Question

How did the work of slave women differ between those who lived in the Chesapeake region and those who lived in the Lower South (South Carolina and Georgia)?

Answer 1

Chesapeake Region

On small plantations and farms, typical in the tobacco country of the Chesapeake, Africans sometimes worked side by side with their owners. • Tobacco plantations were larger and closer to one another than were rice plantations. The size and proximity of tobacco plantations permitted slaves more frequent contact with friends and relatives. • Many Chesapeake slaves, like those in the Lower South, were African born, but most lived on smaller plantations with fewer than 20 fellow slaves. • Chesapeake slaves also had more contact with whites. Chesapeake masters actively managed their estates and subjected their slaves to closer scrutiny. • Most Chesapeake slaves lived in units consisting of mother, father and small children. • In some cases, fathers were married away from their own plantations and visited “broad wives” and children during their off hours. In the Chesapeake colonies of Maryland and Virginia, slavery was widely used in raising tobacco and corn and other grains.

Chesapeake, planters in the Low Country openly acknowledged sexual unions with black women. An elite of free light skinned people of color emerged that served as intermediaries between whites and blacks. slaves in the Chesapeake region became the first slave population in the New World able to naturally reproduce their numbers. Eager to encourage a rapid population increase, slave owners in the Chesapeake consciously imported many female slaves.

In the North, slavery was concentrated in productive agriculture on Long Island and in southern Rhode Island and New Jersey. Most slaves were engaged in farming and stock raising for the West Indies or as household servants for the urban elite. A massive influx of Africans in the mid-eighteenth century in Africa and inspired the creation of many African churches and benevolent societies. Northern slaves developed a vibrant African-American culture. They celebrated a number of popular festivals like Election Day, during which roles between whites and blacks were temporarily reversed.

Lower South

In the South Carolina and Georgia low country, slavery was also remarkably fluid during the pioneering period. Black soldiers played an indispensable role in protecting the colonies against the Indians and the Spanish. White planters were heavily dependent on the knowledge and skills of African-born slaves in growing rice, raising cattle, and building irrigation canals.

Raising tobacco or corn was less debilitating and taxing than growing sugar cane in the West Indies or rice in the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country, slavery in the Chesapeake may have been more difficult psychologically. Even in the eighteenth century, slaveholders in the Chesapeake supervised their slaves much more closely than in the Low Country or the Caribbean and intervened more frequently in their lives. Also, in the Chesapeake, unlike in the West Indies or the Low Country, virtually all people with any African ancestry were defined as slaves.

In the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country, slaves raised rice and indigo and were able to reconstitute African social patterns and maintain a separate Gullah dialect. Although slaves were subjected to a harsh labor regime, the task system became the norm. Each day, slaves were required to achieve a precise work objective. This allowed them to leave the fields early in the afternoon to tend their own gardens and raise their own livestock.