2. LEARN ABOUT SLAVERY Beginning at least as early as 1502, European slave traders shipped approximately 11 to 16 million slaves to the Americas, including 500,000 to what is now the United States. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, slaves could be found in every area colonized by Europeans.
3. THREE SYSTEMS OF SLAVERY Three distinctive systems of slavery emerged in the American colonies. In Maryland and Virginia, slavery was widely used in raising tobacco and corn and worked under the "gang" system.
4. THREE SYSTEMS OF SLAVERY In the South Carolina and Georgia low country, slaves raised rice and indigo, worked under the "task" system, and were able to reconstitute African social patterns and maintain a separate Gullah dialect.
5. THREE SYSTEMS OF SLAVERY In the North, slavery was concentrated on Long Island and in southern Rhode Island and New Jersey, where most slaves were engaged in farming and stock raising for the West Indies or were household servants for the urban elite.
6. The american revolution The American Revolution had contradictory consequences for slavery. Thousands of slaves freed themselves by running away. In the South, slavery became more firmly entrenched. In the North, in contrast, every state freed slaves by statute, court decision, or enactment of gradual emancipation schemes. The slave South failed to establish commercial, financial, or manufacturing companies on the same scale as the North.
7. Antebellum SLAVERY The antebellum period of the old South is often considered the pinnacle of Southern aristocracy. Although the aristocrats owned a majority of the wealth and land, it was their slaves who made the plantations a success.
8. The work Slavery became the most absolute involuntary form of human servitude. Their labor services are obtained through force and their physical beings are regarded as the property of others.
9. The PUNISHMENTS Punishment was an inherent part of the slave system. Not only was physical punishment brutal but the mental and sexual abuse were also an inherent part of slavery. While each plantation had its own set of social, religious, and labor codes, all had the basic format for an instilled hierarchy in which the slave master reigned as gad, by controlling the degree of pain.
10. The FoOD The food was generally adequate in bulk, but imbalanced and monotonous. The slave standard of living started with a poor, and often, inadequate diet. The CLOTHES Slaves were not well-clothed. They had inadequate clothing for people engaged in heavy labor all year.
11. The home Plantation slaves were housed in slaves cabins. Small, rudely built of logs with clapboard sidings, with clay chinking. Floors were packed dirt. They were leaky and drafty and the combination of wet, dirt, and cold made them diseased environments.
12. The diseases The South was a disease environment for everyone due to the hotter weather and the swamp and marsh. Physicians were in short supply, and medical knowledge poor. There was no concept of bacterial transmission of disease, or insect borne diseases. The only thing that eased the pains of slavery was that they were allowed to have families and that they could but their freedom, which was not likely, but it gave them hope.
13. Today, slavery has been eradicated over time after the Revolution and American independence, enjoying the World Freedom and Equality of Human Rights.