American SlaveryBetween 1830 and 1860, a time of growing national divisions over slavery, numerous accounts of the lives of slaves were published. These accounts of life under slavery almost invariably had abolitionist or pro-slavery aims. Slaves in the antebellum South lived in a wide variety of circumstances and worked in a variety of positions, including servants, wagon drivers, iron foundry workers, and skilled craftsmen. However, nine out of ten slaves worked as farm laborers, growing cotton, tobacco, rice, and other products. About half of these laborers worked on large plantations of twenty or more slaves, while the rest worked on smaller, poorer farms, often alongside their masters. The lifestyles on these plantations were roughly similar. Slaves worked from dawn to dusk under the supervision of their masters or white or black overseers. Owners had unlimited legal rights to decide and administer sanctions against their human property, and the whip was commonly used. Most slaves were illiterate. Slaves who stubbornly refused to obey the rules were sold. Marriages between slaves had no legal status and families were often broken up by the sale of one or more members. “Slave owners also steal from slaves; their hands and their feet, and all their muscles, limbs and senses, their body and their mind, their time and their freedom, their freedom of expression and their rights of conscience, their right to acquire knowledge, goods and a reputation. abused. They were practically starving, there were not enough clothes and the living conditions were horrible. The worst thing is that they suffered many lashes. For whipping slaves in Virginia, where no rules or sympathy were involved. The slave receives from the slave's owner fifty to five hundred lashes. The slave owner would consider fifty lashes an insult to the slave. If the slave receives fifty lashes, he must show good humor. Men, women and children must be whipped on their bare backs, it is an honor to whip them on their clothes. Some slaves must lie on their stomachs, flat on the ground, and extended so as to keep the skin stretched for the whip. If they move, they get more lashes. When the slave owner expects to give his slave five hundred lashes, he gives him about half at a time... middle of paper ... Slaves were treated extremely well, even when they were no longer useful. Nehamia Adams says that every slave has an inalienable right to his owner for his entire life's support. It cannot be completely neglected when it is old and decrepit. Adams saw a white-headed black man at the door of his cabin on the estate of a gentleman, who had done no work for ten years. He enjoys all the privileges of plantation, garden and orchard; is dressed and fed with as much care as if he were useful. Adams says: “In a place called Harris's Neck, Georgia, there is a servant who has been confined to his bed with rheumatism for thirty years, and no invalid has any more reason to be grateful to him. attention and kindness..." (88) Works cited Adams, Nehemiah. “A Southern View of Slavery.” Clotel. Ed. Robert S. Levine. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. 403–05. Kolchin, Peter 1993 American Slavery 1619-1877. Hill and Wang, New York. Pennington, James WC “The Fugitive Blacksmith”. 1849. Bland, African American Slave Narratives 541-98. Rogers, William B. "'We're All Together Now':.., 1995.