Antebellum Slave Relationship

Slave-owner and Slave Relationships in Antebellum America Slavery was a well-established institution in the Southern parts of the United States during the middle of the 1800’s. The economy of the South was entirely dependent on slavery, and so was social status. Slave ownership was one of the easiest ways for white males to climb the economic and social ladders in southern society. The United States of the middle nineteenth century represents only one of three race-based slave societies in the history of the world (Camp). One interesting aspect of the slave society of the South is the roles of the slave owners and the slaves, and the relationship between the two. The life of the slave-owner was complicated. The slave owner had to be a business …show more content…
Despite the fact that they were considered property with no rights, they had to try to make the best of their situation. Over time, the slave population on a plantation, or in an area, developed their own community. They established their own rituals and their own churches. These communities acted in the same fashion as any other community, with conflicts between families, between those with power and those without, and between those of different religious beliefs (Camp). The amount of physical hardship endured by the slaves depended a lot upon the tasks they were expected to do and the slave owners they worked for. Some overly cruel owners, or those with cruel overseers, relied heavily on physical punishment to control the slaves, which made most days unbearable. Others, like Hammond, tried to provide some level of comfort for the slaves and tried to work with them to a degree in order to get the best performance out of them and make the plantation …show more content…
Smarter owners, like Hammond, realized that even though he owned them, the slaves were an investment that had to be looked after, nurtured, and controlled, in order to run a profitable plantation. He also realized that he was taking over a plantation that had an established slave community, with established routines, churches, hierarchy, and customs. It was a daily struggle between Hammond and the slave community to establish mutual grounds to get the work done in the most efficient manner. Hammond established rules for the conduct of business on the plantation that controlled many aspects of the slaves’ lives. For their part, the slaves tried to at least appear to follow the rules set forth by the master, while continuing, or re-establishing, their own ways of doing