American Slavery:
The Southern Plantation
Way of Life
From the Series
America's Early Years: 1789-1816
Produced by
Ancient Lights Educational Media
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© 2003 Ancient Lights Educational Media
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Series
. . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Introduction to the Program . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Links to Curriculum Standards . . . . . . . . . .2
Instructional Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Pre-Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Student/Audience Preparation . . . . . . . . . .4
Student/Audience Objectives . . . . . . . . . . .4
Introducing the Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
View the Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Discussion Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Description of Blackline Masters . . . . . . . .6
Extended Learning Activities . . . . . . . . . . .7
Answer Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Script of Narration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
This video is closed captioned.
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blackline master handouts that accompany it for the purpose of
teaching in conjunction with this program, American Slavery: The
Southern Plantation Way of Life. This right is restricted only for
use with this program. Any reproduction or duplication in whole
or in part of this guide and the blackline master handouts for any
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American Slavery:
The Southern Plantation Way of Life
From the Series America's Early Years: 1789-1816
Grades 5-9
Viewing Time: 14 minutes with a one-minute,
five-question Video Quiz
INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES
This standards-based series of programs for grades 5-9
examines the formative years of the American Republic
beginning with the presidency of George Washington and
ending with the election of President James Monroe.
These programs focus on key events that shaped the history of the United States. Major topics included are:
• Launching of the American "ship of state"
• The contributions of founding fathers
• The Louisiana Purchase
• The War of 1812
• United States expansion and how it affected American
Indians and foreign powers
• How industrialization, immigration, expansion of slavery,
and westward movement changed the lives of Americans
and led toward regional tensions
• The extension, restriction, and reorganization of American political democracy
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROGRAM
American Slavery: The Southern Plantation Way of
Life covers a much broader time span than the 17891816 era covered by the series. This is necessary to better understand how slavery came to the American South
and how it grew and developed. In this program the following topics are presented it this order:
1
•
•
•
•
•
•
Slavery and life in the northern and southern states
The slave trade "Triangular Trade Routes"
The slave plantations of colonial times
Slavery and the revolution in cloth-making
The layout of slave plantations
The life of a plantation slave
LINKS TO CURRICULUM STANDARDS
This program is correlated to the McREL US History Standards, a compendium of national and state standards
(www.mcrel.org/about).
US History: ERA 3 Revolution and the New Nation
(1754-1820s)
Standard 8
Understands the institutions and practices of government
created during the Revolution and how these elements
were revised between 1787 and 1815 to create the foundation of the American political system based on the U.S.
Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Benchmarks
• Understands the establishment of power and significant
events in the development of the U.S. Supreme Court
(e.g., the role of Chief Justice Marshall in the growth of
the court, Article III of the Constitution, Judiciary Act of
1789, Marbury vs. Madison).
• Understands the development and impact of the
American party system (e.g., social, economic, and foreign policy issues of the 1790s; influence of the French
Revolution on American politics; the rise of the Federalist
and Democratic-Republican parties; the election of 1800;
the appointment of the "Midnight Judges").
• Understands influences on the ideas established by the
Constitution (e.g., the ideas behind the distribution of
powers and the system of checks and balances; the influ2
ence of 18th-century republican ideals and the economic
and political interests of different regions on the compromises reached in the Constitutional Convention).
US History: ERA 4 Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
Standard 9
Understands the United States territorial expansion between 1801 and 1861, and how it affected relations with
external powers and Native Americans.
Benchmark
• Understands the factors that led to U.S. territorial expansion in the Western Hemisphere
• Understands the short-term political and long-term cultural impacts of the Louisiana Purchase (e.g., those who
opposed and supported the acquisition, the impact on
Native Americans between 1801 and 1861).
• Understands the significance of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition (e.g., its role as a scientific expedition, its contributions to friendly relations with Native Americans).
• Understands the causes and consequences of the agricultural and industrial revolutions from 1700 to 1850.
Topics
1. Development of the Supreme Court
2. Development, ideology, and structure of political systems
3. Territorial expansion in the United States, early 19th
century
4. Expansion, exploration, and conquest
INSTRUCTIONAL NOTES
Before presenting this lessons to your students, we suggest that you preview the program, review the guide and
the accompanying Blackline Master activities in order to
familiarize yourself with their content.
3
As you review the materials presented in this guide, you
may find it necessary to make some changes, additions
or deletions to meet the specific needs of your class. We
encourage you to do so; for only by tailoring this program
to your class will they obtain the maximum instructional
benefits afforded by the materials.
PRE-TEST
Pre-Test is an assessment tool intended to gauge student
comprehension of the objectives prior to viewing the program. Explain that they are not expected to get all the
answers correct. You can remind your students that these
are key concepts that they should focus on while watching the program.
