Slavery: Typical Conditions on Plantations Term Paper

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Overseers used cowhide whips and wooden clubs to enforce their rules, some more cruelly and arbitrarily than others. Whereas most did whip their slaves, some did so only for perceived necessity and without deriving pleasure or satisfaction from it; others did so with extreme and deliberately wanton cruelty, utterly without reason or "justification" even in the context of the time. Cruelty manifested itself I many other ways on plantations, such as by the forced overfeeding of any slave who was overheard to complain of being hungry for lack of sufficient food.

One fairly typical practice consisted of force feeding molasses or other heavy liquid foods to induce discomfort and vomiting in response to complaints of hunger, intended to convince the slave that being perpetually hungry was no worse than its alternative. On the other hand, amongst themselves, plantation owners were subject to shame for underfeeding their slaves; some of those who did employed spies within the ranks of their slaves, to identify complainers, lest they expose them to ridicule from other slave owners, and addressed complaints with whippings (Douglass, p.11).

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As Emancipation loomed, some plantation owners enticed or forced male slaves to drink excessive amounts of alcohol to undermine any personal initiative about gaining their freedom legally or otherwise (Douglass, p.45). Up until emancipation, reading was cardinal sin amongst slaves, and punishable by death, because it was viewed as threatening the very institution itself. As a general rule, plantation slaves endured much hasher lives than "city slaves' (Douglass, p.21). Either way, American slavery remains a haunting memory of the cruelty of which even modern "civilized" men are capable......

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