Slaves in antebellum homes sometimes were afforded kitchen detail. They may work in the house, but affluent homes had a separated kitchen. A big, long kitchen set away from the house; keeping the heat from the constantly working kitchen from affecting the white household. The house slaves were allowed in some houses to eat at the big table in the main part of the house, but not until after the white family ate, the china dishes were cleaned and locked away.
Children were tended to by a slave woman. No matter how many slave children there might be on that particular plantation, there was usually only one woman looking after them.
Slave children were expected to begin working in the fields around the age of seven or eight. In the house they could start earlier, since it was “easy working.”
Children would wear little sacs of asafetida around their necks to ward off whooping cough. Other medicines included castor oil and turpentine cures (believe it or not, standard medicine for everyone!), calomel and blue-mass pills. If babies cried out of hunger, slaves would give them and infusion of hen feathers tea. For a case of hives they would drink sheep wool tea.
The master of the house often hunted the surrounding wilderness for food. And he often took a young slave boy with him to fetch and carry. This boy could ingrain himself and eventually be taught to hunt and work a gun. This proved extremely useful after the Emancipation for those who became very skillful with the gun. They may have had nothing, but they could find food to keep their family healthy.
Older, larger plantation masters – as well as many masters who had a number of slaves – frequently bought and sold slaves. Rather like stock market traders of today. When an opportunity arose to make a little money, he might sell a young boy or a pretty girl. Or he might give the gift of a slave or two to newlyweds from his community or family.
Sellers would parade slaves around town to gather curiosity and public interest in the sales, much as they would new plows or mules.
Before and during auctions, slaves were held in crude little cells made of iron – smaller than those used to pen horses – in buildings called slave pens or stocks.
During auctions, slaves were forced to strip and then prospective buyers did everything to them. They pulled their lips apart to inspect their teeth; pinched their skin to test the youthfulness of the individual; made them dance or run around to test their virility; checked their backs for signs of beatings. This last one was to see if the slave were obedient or no.
Women often faired worse than men at slave auctions. They were obviously sold according to their ability to sexually service their master. Many buyers would come up and “inspect the merchandise,” handling them in a way that was blatantly degrading. Mulattos were given the same regard. Flyers from that time prove that they were marketed in delicate words as little more than accessible whores.
New slaves inducted into their “family” often needed to be whipped, for the simple reason that they did not yet know the rules and order of their new home. But to the masters, they were simply being disobedient.
A master treats often took to “breeding” his slaves. He would take the strongest men and women and put them together in a cabin. This was often referred to as a marriage, but it was in no way legally binding. They would be forced to cohabitate until they gave him strong, strapping children. Masters had no taboos about forcing family members together. Many children of slaves found that their parents were very closely related.
Most slaves were allowed to worship. Many masters would give them Sunday off, where they could handle their own domestic chores as well as go to church. Church for them was varied. Sometimes they congregated in one of the quarters and the minister of their group lectured them and they sang hymns, either of their own making or well established standards. Sometimes it was their master who was their preacher, and of course his lecture consisted of rationalizing the rightness of slavery as preordained by God.
Occasionally, slaves were allowed to worship in the white church – separately, of course – and those who worshipped there could be from one community or a few communities. As they walked to the church, they would pass slaves from other plantations or other homes and pass “news” from one group to another. In this grapevine, they would learn of births and deaths, sales and new acquisitions, runaways and those recaptures, and troubles on the plantations.
There was music allowed – on occasion – in the slave quarters. Jugs and washtubs, frying pans hit with sticks or bones, reed flutes, singing, and slapping.
When a master joined the army, the Mistress often felt free to beat the slaves unmercifully. She would tell them that the master had gone to protect them from the Yankees and so they deserved to get whipped for it.
In the war, masters often left overseers in charge. They would be unmercifully hard to try to make themselves more important. Many who did that were mauled or killed by the eventual uprisings.
Patrollers traveled from town to town with dogs, guns, and bull whips. If a slave climbed a tree, the dogs would go up and knock them out. Sometimes the dogs would maul and tear a slave up before the patroller could get it off of him. Otherwise, they would beat him so he would be unable to work the following day. This is how the master knew if someone were out past curfew.
Runaways would pepper the soles of their feet to cover their tracks. Dogs would sniff the tracks and pepper would shoot up their noses. Then they could not smell a thing.
When the mistress got mad, she might have picked something up nearby and let it fly. If it broke next to or near someone, she would have that slave beaten for it.
Many slaves assumed the appearance of affection. So much so, in fact, that the masters really and truly believed that the slaves liked the way they were forced to live.
One particularly cruel form of punishment was as follows: The slave was stripped and drawn so tight by their horses that not a part of him touched the ground. Then they beat him senseless.
A horrific form of excess torture was known as the “salt cure.” A slave was put to the bull whip until his back was raw with wounds. Then the punisher would slap – and I mean slap – brine into his cuts again and again. Each time he screamed as if his back was being freshly beaten.