STUDENT/AUDIENCE PREPARATION
Set up a Learning Center with images relevant to the topics presented in this program, such as maps depicting
centers of the slave trade, colonial areas where various
types of slave plantations flourished, triangular trade
routes, sites of notable slave rebellions; pictures of plantations, slaves, slave ships, etc.; a diagram of the layout
of a typical slave plantation; and a map of slave and nonslave states before the Civil War.
STUDENT OBJECTIVES
After viewing the program and completing the follow-up
activities, students should be able to:
•
•
•
•
•
Discuss the slave trade.
Describe the layout of a typical southern plantation.
Discuss how slavery developed in North America.
Describe the life of a plantation slave.
Compare and contrast America's North and South with
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regards to slavery in the first half of the 19th century.
• Discuss the effects of industrialization on the growth of
the southern cotton business and slavery.
INTRODUCING THE PROGRAM
Duplicate and administer Blackline Master #1, Pre-Test.
Remind your students that they are not expected to know
all the answers. Suggest that they use these questions as
a guide for taking notes on the key concepts while viewing the program.
Introduce this program with a discussion of the development and significance of slavery in American history.
VIEW THE PROGRAM
Running Time: 14 minutes plus a one-minute, five-question Video Quiz.
Hand out Blackline Master #3, Video Quiz.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
After viewing the program you may find it helpful to discuss key concepts as a class. The following questions/
statements may prove to be useful. You may also choose
to use these topics to begin a discussion prior to viewing
the program.
1. How would it feel to be a slave, to have no freedom, no
possessions, and no rights of which to speak?
2. Try to imagine how you would feel being captured,
taken from your home, sold to slave traders, packed in a
ship, a sold at an auction–becoming a stranger in a
strange world.
5
3. How might have the typical 19th century slave owner
justified his way of life?
4. Discuss some notable slave rebellions.
5. Discuss how the issue of slavery led up to the Civil War.
6. Discuss slavery in the world today (e.g., sweat shops).
DESCRIPTION OF BLACKLINE MASTERS
Blackline Master #1, Pre-Test, is an assessment tool
intended to gauge student comprehension of the objectives prior to viewing the program.
Blackline Master #2, Post-Test, is an assessment tool to
be administered after viewing the program and completing additional activities. The results of this assessment
can be compared to the results of the Pre-Test to determine the change in student comprehension before and
after participation in this lesson.
Blackline Master #3, Video Quiz, is intended to reinforce
the key concepts of the program following the presentation of the program. Student awareness that a Video
Quiz will be given also helps promote attention to the
video presentation.
Blackline Master #4, Crossword Puzzle, is a puzzle
game based on information presented in the Vocabulary
Blackline Master #5, Timeline and Activity, is a chronological list of important events that occurred between1492
and 1847.
Blackline Masters #6 and #7, Vocabulary List and Activity, includes important names, people, places, and
words relating to events that occurred during this era in
history.
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EXTENDED LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Field trips to historic sites are the best way to savor the
flavor of America's early days. Research papers, oral
reports, news reports, or PowerPoint® presentations could
be done on the following subjects:
1. America's slave-owning Presidents and their views of
slavery.
2. A detailed look at the daily life of a plantation slave.
3. The legal rights of slaves.
4. A history of the African slave trade.
5. Slave ships and trading posts.
6. Family life of southern slaves.
7. The role of religion and music in the lives of slaves.
8. Slave rebellions.
9. Runaway slaves.
10. Justifications for slavery by white plantation owners.
11. Reparations to African-Americans with family backgrounds of slavery.
ANSWER KEY
Blackline Master #1, Pre-Test
1. True
2. True
3. True
4. False. Typical slave cabins housed 10-12 people.
5. False. Slaves didn't get vacations.
Blackline Master #2, Post-Test
True or False
1. False. Slavery dates back to ancient times.
2. False. In the South, most slaves lived on large plantations with from 20 to several hundred slaves.
3. False. The number of slaves peaked right before the
Civil War.
7
4. False. The Industrial Revolution caused the size of factories to increase.
5. False. Africans captured as slaves were usually captured by other Africans and then traded to Europeans.
6. False. The slave trade centered along the central Atlantic Coast of Africa
7. False. Slave children received no education whatsoever.
8. False. Cotton didn't become America's main export
until the 19th century.
9. False. Slave owners could testify against slaves but
slaves could not testify.
10. False. There was no provision in the Constitution
depriving slave owners of the right to be President. (Presidents Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were slave
owners).
Fill in the blank
1. Great Britain, Spain
2. Tobacco
3. Rice, indigo
4. Sugar cane
5. outlawed(banned)
6. spinning, weaving
7. agriculture(farming, plantations)
8. bidder
9. Any four: Own land, vote marry, runaway, move freely
about, testify in court, marry, be educated, earn their freedom through work.
10. cabins (houses)
Blackline Master #3, Video Quiz
1. True
2. False. Cotton did not become an important export until
after American independence.
3. True
4. False. Industrialization of the textile industry caused
the number of plantation slaves to increase.
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5. False. Slaves could neither vote nor own property.
Blackline Master #4, Crossword Puzzle
1
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2
3
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5
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9
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10
6
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8
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S
Blackline Master #5, Timeline Activity
1. 1617, 1619
2. 1822
3. 1807
4. 1793
5. 1791
Blackline Master #7, Vocabulary Activity
1. field slaves, house slaves
2. overseer
3. Industrial Revolution
4. seeds
5. auction
6. Africa
7. indigo
8. plantations
9. Quakers
10. West Indies
9
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SCRIPT OF NARRATION
By the early part of the 19th century the enslavement of
people of African descent had become a way of life in the
southern United States. In 1808 a law was enacted by
Congress that that made it illegal to bring any more slaves
into the country, however no one bothered to enforce it.
As a result, people taken captive in Africa continued to be
shipped to the USA, where they were sold at public slave
auctions. So that by the year 1860, there were four million
people living in slavery in America. And almost all of them
worked on the large farms called plantations that were so
commonplace across the southern United States.
Slavery and Life in the Northern and Southern States
As the American nation began to mature during the first
half of the 19th century, the practice of using slave labor
had created a great division between the southern states
where it thrived, and the northern states where slavery
had been declared illegal.
The warm South had the kind of soil and weather that
allowed large-scale agriculture to flourish. As a result,
nearly all of the people enslaved in the South lived on big
plantations that had at least 20, and quite often hundreds,
of slaves. And the owners of these plantations successfully used their slaves to generate huge profits for themselves.
In contrast, slavery never really caught on in the North.
For the most part, northern land couldn't support the kind
of large-scale agriculture where the use of slaves actually paid off. In fact, in chilly New England, the poor rocky
soil pretty much limited agriculture to small, not very prosperous, family farms. Because farming in the North often
proved to be a bad way to make a living, increasing num10
bers of northern farmers took up more reliable work in factories that were becoming a very familiar sight in New
England as industrialization took hold.
But there were other reasons slavery didn't work in the
North. One was that many northerners had strong Quaker
or Puritan backgrounds that made them oppose slavery
for religious reasons. Another was that, unlike the South,
the North possessed a good number of important institutions of higher education as well as certain powerful news
-papers, both of which actively promoted anti-slavery
views, usually for humanitarian reasons.
The Slave Trade "Triangular Trade Routes"
The history of the slave trade goes back thousands of
years. For example, in the days of Ancient Rome, it was
fairly typical for conquering armies to enslave their enemies. Much later in history, after Christopher Columbus
reached the West Indies in 1492, colonists from Europe
began to raise sugar cane there. The demand for sugar
was strong and at first the Europeans tried to enslave the
native people to work on their plantations. But when that
approach failed, they started to look to Africa for slaves.
This was a logical place to find them because a wellestablished slave trade was already in existence there.
The slave trade took place along the middle part of
Africa's west coast. Africans in this region captured other
Africans, often in tribal wars. They put them in chains, and
held them at slave trading posts along the coast. The captives were sold to white sea captains, packed into
cramped ships, and transported across the ocean. In the
colonies, they were resold at public auctions to the highest bidder. Slave auctions such as the one advertised
here, that took place in Charleston, South Carolina in
1769, were quite commonplace in America during colonial
times.
11
As the colonies grew, several different three-way or "triangular trade routes" developed to meet the growing
demand for slaves. In this example the route started when
ships carrying African slaves sailed to the American
colonies where they were sold for big profits. With the
money the ship owners got for the slaves they could buy
American tobacco and bring it to Britain, where it was in
great demand. There the tobacco could be traded for
British products. After that, to complete the triangular
trade route, the British products, often things such as
guns and cloth, could be shipped to Africa and traded for
more slaves. In this way slave ships transported 10 to 12
million captive Africans across the Atlantic Ocean from
the 1500s to the 1800s.
The Slave Plantations of Colonial Times
Slavery first appeared on American plantations very early
in colonial times. Jamestown, Virginia, America's first
English colonial settlement, was founded in 1607. Just 12
years later, the first Africans were sold here to work on
tobacco plantations. As the smoking habit spread, tobacco became the most valuable export of the colonies of
Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. As that happened
the number of tobacco plantations increased and more
slaves were imported. So that by 1750 about 200,000
black slaves were living in the English colonies of
America.
In the colonies of South Carolina and Georgia most
slaves were forced to work in huge flooded fields like this
one where rice was raised, or on plantations where indigo plants were cultivated, from which a valuable blue dye
was made.
