each other with no place to go to the bathroom, little water to drink, and hardly anything to eat. As the population constantly increased in the colonies during the

1600’s, so did the demand for slavery especially in the southern colonies where the big plantations were. These plantations were very profitable since the owners had free manual labor and they could keep all the profit f

The plantation was a combination factory, village and police precinct. The most obvious characteristic was the oppressive regime placed on the slaves. One example of this was a communal nursery, which prepared slave children for slavery and made it possible for their mothers to work in the fields. The woman who cared for black children was commonly designated "aunty" to distinguish her from the "mammy", the nurse of white children. Sometimes one women cared for both white and black children. Boys and girls wandered in around in a state of near-nudity until they reached the age of work. On some plantations they were issued tow-linen shirts, on others they wore guano bags with holes punched in them for the head and arms. Children were never issued shoes until they were sent to the fields, usually at the age of six or seven. Young workers were broken in as water boys or in the "trash gang." At the age of ten or twelve, children were given a regular field routine. A former slave recalls, "Children had to go to the fiel' at six on out place. Maybe they don't do nothin' but pick up stones or tote water, but thy got to get used to bein' there."

While the diet provided to the slave kept them alive and functioning, it lacked many important nutrients, and diet-related diseases plagued slave communities. The diseases and other inflictions that befell slave include hernia, pneumonia, and lockjaw. Because of the lack of proper sanitation, slaves also suffered from dysentery and cholera more severely than the whites.

After the civil war, president Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery, although negroes still weren’t considered completely free. Since blacks only had skills in the department of slavery they were in, they had no specialties to survive in the real world, nor did they have money or land to start a new life. Most slaves continued to work on plantations for small pay, working to earn enough money to buy land.

Even though blacks were now “free” there was still racism against them. There were laws called “black codes” these “codes” prevented black men from looking at white females, forced them to walk on a different sidewalk, prevented them from eating in a white mans restaurant, and prevented them from voting.

Twice a year the slave was issued a clothes ration. A South Carolina planter described a typical allowance in his plantation manual: "Each man gets in the fall two shirts of cotton drilling, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket, In the spring two shirts of cotton shirting and two pair of cotton pants.”

By the American Revolution, 20 percent of the overall population in the thirteen colonies was of African descent. The legalized practice of enslaving blacks occurred in every colony. The economic realities of the southern colonies, however, perpetuated the institution, which was first legalized in Massachusetts in 1641. During the Revolutionary era, more than half of all African-Americans lived in Virginia and Maryland. Most of these blacks lived in the Chesapeake region, w

Some topics in this essay:
Eli Whitney, People England, Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina, Araminta Ross, Underground Railroad, Civil War, American Revolution, County Maryland, North Star, underground railroad, civil war, black people, slave owners, percent overall population, southern colonies, harriet tubman, araminta ross, free slaves, slaves planters, black children,