Working in the Cotton Fields

Plantation owners forced enslaved people across the southern United States to work long days in harsh conditions. Overseers enforced productivity through beatings, floggings, and, sometimes, death.

Primary Document

For Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave:

“The day's work over in the field, the baskets are … carried to the gin-house, where the cotton is weighed. No matter how fatigued and weary he may be—no matter how much he longs for sleep and rest—a slave never approaches the gin-house with his basket of cotton but with fear. If it falls short in weight—if he has not performed the full task appointed him, he knows that he must suffer. And if he has exceeded it by ten or twenty pounds, in all probability his master will measure the next day's task accordingly. So, whether he has too little or too much, his approach to the gin-house is always with, fear and trembling. Most frequently they have too little, and therefore it is they are not anxious to leave the field. After weighing, follow the whippings...”