In colonial times the lands along the northern coast of the
Gulf of Mexico, from Texas to Florida, were ruled by Spain
or France. In this area the majority of slaves worked on
12
large sugar cane plantations similar to those in the West
Indies.
Cotton, the plant most people associate with slavery, did
not become an important crop until well after American
independence.
Slavery and the Revolution in Cloth-Making
The cotton clothing, sheets, and so forth that are so commonplace today were not widely available until after a revolution took place in the way cloth was made. This
Industrial Revolution resulted in the rise of big textile factories and was coupled with a significant increase in the
number of slave plantations on which cotton was raised.
The changes in cloth making can be traced back to the
invention of three important new machines during the last
half of the 18th century. The first invention replaced the
spinners who used spinning wheels to make the thread
used for weaving. These devices were water-powered
spinning machines, like this one, that were capable of
rapidly spinning multiple spools of thread from raw fibers.
The second invention replaced the weavers who wove
thread into cloth on handlooms. These machines were
water-powered looms, like the one seen here, that could
manufacture rolls of cloth at a high rate of speed.
The third invention, called the cotton gin, is what really
turned the raising of cotton into a major business.
Cotton possesses excellent fibers for cloth making but
they are full of seeds when picked from the plant. Before
the invention of the cotton gin, the seeds had to be removed slowly by hand before the fibers could be spun into
thread. But using a cotton gin, one person turning a crank
could remove as many seeds from raw cotton in a single
13
day as 50 people working by hand. Soon water-powered
cotton gins came along that removed seeds even faster.
After the new textile machines came into widespread use,
cotton consumption increased dramatically in the United
States. Cotton even became America's main export as
well. And it is amazing to think that a product of such
great importance to the nation was produced almost
entirely by slave labor.
The Layout of Slave Plantations
No matter what crops were raised on them, most of the
slave plantations of the American South tended to be laid
out in a similar fashion; patterned after the grand aristocratic estates of Europe. On a plantation, the owner's
home, the mansion house, was always the biggest and
most beautiful building. It was usually surrounded by a
vast expanse of lawn and well-tended gardens. Adjacent
to the mansion house, it was typical to find a much smaller overseer's workplace. This was the combined home
and office for the man that oversaw the day-to-day operations of the plantation. The slaves lived in rows of simple
cabins like these. Often the slave cabins were built near
the driveway to the mansion house so the owner could
impress visitors with his wealth. For slaves were very
expensive and a strong young slave could easily cost
over $1,000, which was a great deal of money back then.
It has been said that southern plantations were much
more like small towns than big farms because there were
so many people living and working in so many different
buildings on their grounds. For example, in addition to the
numerous buildings in which people lived, there was
almost always a separate kitchen building where slaves
prepared meals for the owner's family; a smokehouse for
making ham and bacon; a schoolhouse, where the children of the owner and overseer were taught; an assortment of barns, stables and gardener's sheds; several
14
workshops; a grist-mill for grinding grain into flour; and
many special buildings where slaves processed the crops
after they were harvested, such as this "sugar house,"
where sugar cane juice was boiled down; barns where
tobacco was dried and packed and the buildings where
cotton was cleaned and baled.
The Life of a Plantation Slave
The life of a plantation slave was a sad one of forced
labor, poverty, and ongoing humiliation. Under the law
slaves were considered to be the property of the plantation owner; just like his farm animals. If you were a slave
you could be sold at any time and your family torn apart.
If the ongoing misery of your life made you want to run
away you knew would be hunted down and, if caught,
brought back to the plantation, where you might be
whipped or forced to wear a slave's collar like this one
that had bells on it so the owner's men could easily find
you if you tried to escape again.
In the South it was illegal for slaves to receive an education, to marry, to vote, to own property, to testify in court,
or even to earn their freedom through their work. There
were two basic types of slaves on plantations–the luckiest
were the house slaves who took care of the owner's
house and family, while the field slaves worked in the
fields from sunrise to sunset with just one 15-minute
break a day. To eat, slaves were given meager "rations"
mostly of cornmeal, pork, and molasses. And every year
slaves received one new set of winter and summer
clothes and a new blanket. Most slaves shared their small
cabins with 10 to 12 people and slept on straw piled on a
dirt floor
And so the lives of the slaves who did the work on plantations were filled with unending hardship, suffering and
poverty; in order that that those who enslaved them could
enjoy lives of comfort, luxury and ease.
15
Video Quiz
1.True or False? In 1808 the U.S. Congress passed a law
banning the importation of slaves.
2.True or False? Cotton was the main export of the thirteen American colonies.
3.True or False? Some triangular trade routes were
based on selling slaves.
4. True or False? Industrialization of the textile industry
caused the number of plantation slaves to decrease.
5. True or False? Slaves could legally own land but not
vote.
16