HI330 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Ring Shout, Cuisine Of The Southern United States, Fictive Kinship
Document Summary
They were expected to work by their masters. Work for the benefit of another person and not their own. Might work with a merchant or shop keeper, artisan, be a sailor. Increasingly important role in industry in the north. Mining of coal, iron and worked in refineries to refine iron. Would work 5 days a week instead of 6 or 7 and if you worked the weekend you would be paid. Could result in their workers being sick, break tools or equipment and sloppy work would eventually cost them money. Deep system to set work limits that gave slaves some free time. 17th century petitioned the courts to discipline their unruly slaves via the legal system. 18th century slaveholders assumed absolute sovereignty over their plantation masters authority was rarely questioned and the law rarely got involved. African slaves had no court of last resort to defend them. Limits to the amount of work a slave could actually do.
