Daily Life of African American Slaves in the Antebellum South

Providing an indispensable resource for students and scholars studying the history of slavery, this book covers the full spectrum of daily life among slaves in the Antebellum South, giving readers a more complete picture of slaves' experiences in the decades before emancipation.
In their daily struggles to forge lives of dignity and meaning within an inhuman system, slaves in the Antebellum South demonstrated creativity, resilience, and an insatiable desire to be free. The Daily Life of African American Slaves in the Antebellum South focuses on their struggles to create lives of meaning and dignity within a brutal and repressive system.
This volume provides a comprehensive examination of the institution of slavery from the perspective of the slaves themselves. Readers can explore family life, religious beliefs, political activities, intellectual aspirations, material possessions, and recreational pursuits of enslaved people. The book shows that enslaved people were tightly constrained by the harsh realities of the oppressive system under which they lived but that they found ways to forge lives of their own. The book synthesizes the latest and best literature on slavery and gives readers the opportunity to examine history through the lens of daily life using primary source documents created by slaves or former slaves.

Paul E. Teed is professor of history at Saginaw Valley State University, USA.
Melissa Ladd Teed is professor of history at Saginaw Valley State University, USA.

Preface
Introduction
Timeline of Events
Glossary
1. Economic Life
The Planters' Economy
The Agricultural Cycle
The Chesapeake and Tobacco
Cotton
Sugar
Rice
Slave Hiring
Reproduction and the "Fancy Trade"
Domestic Work
Independent Production
Document: Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (1853)
2. Domestic Life
The Slave Trade
Bonds of Affection
Courtship and Marriage
Pregnancy and Childbirth
Parenting Enslaved Children
Document: Henry Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown (1851)
3. Material Life
Food
Slave Quarters
Clothing
Documents: Interview with Tempie Cummins (1937) and Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States (1837)
4. Religious Life
The African Spiritual Legacy
Christianity and Conversion
Origins of the Black Church
Religion and Daily Life
Religion and Rebellion
Document: Peter Randolph, Sketches of Slave Life: Or, Illustrations of the "Peculiar Institution" (1855)
5. Political Life
Paternalism: The Ideology of Plantation Government
The Politics of Fieldwork
The Politics of the Big House
Disrupting the Plantation Hierarchy
Enslaved People and American Politics
Document: Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom (1896)
6. Intellectual Life
Slavery and Literacy in the Antebellum South
The Meanings of Literacy
Slave Narratives: Ex-Slaves as Organic Intellectuals
Folk Medicine: Healing Knowledge in the Slave Community
Document: Thomas Jones, The Experience of Thomas H. Jones, Who Was a Slave for Forty-Three Years (1862)
7. Recreational Life
Music
Dancing
Holidays and Festivities
Children's Games
Storytelling
Document: William Wells Brown, My Southern Home (1880)
Bibliography
Index