Gin, U.S. South, 1869 Source: Frank Leslie's Boy's and Girl's Weekly (Oct. 2, 1869), vol. 6, no. 154, p. 380 (Copy in Special Collections, University of Virginia Library)
Cotton Whipping Machine, U.S. South, 1869 Source: Frank Leslie's Boy's and Girl's Weekly (Oct. 2, 1869), vol. 6, no. 154, p. 380. (Copy in Special Collections, University of Virginia Library)
Bagging Cotton, Jamaica, 1808-1815 Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-110700
Tobacco Factory, Virginia. 1870s Source: Scribner's Monthly (Apr.1874), vol. VII, p. 652; also published in Edward King, The Great South . . . profusely illustrated from original sketches by J. Wells Champney (Hartford, Conn., 1875), p. 557. (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library) http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/details.php?categorynum=7&categoryName=New%20World%20Agriculture%20and%20Plantation%20Labor&theRecord=
Sugar and Sugarcane Production
It was with the rise and demand for sugar trade that prompted the transition from Indian to African slaves" (Klein and Vison, Pg. 46). Richard Follett explains in his book Sugar Master’s Planters and Slaves in Louisiana Cane World, 1820-1860, “The slaves conducted all the work of skilled labourers” (Pg. 3) and moved along the fields in military style. Follett’s details of the sugar plantation owners viewing slavery as an “organic institution” revealing the sugar masters as the hierarchy above all the plantation slaves (Follett, Pg. 4). Within the sugar fields sexual orientation of the slaves was of no concern to the sugar master. Both male and female worked equal labor jobs in the sugar fields with the use of “supervised “gangs” for routinized tasks” (Klein and Vinson, Pg. 63). The sugar plantations required both “skilled and semiskilled slave labor” (Davis, Pg. 108), working extreme hours and days upon days making for danger of accidents in the field and “Boyling Houses” (Davis, Pg. 109). The fact that sugar “became one of the first luxuries consumed by the masses in Western societies (along with slaved produced coffee, tobacco and eventually chocolate), it also became the principal incentive for transporting millions of Africans to the New World.” (Davis, Pg. 107). The demand for sugarcane and sugar production, in many ways, shaped the exploitation of slave ships and the Atlantic Slave System (Davis, Pg. 104).
Sugar Factory, Plantation Asuncion, Cuba, 1857 Source: Justo German Cantero, Los ingenios: coleccion de vistas de los principales ingenios de azucar de la Isla de Cuba (Havana, 1857); reprinted Barcelona, 1984, edited by Levi Marrero.
Working in Sugar Cane Fields, 19th cent. Source: Edmund Ollier, Cassell's History of the United States (London, 1874-77), Vol. 2, p. 493
Harvesting Sugar Cane, Louisiana, 1853 Source: Harper's New Monthly Magazine(1853), vol. 9, p. 760. (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library)
Whipping Slaves, Cuba, 1868 Source: Harper's Weekly (Nov. 28, 1868) vol.12, p. 753 (front page). (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library) http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/details.php?categorynum=16&categoryName=Physical%20Punishment,%20Rebellion,%20Running%20Away&theRecord=23&rec
The trading and selling of slaves was just the beginning of so many insults that those enslaved would encounter. Many of them were separated from their families, sold and never to be seen again. Out of those sold it was not uncommon for the sold slave to be “stripped and whipped, or raped, or sometimes even killed at the whim of an owner” (Davis, Pg.37). Many of slaves not only encounter the physical labor and abuse, but somewhere faced with the mental abuse and scares that haunted them. Davis talks of the “psychological curse” (Pg. 102) that African Americans have dealt with for over 200 hundred years; struggling with acceptance or internalizing the identity that they have been labeled with (Davis, Pg. 102). Yet, the planters, the masters, the overseers, the plantation owners, struggled with an even greater truth, without the owning of a slave, without being in control of an individual’s daily duties, without the intense manual labor of a slave, plantations would not have economically bloomed and the buying and trading of larger labor forces, the slaves, would not have been needed. The existence of plantation economics would have failed.
Slave house or cabin, U.S. South, 1862-65 Source: Edwin Forbes, Life Studies of the Great Army. A historical work of art, in copper-plate etching . . .illustrating the life of the Union Armies during the years 1862-'3-'4'-5 (New York, E. Forbes, 1876), plate 23 (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library) http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/details.php?categorynum=8&categoryName=Plantation%20Scenes,%20Slave%20Settlements%20and%20Houses&theRecord=79&rec
Works Cited
Davis, D. B. (2006). Inhuman Bondage The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Follett, R. (2005, June). Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Lousiana's Cane World 1820-1860. Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.proxy.library.oregonstate.edu/lib/oregonstate/detail.action?docID=10554002
III, H. S. (2007). African Slavery in Laten America and the Caribbean Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. .
Klein, H. S. (n.d.). the Atlantic Slave Trade Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Moyer, T. S. (n.d.). Ancestors of Worth Life. Retrieved from http://reader.eblib.com.ezproxy.proxy.library.oregonstate.edu/(S(igmypqwwtn4kzc5djutqy342))/Reader.aspx?p=1920362&o=450&u=YBThIjof3f5UnAGzg3F%2b3A%3d%3d&t
Handler,J.S., (2015, January), The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record. http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/search.html