Slaves

Slaves were the backbone of the economy of the Southern. Slaves were more important to the South than the North. America’s southern states become the economic engine of the nation due to the plantations of cash crops such as tobacco, cotton, and sugarcane where slaves worked. The American prosperity was impacted by the slave economy. 75 percent of the entire world’s cotton was produced by the South and Mississippi River valley was registering more millionaires per capita than anywhere in the nation due to the income coming from the plantations where the slaves were working tirelessly for their masters.

The slaves were owned by mostly the white families that could afford them. People think that almost all the Southerners owned slaves however only a quarter of the Southern families owned slaves. Slaves were owned by plantation owners, some few black indentured servants, rich white families and elites. Slaves were a symbol of prosperity and wealth. The slaves were kept by the white families as source of labor for their farm; small and large plantations, on their homes, industries and transportation.

Basically, the slaves did everything that their holders were lazy to do. Most of them worked on the plantations as agricultural laborers. However, some of them worked at homes as house servants. They worked from sunrise to sunset six days a week. Scientific management techniques were used by the plantations that owned the slaves. The top nonownership management position was given to a black to act as a positive labor incentive. The two kinds of labor systems used in plantations was slavery and waged labor. Slavery was free labor from Africans and it replaced the indentured servitude. The propertyless people who had gained freedom became waged laborers since they did not have access to land and property.