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What would life would have been like for a slave?

Life for a slave during this era would have varied widely depending on the individual slave’s circumstances.  We have to remember that, while slavery was a horrible and evil institution, not all slaves experienced it in exactly the same way.  The slaves were individual people with different experiences.


In one sense, we can say that life would have been terrible for all slaves.  Every slave would have lived their entire life knowing that they were not free.  Every slave would have known that, at any moment, they could be beaten at the whim of another.  Every slave would have known that their owner could sell them or their family or friends and they would never see one another again.  Every female slave would have known that she could be sexually abused with impunity.  Even if these things never did happen to a given slave, each slave would have known that they could happen and therefore each slave would have lived life feeling very insecure and feeling that they had not control over their lives.


However, different slaves would also have had different experiences.  To some degree, this was because different slaves had different jobs and different owners.  A field slave would have to engage in hard physical labor all day, but would have spent most of his or her time among other slaves.  By contrast, a slave who worked more as a domestic servant would not have had to work as hard, but that slave would have spent every day mostly in the company of the white people they were serving.  These would have been very different lives.  A slave might have had a particularly brutal owner.  If so, that slave would have had a very different life than a slave whose owner was relatively kind.  A female slave whose owner (or owner’s son, or nephew, or whatever) found her physically attractive would have had a very different experience than one who was not subject to sexual abuse.


In addition, we have to remember that the slaves were individual people with different personalities.  We should not think of them as one monolithic group because, in a sense, that denies their humanity.  Different slaves would also have experienced life differently because they would have had different personalities.  One slave might have had a very aggressive and hot-headed personality.  That slave would have probably gotten in a lot of trouble with authority and would have been beaten a lot.  A second slave might have had a personality that wished to avoid conflict. That slave might have had a life that seemed easier.  (Of course, the first slave might have had more peace of mind, at least knowing that he or she was resisting while the second slave might have felt that they should have been more defiant.)  Since people are different and slaves were people, the slaves would have had very different personalities and, therefore, different experiences of life in slavery.


Life as a slave would have generally been a life of hard work and few material comforts.  It would have been a life of uncertainty and lack of control.  Beyond that, however, life for different slaves would have been very different depending on the slaves’ individual circumstances and personalities.

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