PROJECT+NOTES

by Jessica Gathing book-Life Under Slavery & website
 * The new world slavery affected both americans and africa.
 * By 1620 approximatley 300,000 Africans had arrived in the New World. In 1780 Pennsylvania enacted a law that said the children of enslaved mothers would become free at a certain age. In 1790 the U.S. enslaved population was less than 700,000; by 1860 it had risen to 3,953,750 and Brazil was the largest American colonial slave society and twice the number of slaves that lived in Brazil lived in the U.S.In 1860 known decendents of Africans, both enslaved and free numbered 4.5 million or about fourteen percent of the U.S. population.Another 80,000 to 90,000 had been sent to the Carribbean islands and other mainland colonies.
 * A visitor to a large southern plantation between the years 1830 and 1860 most likely would have formed first an impression of the owner’s home, or “Big House” as it was sometimes called. Owners often deliberately situated their homes to dominate the landscape, as if to emphasize their own importance. From the vantage point of the Big House, masters and mistresses kept watch over the plantation in an effort to ensure that everything ran smoothly. Supervision focused on the enslaved workers who grew the cotton, rice, tobacco, sugar, and other crops that made the plantation profitable; who waited on the owners and their guests; and who performed skilled tasks such as blacksmithing, weaving, sewing, carpentry, and cooking. A guest walking around the grounds adjacent to the Big House would have encountered a variety of barns and smaller buildings where most of the specialized jobs were performed. Off in the distance were the fields. In between, the guest might glimpse a cluster of seemingly inconsequential cabins constituting the “quarters.” Guests of the owning family generally did not venture here, where the slaves lived.