LIFE AS A SLAVE
“Master he be a hard hard man.
Hoe Emma Hoe, Hoe Emma Hoe.
Sell my people away from me.
Hoe Emma Hoe, Hoe Emma Hoe.”
—“Hoe Emma Hoe,” a slave work song
By the early 1800s, most northern states had outlawed slavery. But southern states grew more and more dependent on slave labor to farm the huge plantations.
Posters, like this one from Spring Hill, Arkansas, advertised upcoming auctions and the slaves that would be sold.
Slave owners bought and sold slaves at auctions. Black people could only watch as their families were broken up. They saw their husbands, wives, and children sold to faraway owners. In most cases families were never reunited.
Artists created pictures of the whippings slaves received based on eyewitness accounts.
No laws controlled how owners treated the slaves on their plantations. Some masters were kind. But many more were cruel. Years after she was freed, former slave Ella Wilson recalled, “My [master] used to throw me in a buck and whip me. He would put my hands together and tie them ... He would whip me on one side till that was sore and full of blood and then he would whip me on the other side till that was all tore up.”
DEFENDING SLAVERY
Some Americans believed the slavery system not only helped masters, but it helped slaves too. In 1854 Nehemiah Adams published A South-Side View of Slavery. Adams was against slavery until he took a trip to the South. He claimed he saw only happy slaves during his visit. He wrote of one woman, “She says that if she were to buy her freedom, she would have no one to take care of her for the rest of her life. Now her master is responsible for her support. She has no care about the future. Old age, sickness, poverty, do not trouble her.”
the title page of Adams’ book
slave children behind the shacks they lived in, South Carolina around 1860
In 1835 George McDuffie, governor of South Carolina, gave a speech to the South Carolina legislature. He spoke of the popular belief among southern whites that blacks were not as smart as whites. “They have all the qualities that fit them for slaves, and not one of those that would fit them to be freemen. They are utterly unqualified not only for rational freedom, but for self-government of any kind.” McDuffie declared, “Emancipation would be a positive curse, depriving them of a guardianship essential to their happiness ...”
FIGHTING SLAVERY
“Our Country is the World, our Countrymen are all Mankind.” This phrase was the motto of The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper. The motto rang true for all abolitionists too.
The abolitionist movement started as a whisper and grew to a roar. Free African-Americans and white people united to end slavery in the United States. William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator and famous abolitionist, spoke of what was at the very heart of their fight, saying, “ ... every sixth man, woman, child and babe in the United States is a slave, one who has no more rights than a beast ...”
This pamphlet, from April 24, 1851, warned African-Americans in Boston to be on the lookout for police who were trying to catch them and sell them back into slavery.
Escaped slaves lent their voices to the abolitionist movement too. Speaking publicly against slavery was a great risk to their safety. But many, like Frederick Douglass, used their personal stories to convince others to join the fight. In his autobiography, printed in 1845, Douglass described the violence one slave experienced at the hands of a cruel master. “Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen ... He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook ... Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes ... and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin ...”
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Many abolitionists found a secret way to fight slavery. The Underground Railroad was a system of hiding places that led slaves to freedom in the North.
Abolitionist Martha C. Wright described the journey on the Underground Railroad in a letter. “... They walked all night, carrying the little ones, and spread the old comfort[er] on the frozen ground, in some dense thicket where they all hid, while Harriet went out foraging, and sometimes [could] not get back till dark, fearing she [would] be followed. Then, if they had crept further in, and she couldn’t find them, she [would] whistle, or sing certain hymns and they would answer.”
Few photos exist of the Underground Railroad because it was conducted in secret. Artists re-created scenes like this one showing Harriet Tubman helping slaves escape.
The “Harriet” that Wright mentioned was escaped slave Harriet Tubman, one of the Underground Railroad’s best known conductors. Conductors risked their lives to lead slaves to free northern states.
Slave owners felt that slaves were their property. They offered rewards for escaped slaves. If caught, slaves were sent back to their masters and were harshly punished. Anyone caught helping them were considered slave stealers. Slave stealers could be fined, jailed, or killed.
ROUTES OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD