Slave Plantations Essay, Research Paper

?A Plantation was a World in Itself?

It?s the dead of summer and sweat drips down the face of an Africa slave. His brittle bones are almost to weak for him to walk another line of the cotton fields, when he falls face first into the dirt, and he screams for his life while he?s thrashed repeatedly by a whip. That is the picture that appears in my mind when I hear of slave plantations. The image of a plantation is a world full of crops, animals, slave huts, slaves, and the ?Big House?. All of these elements of a plantation make a plantation a world in itself.

Where in a plantation full of slaves are all of the slaves suppose to be housed? Slaves were kept in an arrangement of houses called slave row. On slave row, the houses were built for slaves and animals. There were no real floors, and most of the time there were no windows. The houses weren?t put together that great so when a storm hit it was a bad night of sleep for all. They fit about 10-12 slaves per hut, and the children slept on the dirt. They had a single blanket, and a pillow made out of wood.

Slaves were up very early to start their work on the crop fields. The major crops were corn and cotton. The slaves used mules to help the plow the fields to get their quota of 200lbs a day. Besides from mules you could find horses, oxen, hens?, chickens, and pigs. Slaves worked till the late night before they went back to slave row for there short night sleep.

Slave owners live what was known as ?The Big House?. The slave owners lived in a house that was considered to be a mansion compared to slave row, but this was not always true. Some Slave owners had small house because they didn?t have a whole lot of money, but still there conditions were still tremendously healthier than what the slaves had to live with. The slave owners were cruel to their slaves, when feeding time came about the slaves were fed very small rations of food. Since the plantation was so big and there were so many slaves, the slave owner hired men called over see?ers to observe the slaves as they went through daily routines.

The Elements that make up a plantation, crops, slaves, animals, slave row, and the notorious slave owner, are very common to a plantation in the south. As you can obviously see that the slaves got the short end of the stick when it came to housing, sleeping, eating, and work when it came to running a plantation. Slave owners had over see?ers basically run the plantation by looking over the slaves. In a slaves eye the slave owner lays luxurious it the ?Big House? as they find every last energy to struggle to keep the plantation up to expectations, even when there life is endanger everyday.