Slave

Slave During the era of slavery in the United States, not all blacks were slaves. There were a many number of free blacks, consisting of those who had been freed or those in fact that were never enslaved. Nor did all slave work on plantations. There were nearly five hundred thousand that worked in the cities as domestic, skilled artisans and factory hands (Green, 13). But they were exceptions to the general rule. Most blacks in America were slaves on plantation-sized units in the seven states of the South. And with the invent of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, more slaves were needed to work the ever-growing cotton game (Frazier, 14). The size of the plantations varied with the wealth of the planters. There were small farmers with two or three slaves, planters with ten to thirty slaves and big planters who owned a thousand or more slaves. Scholars generally agree that slaves received better treatment on the small farms and plantation that did not employ overseers or general managers. Almost half of the slaves, however, live, worked and died on plantations where the owners assigned much of their authority to overseers. The plantation was a combination factory, village and slaves, slave, plantation, work, cotton, children, fields, six, plantations, one, field, worked, two, overseer, master, generally, yards, out, life, issued, house, hands, each, cabins, women, whites, shoes, required, punishment, olmsted, gets, frederick, cold, black, age, year