Lonestar_logic
Republic of Texas
- May 13, 2009
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Semantics? They weren't paid for their labor, someone ELSE was paid for their labor.
They were given room and board and some earned their freedom.
that and a whipping when they got out of hand
Not a bad deal
Whipping them wasn't as common as you may think, slaves were needed to perform work much like a draft animal so harming them wasn't in the best interest of the slave or the owner. How much work do you think you would get out of someone after whipping them? Whipping was limited to serious disobedience. Fact is many slaves stayed on the plantations where they worked even after the emancipation.
From Ira Berlin’s Generations of Captivity (Harvard University Press, 2003), "Other aspects of the new work regimen operated to the slaves’ advantage. Slave lumbermen, many of them hired out for short periods of time, carried axes and, like slave drovers and herdsmen, were generally armed with knives and guns – necessities for men who worked in the wild and hunted animals for food and furs. Woodsmen had access to horses, as did slaves who tended cattle and swine. Periodic demands that slaveowners disarm their slaves and restrict their access to horses and mules confirmed that many believed these to be dangerous practices, but they did nothing to halt them. In short, slave lumbermen and drovers were not to be trifled with. Their work allowed considerable mobility and latitude in choosing their associates and bred a sense of independence, not something planters wanted to encourage. Slaves found it a welcome relief from the old plantation order.
As the slaveholders’ economy faded, the slaves’ economy flourished. Black men and women became full participants in the system of exchange that developed within the lower Mississippi Valley, trading the produce of their gardens and provision grounds, the fruits of their hunting and trapping expeditions, and a variety of handicrafts with European settlers and Indian tribesmen. Many hard-pressed planters turned to the production of foodstuffs for internal consumption and sometimes for export to Saint Domingue and Martinique. To cut costs, they encouraged and sometimes required slaves to feed themselves and their families by gardening, hunting, and trapping on their own time. Indeed, some slaveholders demanded that their slaves not only feed themselves but also provide their own clothes and purchase other necessities. Such requirements forced slaveowners to cede their slaves a portion of their time to work independently. "It is because the slaves are not clothed that they are left free of all work on Sunday," argued one advocate in an affirmation of the slaves’ right to maintain gardens, market produce, and work independently on Sunday. "On such days some of them go to the neighbors’ plantations who hire them to cut moss and to gather provisions. This is done with the tacit consent of their masters who do not know the where-abouts of their slaves on the said day, nor do they question them, nor do they worry themselves about them and are always satisfied that the Negroes will appear again on the following Monday for work."
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