Daily Slave Life

Documentation of information has always played an important role in understanding events occurring in the past. Historians and scholars obtaining this information used many methods, such as information passed down to each generation about one’s own family history, interviews, stories, autobiographies, and songs. A good example of how information was obtained during the time of slavery is through the use of these methods. Biased information was documented by white southerners who proclaimed that it was in the best interest of the African-American to live in the slave system, and the Northern abolitionist believed the slaves longed for freedom often exaggerated for the purpose of propaganda. Travelers who visited the United States wrote about their views of slavery. Their own cultural biases often affected what they reported. To have a better perspective of slavery, the real question was how the slaves felt about the slave system, and how accurate information can be obtained to support the data, since the majority of the slaves could not read or write. In this paper, the following themes will be discussed: stories related to how a slave felt …(I represent the slave)…about one’s master, songs related to how a I felt about me receiving inhumane treatment the type of plantation in which I worked, my family situation, where I lived, would eat, and how I felt throughout my days as a slave.
The evidence of my life consist of many topics. For example, how did I feel about my master? A good example of how I felt about my master was when I was whipped, because of I found some cookies of my masters and I would hide them in a chair to take home. I was whipped for nearly ten minutes. I did not mean to do it, I was just so hungry. Ther...

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...e, we would take it. Some of the slaves on my plantation were not so lucky. Billy got beat so hard that last time, I ended up burrying him in a hole my master made me dig.
In conclusion, much of the evidence in my readings that was documented in the form of songs, and stories that slaves told to one another, and narratives by former slaves. Some of the evidence was in oral form, and was collected soon after emancipation. In the 1930’s, the Federal Writers’ Project was established. It collected over two thousand narratives from ex-slaves in all southern states, excluding Louisiana. These documents were placed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C, where they remain today. Some slaves were able to share his or her own perception of the events that took place during their lifetime, and the best methods were used to preserve this valuable part of history.