National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: How Slavery Affected African American Families
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Heather Andrea Williams discusses the lives of enslaved African American families and how slavery made their lives different from other families.
PBS
Pbs: Cet: Africans in America: Arthur Middleton
This lesson describes the rice cultivation on Arthur Middleton's South Carolina plantation and the importance of slaves to this cultivation. It also offers a description of the Middleton Family. Click on Teacher's guide for teaching...
![Hillcrest High School: The Colonies Come of Age: The Agricultural South [Pdf] eBook](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "Hillcrest High School: The Colonies Come of Age: The Agricultural South [Pdf] eBook")
Other
Hillcrest High School: The Colonies Come of Age: The Agricultural South [Pdf]
A chapter from a history text that looks at the plantation economy of the Southern colonies, which relied on slave labor. It discusses the role of women as second class citizens, the cash crops that were grown, indentured servitude, the...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: The Varieties of Slave Labor
Daniel C. Littlefield, Professor of History at University of South Carolina, explores how plantation or slave labor differed according to location and period.
British Library
British Library: Caribbean Views
Learn about plantation life during the 18th and 19th centuries by viewing images, maps, and text material in this virtual exhibition from the British Library. Writer Mike Phillips gives his personal interpretation of this exhibit on...
PBS
Wnet: Thirteen: Slavery and the Making of America: Slave Religion
What religions did slaves bring from Africa to America? This PBS series site provides the historical overview of how early African Americans preserved African spiritual beliefs and practices while enslaved, converted to Christianity, and...
US Department of State
Bureau of International Information Programs: History Outline: Sectionalism
Article reviews several conditions of American society that sowed the seeds of civil war, particularly slavery and sectional conflict.
New York Times
New York Times: Insurance Policies on Slaves
[Free Registration/Login Required] Read this intriguing article about the newly unearthed insurance policies that were sold to plantation owners to insure their slaves. This is a superb example of how the U.S. viewed slaves as a...
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: Anglo American Colonization in Texas: Negro Slavery
Describes the role slavery played in Texas in the mid-1800s, and the cotton plantations' role in the Texas economy.
Other
Smithsonian Institution: Remembering Slavery
Gain access to radio and TV broadcasts featuring first-person narratives about being a slave. Learning guides are included online for teacher use.
Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation
History Is Fun: Tobacco and Labor [Pdf]
A clear explanation of the system of indentured servitude that supplied Virginia tobacco plantations with the labor force they needed in order to manage their crops. Explains how such servants were able to earn their own land, and how...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Driver, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Unusual letters from black slave drivers, and in one case, letters in reply from the white slave owner, about crops, labor, and conditions on plantations in the mid-1850s.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Charles C. Jones, Triumph of Nationalism: America, 1815 1850
Plantation owner, Charles Colcock Jones, argues in two chapters from his book on promoting religious education for blacks that plantation owners have an obligation to offer religious instruction to slaves.
Digital History
Digital History: Solomon Northup and Mammy Harriet [Pdf]
Solomon Northrup, a free man, was captured and sold into slavery. Read his account of what plantation life was like from his book, 12 Years a Slave. In addition, read the remembrances of a house slave and what her life was like. [pdf]
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Us History: 1844 1877: Life for Enslaved Men and Women
During the nineteenth century, enslaved African Americans worked on large plantations in the US South under brutal conditions.
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: Mount Vernon and the Dilemma of a Revolutionary Slave Holder
Read about George Washington's dependence on slaves to increase his wealth, and his private views on slavery. What were the possibilites had he expressed these views in public?
Cornell University
Cornell University: Library: I Will Be Heard: A Slave's Life
A brief look at how slavery in America was tied to the crops grown in the South. See how the need for skilled workers was decreased and the use of unskilled slaves increased with the introduction of the cotton gin.
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: Sacred Beliefs
At the beginning of the Civil War people in both the North and the South held firm beliefs about the reasons for the war. Some wanted to preserve the Union, others to end slavery. In the South the question was about states' rights and...
University of North Carolina
Documenting the American South: Thirty Years a Slave
From the extensive site, "Documenting the American South," read Louis Hughes' "Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom: The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of the Planter," which was originally...
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: African Americans in the British New World
Read about the transit of Africans from their homeland to the American British colonies to work on plantations in the south as part of leg in the triangular trade.
Other
Understanding Slavery: The Lives of Eighteenth Century African Americans
Comprehensive description of slaves in South Carolina. Click on the topics on the left to take you to a wealth of information about the lives of slaves in South Carolina.
Digital History
Digital History: The Origins of New World Slavery
Read about the initial slow introduction of slave labor into the colonies, which accelerated because of the slaves' knowledge of growing crops, and the decline in the institution of indentured servitude.
Digital History
Digital History: Slavery and Spanish Colonization
Read about the slave trade and use of slaves in agriculture and mining in Spanish America in the New World. Find out why it was expedient to use African slaves.