Post by Lady Sin Ra on Apr 16, 2007 12:19:40 GMT -5
Away from the view of owners and overseers, slaves lived their own lives. They made friends, fell in love, played and prayed, sang, told stories and engaged in the necessary chores day-to-day living, from cleaning house, cooking and sewing to working on garden plots. Especially important as anchors of the slaves' lives were their families and their religion.
Throughout the South, the family defined the actual living arrangements of slaves: most slaves lived together in nuclear families with a mother, father, and children. The security and stability of these families faced severe challenges: no state law recognized marriage among slaves, masters rather than parents had legal authority over slave children, and the possibility of forced separation, through sale, hung over ever family. These separations were especially frequent in the slave-exportint states of the upper South. Still, despite their tenous status, families served as the slaves' most basic refuge, the center of private lives that owners could never fully control.
Religion served as a second refuge. In the colonial period, African slaves usually clung to their native religions, and many slaveowners were suspicious of others who sought to convert their slaves to Christianity, in part because they feared that converted slaves would have to be freed. During the decades following the American Revolution, however, Christianity was increasingly central to slaves' cultural life. Many slaves were converted during the religious revivals that swept the South in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Slaves typically belonged to the same denominations as white Southerners, the largest of which were the Baptists and Methodists. Some masters encouraged their slaves to come to the white church, where they usually sat in a special slave gallery and received advice about being obedient to their masters. In the quarters, however, there developed a parallel, so-called "invisible" church controlled by the slaves themselves, who listened to sermons delivered by their own preachers. Not all slaves had access to these preachers and not all accepted their message, but for many religion served as a great comfort in a hostile world.
Throughout the South, the family defined the actual living arrangements of slaves: most slaves lived together in nuclear families with a mother, father, and children. The security and stability of these families faced severe challenges: no state law recognized marriage among slaves, masters rather than parents had legal authority over slave children, and the possibility of forced separation, through sale, hung over ever family. These separations were especially frequent in the slave-exportint states of the upper South. Still, despite their tenous status, families served as the slaves' most basic refuge, the center of private lives that owners could never fully control.
Religion served as a second refuge. In the colonial period, African slaves usually clung to their native religions, and many slaveowners were suspicious of others who sought to convert their slaves to Christianity, in part because they feared that converted slaves would have to be freed. During the decades following the American Revolution, however, Christianity was increasingly central to slaves' cultural life. Many slaves were converted during the religious revivals that swept the South in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Slaves typically belonged to the same denominations as white Southerners, the largest of which were the Baptists and Methodists. Some masters encouraged their slaves to come to the white church, where they usually sat in a special slave gallery and received advice about being obedient to their masters. In the quarters, however, there developed a parallel, so-called "invisible" church controlled by the slaves themselves, who listened to sermons delivered by their own preachers. Not all slaves had access to these preachers and not all accepted their message, but for many religion served as a great comfort in a hostile world.