Trade in the Antebellum was practiced mainly in the South by 1830 AD. African Americans were the main target for provision of labor. They used to be hired for labor to work in plantations. In addition, they worked in small farms. They also worked in the homes, cities and towns as well as in the transport sector and the industries. This paper seeks to examine the jobs that slaves did in the context of Antebellum Slave trade. The paper also informs on the justifications that slave owners used to justify their actions as well as some forms of slave resistance, and the culture of African-Americans during the trade.

The slaves worked in plantations. Cotton plantations were the major plantations going with up to hundreds of slaves. Other slaves worked as harvesters in corn plantations. Rice plantations also were areas that depended on slave labor (Starobin, 1974). In theplantations, the slaves did the planting and harvesting. Apart from this, the slaves did the digging of ditches, clearing of new land, making repairs to buildings and rearing livestock.

Some slaves worked in form of domestic workers. They were designated as house servants. They had less privacy than the slaves who worked in the field. The nature of work they did was somehow hard because they could be called anytime to attend to their masters and mistresses. Joyner (1984) observes that because the lived in close proximity, slaves who worked as house servants made very close relationships with their masters. The slaves who worked as domestic workers also tended to have the privilege of accessing to food stores easily than those who worked in the field.

Slaves who were working in the industries lived in towns. Some of them worked as blacksmiths, carpenters, bakers, shoemakers and as tradespeople. They worked having been hired by their masters to work for a day, a week, a month or for several years. The town slaves could be allowed to hire themselves out, which they often did.

Racial hierarchy was the basis through which the masters used to justify their crude ways of enslaving the Africans. Every plantation had its semester who reigned as a god. The slaves used to take any order from the master. Starobin (1974) observes that masters had many reasons to justify their acts. They claimed that slavery was as old as in the Bible times, and that the same Bible advises slaves on how to treat their masters. They further argued that slavery was a good economic practice for an agrarian system, and that, after all, it was not only in their part of the country that it was practiced but also in the whole country.

The African Americans, despite their harsh conditions, were able to maintain their cultures. The harsh conditions they went through encouraged them to form tight bonds for comfort. State legislation went far in justifying the slave trade, therefore, giving leeway to the slave masters to propagate the practice. The slaves lived in the worst of conditions in the fields as their masters lived in mansions. Due to their conditions, the slaves bonded together and formed extended families.

Africans raised resistance a time and again about their conditions. They used to pretend sickness, disable machinery, and destroy crops as well as practicing go-slows. Sometimes they argued and fought their masters. Other times they stole livestock and others run away. Some slave even killed their masters in cold blood, while others mutilated themselves so as to cut the value of their labor.

In conclusion, slave trade was an evil towards the blacks, though was not regarded so by their masters. Africans had to fight hard to earn their freedom.

Reference

Starobin, S.R. (1974). Blacks in bondage: Letters of American slaves. New York: Barnes and Noble.

Joyner, C. (1984). Down by the riverside. Illinois: The Illinois University Press.