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former slave who became a famous abolitionist speaker, explained: I suffered much from hunger, but much more from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost naked—no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a coarse tow linen shirt, reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must have perished with cold, but that, the coldest nights, I used to steal a bag which was used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into this bag, and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out. Owners also felt justified in punishing their slaves however they saw fit, sometimes even before a slave did anything wrong, just to remind him or her not to step out of line. William Wells Brown remembered how his owner had hired him out to a particularly foul-tempered man who regularly got so angry that he would “take up a chair, and throw it at a servant; and in his more rational moments, when he wished to chastise one, he would tie them up in the smoke-house, and whip them; after which, he would cause a

Five generations of black American slaves outside their modest home on a South Carolina plantation.

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SLAVE REVOLTS AND REBELLIONS