Many slaves say that the food they ate at the plantations was extremely bad and insufficient. One of the former slaves remembers that they had only two meals a day. The first time they ate was at twelve o’clock, which was the middle of their working day, and the second time -- late at night when the work for the day was done (Lester 64-65). Certainly, the slaves were hungry all the time. Considering how much they had to work, there is no wonder why many of them had faints caused by their hunger. According to a slave the meal itself usually consisted of cornmeal and salt herrings, “...to which was added in summer a little buttermilk and the few vegetables which each might raise for himself and his family on the little piece of ground...”(Lester 64). A former slave remembers that the very typical thing for a plantation was that children younger than eight years old did not receive any food at all. They could eat only what their parents left over from their meals (Feldstein 44). Certainly, many female slaves did not eat already very scanty food to feed their children. The same person remembers that returning home late at night women mixed cornmeal with a little water, and backed it on the fire (Feldstein 43). That was the only time when children could eat during the day. With so scarce food as the slaves had, it was almost impossible to survive. Charles Ball, a former slave, wrote that there were a lot of “...raids on the smokehouse...” (Feldstein 43). That was the only way slaves could get some extra food to feed themselves and their children. However, Charles Ball added that “...if a slave were caught stealing, his punishment would... be severe”(Feldstein 43). A former slave remembers that he used to steal some food from his master to survive. He says that if a turkey was stolen by the slaves, they tried to implicate an imaginary fox. When they stole potatoes, they tried to implicate the hogs (Feldstein 45). As we can see the conditions of the slaves were inhuman. They had to have a lot of endurance to survive in their situation. The slave owners’ viewing of how they fed their slaves differs form all the descriptions made above by the slaves themselves. The same slave owner whom we have seen before also says in his letter to Lord Brougham that “...America found in the slave... a savage, and she has civilized him!... She found him naked and starving, and she has clothed and fed him!”(Williams 32) Again, this person was not alone who thought that slaveholders “clothed and fed” the slaves. Many slave owners shared the same point of view. They really believed that their slaves were well dressed and fed. They saw the slaves’ situation as very good and they thought of themselves as of the very kind people who did all these good things for uncivilized savages. According to the slaves’ description of their labor, they had to work on the plantations very hard. They were called to work at five o’clock in the morning and they worked until late night (Feldstein 48). Often slaves had to work without any tools. One of the former slaves wrote that they were given a row in the field and they had to remove all the weeds from there. He remembers that in the end of the day, overseers checked everyone’s row. “For every... stray weed that had been left in the row,... the slave who had left it got a flopping more or less severe”(Feldstein 48). Another former slave remembers that they had to plough with the oxen or mules. “The women as frequently as the men perform[ed] this labor, feeding, currying, and taking care of their teams and in all respects doing the field and stable work”(Lester 65). Also, we have some memories of former slaves that tell us how difficult it was to work on the cotton plantation. Men, women, and children, all had to work on the plantation. He remembers that “...women and children picked cotton till the blood runs from the tips of their fingers...”(Feldstein 47). He also remembers th

Some topics in this essay:
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