Most enslaved people lived on plantations, forced labor camps dedicated to the large-scale production of cash crops. By 1850, more than half of enslaved people in the United States grew cotton for export to northern and British textile mills.
Wealth in the South was measured in the terms of land and slaves. Slaves were treated as property, subject to being bought and sold. Some whites were sensitive about how they treated the other humans that they referred to slavery as “that peculiar institution”. Most slaves labored in the fields, but many learned skilled crafts or worked as house servants, in factories or on construction gangs. In large plantation in the Cotton Belt, slaves worked in “gangs” under an overseer. These overseers were sometimes helped by black “drivers” who enforced a sun-up to sun-down workday, 6 days a week.
