Female slaves in the antebellum United States faced challenges similar to male slaves, but also experienced gender-specific abuse and were often denied education and skilled work. They were considered property and forced to renounce their African customs and languages. Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse was common, and maintaining a stable family unit was difficult as owners could separate spouses and children. Slaves were forbidden from learning to read or write and were forced to practice Christianity and speak English.
Women in slavery in the antebellum United States faced most of the same problems faced by their male counterparts. These women were generally regarded as the property of their masters, lacking intrinsic rights and privileges, and were usually prohibited by law from being educated. They were largely forced to renounce their native African customs, religious beliefs, and languages. However, women in slavery also faced special gender-related challenges, including increased incidences of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at the hands of other slaves and whites. These women were almost never allowed to do skilled work outside the home. Some were never allowed to marry, and others lived in fear that their husbands or children might be taken from them at any moment.
Like all slaves, women in bondage were generally forbidden from learning to read or write. Masters generally forced their slaves to practice Christianity and to speak English instead of their native languages and faiths. While male slaves were often trained to do skilled work as artisans, this privilege was generally denied to female slaves.
Slave women sometimes worked in the home, often serving a white mistress and attending to all of her needs, around the clock. Women who had no duties around the house worked in the fields, usually from dawn to dusk, performing hard physical labor. More than half of the slaves working the plantation fields were women.
Sexual, physical and emotional abuse of women in bondage often began when girls reached puberty. This abuse typically came from masters, mistresses, and members of the master’s family. The master’s white clerks also often took liberties with teenage and female slaves. Male slaves also sometimes perpetrated abuse against their female counterparts.
Slavery as it existed in the antebellum United States was chattel slavery, meaning that slaves were considered property similar to livestock. Children of slaves were almost always forced into slavery themselves, even if one of their parents was white. Enslaved women were generally forbidden to reject the sexual advances of their white masters and could be severely punished if they did so. Women who had children from white fathers were also sometimes punished, as they were commonly accused of playing the seductress. White plantation owners, however, enjoyed the economic benefits of being able to increase their slave population without purchasing new ones.
Maintaining a stable family unit was another problem for women in slavery. Plantation owners sometimes denied their slaves the right to marry. Others believed that slaves were happier and easier to control if they were allowed to marry and live in family units. However, slave owners reserved the right to take children from separated parents or spouses, often by selling the individuals to another plantation. Those who remained were typically not given special rights to visit loved ones on other plantations, and in some cases, families found themselves separated by great distances.
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