From Sea to Shining Sea for Young Readers by Peter Marshall & with Anna Wilson Fishel

Author:Peter Marshall & with Anna Wilson Fishel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JNF049130, JNF025190, United States—History—1787–1837—Juvenile literature, United States—Social conditions—To 1837—Juvenile literature, United States—Church history—19th century—Juvenile literature, History (Theology)—Juvenile literature, Providence and government of God—Juvenile literature
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand.

Matthew 12:25

The wake-up horn sounded, and the six men and four women in cabin fourteen rolled off their straw pallets, groaning. They groped in the darkness for their field clothes. Those who still had shoes fumbled around the floor in search of them. The women grabbed some hoecakes and filled drinking gourds with water. Another day of sweat and toil had begun.

Streaks of pink and gray lined the eastern sky as the last man dashed toward the field. Frantically, he tucked in the shirt he had been slow to find. The overseer waited, slapping the handle of his whip in the palm of his hand.

“Jethro,” he said wearily, “you’re late again. Step forward.”

The slave did as he was told. The overseer lashed him twelve times as the boy hollered and the others watched. He would not be late again, anytime soon.

This same scene repeated itself many times throughout the deep south. Before dawn, thousands of slaves awoke to face days of hard labor for their white masters. Many sweated in the cotton fields. Others worked as house slaves. One fifteen-minute break for lunch punctuated their long, hot day. At day’s end during the fall, the field hands lifted the bales of cotton over their heads and wearily walked to the gin to have the cotton weighed. They worried about not making their quota, the daily amount of cotton each slave was to pick. Beatings often followed for those who failed to measure up.

Poverty defined the life of a slave in the nineteenth century. Often seven to twelve of them, from different families, were crammed into clapboard shanties with no windows or floors. There was little protection from sweltering heat in summer or freezing cold in winter. A pair of pants and a couple of shirts clothed a male slave in summer. In winter, he received a pair of shoes, a jacket, a blanket, and two caps. A quart of cornmeal and a piece of pork comprised his daily food. An Englishman estimated that the cost for all of this was one pound, ten shillings per year. Yet a slave’s labor was valued at twenty pounds per year. A slave received barely one-tenth of what he deserved.

Why did the institution of slavery prosper during the nineteenth century in America? For one thing, the south’s mild climate and rich soil encouraged plantation farming. Southerners harvested thousands of acres of tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and hemp. These plantations required field hands, and slave labor fit the need perfectly, especially because it was so cheap. Once a landowner had regained his initial purchase price for a slave, he could enjoy his profits. By 1790, the states of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia reported almost 650,000 slaves within their borders. Slavery was rapidly taking hold in the South.

Then, in 1793, a single incident sealed the south’s fate. Eli Whitney, a young Yale graduate, sailed to Savannah to tutor the children of a prominent family.

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