The Maltreatment Of Slave Women In Early America

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Maltreatment of Slave Women Over the course of human history, slavery has existed and perverted the morality and sensibility of people throughout the world. The horrific treatment of African American slaves in early America is one of the numerous examples of the corrupt nature of slavery. The maltreatment of enslaved black women reveals to the clear mind the horrendous truths of American slavery. Slave women, for merely the shade of their skin, were treated as nothing more than the stupidest and unfeeling of animals. Slave Masters took advantage of their female slaves in numerous ways, rarely handling them with extra consideration for the sake of their femininity. Slave masters manipulated and took advantage of their slave women in …show more content…

Slave masters, their sons, and overseers bribed young slave girls and women with promises of gifts. If these women refused to submit to their will they were often harshly whipped or starved until they resigned to comply with their desires. (Katz 38) In sale, especially beautiful young women and girls sold for considerably higher than the normal sale price. While the average slave woman might sell for $1500, unusually attractive women and girls could sell for as much as $5000. (Katz 38) Slave owners also took advantage of their female slaves, considering them as simply tools for reproduction. They considered marriage between black slaves illegitimate, and neither respected nor recognized slave marriages. (Katz 26) Slave owners bred their women slaves, single and married alike, with different male slaves, solely for the increase of their wealth and workforce. (Katz 38) Some slave masters would tempt their women slaves with prospects of eventual freedom if they produced a certain number of offspring. (Jordan and Schomp …show more content…

Every slave received the last name of their master, and any slave discovered secretly utilizing their traditional family name could be severely punished. (Katz 32) Slave masters, denying their slaves the natural right to name their children, existed as one method to dehumanize their human livestock. Often mothers returned to strenuous labor immediately after childbirth. For this reason, mothers were often separated from their children for the majority of the work day. Older women and grandmothers, no longer able to tackle the heaviest slave labor, watched and cared for the youngest children in their mothers' absences. (Jordan and Schomp 40) Horrific as it may seem, slave owners snatched infants and young children from their mothers for sale without guilt or apprehension. Jennie Hill, former slave, expressed how her slave master deemed that slave women, "bore their children as animals bear their young and that there was no heart-break when the children were torn from their parents..." (Jordan and Schomp 40) It is a fact that approximately half of all slave children were sold from at least one, if not both of their parents, in their childhood. (Jordan and Schomp 40) Apprehensive mothers were frequently frightened to even leave their children in the slave quarters each day for fear they would be sold away in their absences. They often attempted to

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