9781422274248

Photo from 1862 shows a nursery, where slave children were cared for, on Elliott’s Plantation in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Slaves are seated in front of the building.

female slaves, or subjected them to other forms of sexual abuse. As Women’s America notes, “The law did not protect enslaved women against rape or seduction.” In fact, there were no laws prohibiting any type of abuse. The slave system was a more extreme version of the limited rights and protections that free women had in American society at the time. Although female slaves performed the same work as male slaves, this was not due to any ideas about equality between the sexes. Female slaves performed the same work as men because their status was lower than that of free women or of enslaved men. Free women, particularly those with wealth or status, were generally protected from hard work. Slave women, because of their low status, were treated more like animals. In the later generations of slavery, especially as the international slave trade ended, some owners put

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WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN SLAVERY