Abner Jordan was interviewed by a member of the Work Projects Administration for a Federal Writer’ Project that was documenting North Carolina slave narratives. Jordan has never left North Carolina since he was born there and agreed to the interview despite being the old age of 95. He discussed his birth with hesitance, claiming that he was “bawn about 1832 in Staggsville, Marse Cameron’s place”....
In August of 1861 the Civil War was beginning to show its true colors, bloody and drawn out battles of attrition revealed the war would be much longer and bloodier than anyone had expected. Failed offensives by both the North and South were publicized throughout the nation, and the newly established Confederate was burdened with building a country from scratch and governing a war. At this same time...
When we learn about slavery and the slaves’ masters we often get a picture of an evil cold hearted man, who would whip and torment slaves, while they worked in weather conditions that made it impossible to get any work done. We also often assume that their (the slaves) masters would force them to work whether they were sick or even near death. Using the plantation letters from the Cameron Family...
Disease was rampant among the slave population in the Antebellum South. Poor diet, less than adequate clothing, and exposure to the elements, caused the immune systems of the over-worked laborers to break down, making them susceptible to contracting a variety of illnesses. A demographic that was particularly at risk were children age nine and under. Fully 45 out of every 10,000 slave children aged...
Maintaining order on a plantation that was dependent on slavery was very important. To achieve this slaves required positive aspects in their life to look forward to. These privileges drove them to work. The creation of task systems and gang systems were frequent practices and established content lives among workers. Task systems were designed so that each slave had one engagement he or she was required...
In the “Cameron Plantation Letters” there are numerous references to the health of the slaves living on the Greene County Alabama plantation. There are one hundred or so letters in the University of North Carolina collection that are catalogued on the website ‘The Plantation Letters, Interpreting Antebellum Plantation Life’. I found thirty-five that directly referenced the health...
In the early years of the nineteenth century many people came to Spanish Florida. Some were forced to come to Florida to work on plantations and others like Zephaniah Kingsley sought to make their own fortunes by obtaining land and establishing those plantations. During this time alliances and politics were shifting and though some of the enslaved would later become free landowners, they had to watch...