Field workers traditionally cleared and prepared land; grew and harvested crops like wheat, barley, corn, oats, rye, and sometimes tobacco; and readied the crops for market. They raised livestock; took care of the slave-owner's vegetable gardens and fruit orchards; and built and repaired fences and farm buildings. Their work day started at dawn and continued throughout until dusk.
One old timer slave said: "The fields stretched from one end of the earth to the other" (Morsback, The Negro in American Life, p. 37). The warm Southern climate meant little money was spent to provide housing or clothing. They slept on a bench or on the ground. Slaves often gained recognition from the captors by doing their job unusually well and showing physical strength in clearing the field of trees, in fights, or in violent wrestling matches. Many field slaves did not like this because it raised the production quota and encouraged the captors to whip the slaves into doing more work. Nevertheless, there were things field slaves did in the form of contests generated among themselves. For example, to plow a straight furrow, to cure a lame horse, and any tiny bit of reading ability were sources of pride for the slaves, even if not noticed by the slave-owner (see Miller, Dictionary of African-American Slavery, p. 238).
Antebellum southern plantations varied in size, with some as large as 5,000 acres. In 1860, 1,733 planters owned 100 or more slaves each while 10,000 owned between 50 and 100. Able-bodied males between 18 and 30 sold for $500 in 1800, $900 in 1810; $1,000 in 1870; $1,300 in 1834; and $1,800 in 1860. Women sold for 3/4 the price of males. Slaves declined in sale price after age 30 and, after age 65, were considered commercially valueless (Simkins, A History of the South, p. 124). All field slaves did not share the same lot. The work performed by the slaves depended upon the size of the plantation and its location; the specialty of the crop (cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar cane, hemp, etc.); the gender; the climate; the assignment to the house or to the field; and the special agricultural skills brought from Africa. Slaves close to cities sometimes mixed with "Free Negroes" in church.
While field slaves worked from "can see to can't see", they were under the supervision of a White overseer and/or his subordinate, the Negro slave-driver. on many estates, the slave-owner either did not visit his plantation at all or did so perhaps once a year. In these situations, the slaves were left to the uncontrolled caprice of the overseer and he had three objectives. First was to establish and maintain strict discipline. Hence, there was never a moment for slaves to exercise either their will or judgment in opposition to a positive order.
Second was the aim to implant in the bondsmen a sense of personal inferiority -- "to know and keep their places" (i.e. the place assigned them by the captors)-- to feel the difference between master and slave --and to understand that bondage was their natural status.
Third was to awe the slaves with a sense of their master's enormous power (Drewry, Afro-American History, p. 28). Overseers were considered by White owners as a very inferior class in point of character -- the curse of this country -- the worst men in the community and yet acceptable. Apart from the ongoing pain and suffering they inflicted, they killed 3% of slaves per year by working them to death or at their whim "for no reason" (Fishel, The Negro American, p. 108).
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Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.
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