Life on the plantation

Throughout the southern part of North America large plantation farms were set up to grow tobacco, cotton or rice, most of it for sale to Europe. This is what a plantation was like:

The big white house stands in colonnaded splendor on a hill which overlooks fields fleeced with cotton or lined with tobacco or sugar-cane or rice. Near this house huddle two rows of log and daub cabins. Other houses and buildings dot the landscape: the overseers' quarters, the stables, the corn cribs, the gin and press. The center of this agricultural factory is the big house. From it radiate like spokes the fields and gardens.

Most blacks were slaves on large or small plantations. The purpose of slavery was to supply cheap labour for the plantation-owners. Life for a slave was harsh and unpleasant even if the slave-owner was not especially brutal. Black labour was thought ideal for the hot and hard conditions in the fields. After all, the climate was rather like it was in Africa. The power of the masters over their slaves was almost unlimited. Usually they left it to overseers to run their estates and manage the slaves. Nearly all of them used the whip to control the slaves. Although slave-owners were not supposed to actually kill a slave, little would happen to them if they did. A court would not convict a white who had killed a black. Black people were not allowed to give evidence against whites in court.

Nigel Smith: Black peoples of the Americas; Oxford University Press, 1992/2000, page 20