The story of African-American life in Georgia and South Carolina begins over 500 years ago with the ambitions of a Portuguese nobleman, Prince Henry the Navigator. Acknowledged as a leading force behind the age of exploration, Prince Henry dispatched many ships from the coasts of Portugal to distant seas to acquire goods. Among those sailing under his orders was a young Portuguese sea captain, Antonio Gonsalves. In 1441, Gonsalves, intending to acquire a cargo of animal skins and oils to sell in Europe, landed on the shores of West Africa. The ten Africans he abducted were almost an afterthought.

When he returned to Portugal, Gonsalves made a gift of the captives to Prince Henry, who in turn presented them to the Pope, then as much a powerful political figure as religious leader. The gesture so pleased the pontiff that he granted Prince Henry title to a broad chunk of West African territory. For a brief time thereafter, the Portuguese dominated European trade with the continent of Africa and the peddling of its inhabitants.

Long a part of history throughout much of the world, the practice often enslaving others now entered a new era, the so-called "Commercial Age." Thousands of Africans during this period were herded into cramped, unsanitary quarters and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean for sale. Within two decades of Antonio Gonsalves' voyage, the African slave trade had become a highly profitable venture for Europeans. And within 50 years, the biggest demand for the captives came from the New World. The flood of forced migration to the Western Hemisphere was well underway by 1540, when an estimated 10,000 slaves were annually reaching Spanish colonies. Gradually, more of the great European powers of the day joined in the flesh trade, with the French, Dutch, British, and others participating in and encouraging the increasingly thriving business.

Slavery was not a new concept for Africans who found themselves sold into bondage by rival tribes. Like people of other cultures, Africans occasionally kept their own captives, whom they won in battle or enslaved as punishment for crimes or debts. But nothing could have prepared those kidnapped by Europeans for what they were to encounter.
 

Right: Drawing of how slaves were stowed.

They must have been terrified as they were violently forced from their homes and marched towards the coast to be lodged in prisons the size of warehouses until slave ships arrived. Once the vessels moored offshore, the Africans were rowed in small boats to the waiting ships. Crew members snapped whips at their backs to hurry them up swaying rope ladders. On deck, women were separated from the men, who were chained together in irons around their ankles to prevent escape. Nightmarish quarters for the voyage, which lasted as long as two months or more, were small, nearly airless pockets below deck. Frequently, there was barely enough space to lie down or adequate room for movement of any kind without bumping into the other prisoners on all sides. Distance between the floor and ceiling was often so slight that sitting comfortably, much less standing upright, was impossible. Documents from the era reveal that slave quarters on some vessels were less than two feet high.

But not all the passage was spent down below. In good weather, captains sometimes allowed the Africans to climb on deck to eat. At other times, the captives were brought up to perform an exercise slave traders called "dancing the slaves."

In this coerced "dance," the Africans were forced to jump up and down vigorously, with anyone whipped who didn't show enough enthusiasm. The exercise was supposed to keep the captives healthy and to prevent them from slipping into listless depression, but the strategy often failed. Disease rampaged through many slave ships, with one in eight Africans perishing on board, by some accounts. Other reports cite losses on some ships of as many as two-thirds or more of the slaves. Half the human cargo dying was not unusual. In fact, any slave who became ill was in grave jeopardy, and not only from disease. Captains, intent on preserving as much of their pay-load as possible, were known to toss overboard any slave who became so sick that he or she might infect the others.
 

African captives were examined from head to toe, then sold to the highest bidder in auctions.

Other slaves perished when they were unchained for some reason, leaped overboard, and drowned. Whether intending to escape or to commit suicide, anyone who reached the water had first to jump clear of nets, which ringed the ships for the purpose of catching potential escapees. Others intent on suicide by starving themselves were kept alive only through the practiced brutality of their keepers. Slave traders intervened in such hunger strikes by using a "mouth opener" containing live coals.

There were also other dangers. Food and water sometimes ran low, leading to rationing or no provisions at all for the weaker prisoners. Also, fierce storms could suddenly rise up and furiously rake the seas, at worst threatening the sometimes rickety ships with sinking, at best causing the Africans to be horribly nauseated. Slave mutinies were also a risk, with results precarious and unpredictable for all on board. Captains tried to prevent revolts through daily searches for any objects that could be used in a violent uprising and by closely guarding all weapons, but even with such precautions mutinies erupted. Indeed, rebellions occurred often enough so that most slave traders felt compelled to buy "revolt insurance."

Africans who somehow survived the perils at sea found themselves facing a new set of trials when the ships docked in the New World. Displayed like livestock, they were forced to endure rough inspections from head to toe. Prospective buyers evaluated their teeth and bones, pawing over them as if they were less than human. A slave's value was set according to age, sex, size, and strength, with the individuals who looked strongest fetching the highest prices. In a language the Africans couldn't understand, their fates were decided by bidders who haggled with the traders to get the cheapest prices for the most able-bodied slaves.

These unfortunate captives were the ancestors of the elderly African Americans interviewed by oral historians in the 1980's. While centuries had passed since the abduction of men and women from African villages, the impact of their enslavement continued to reverberate through the lives of their descendants.

Left: Slavery brought thousands of Africans to the new world, beginning a life of extreme hardship for most. Farmers and plantation owners alike bought them to work on Georgia and South Carolina fields.
 

In Georgia and South Carolina, the principal settings for the life stories shared with researchers, slavery played an early and integral role. South Carolina was established first in 1670, when British settlers founded Charles Town on the Atlantic Coast. Later, the name for the waterfront community was shortened to Charleston. From this base, the white pioneers gradually moved into the interior of the country. Early colonial life was marked by hard, physical work as the new arrivals struggled to scratch out a civilization in an unfamiliar land. Most of those who could afford to bought slaves to shoulder the brunt of the burden.

Slavery quickly became so widespread in the colony that by 1708 the official census in South Carolina showed that there was almost the equivalent of one slave for every white resident. Not all the slaves, however, were African. The census reported that among 9,500 people, 3,000 were black slaves and 1,400 were Indian slaves. Enslaving Indians, however, gradually diminished because the practice provoked wars with the natives and because the Indians repeatedly tried to escape and often succeeded. Unlike the Africans who were separated from their homeland by an ocean, the Indians were in their own territory and could more easily disappear into the wilderness.

Settling of the colony of Georgia followed in 1733 with the arrival of British settlers at Yamacraw Bluff and the building of the town of Savannah. Georgia's founding father, James Oglethorpe, was an early opponent of slavery, but even a legal prohibition against the practice was soon swept aside as Georgia's coastal planters enviously watched the profits their neighboring planters in South Carolina were reaping.
 

The Taylor Cotton Gin in Calhoun Falls, South Carolina, was a focal point of early industry.

In both colonies, expansion steadily pushed inland, with new settlers sometimes taking slaves with them. Initially, however, slavery was not as widespread in the interior as it was along the coast, where fortunes were being amassed from the forced labors of Africans working rice and indigo plantations.

The heavy dependence on slaves on coastal plantations resulted in black majorities in both Georgia and South Carolina by the end of the Revolutionary War. This alarmed some officials, including Georgia Governor James Habersham. He and others sought to diminish the seemingly unceasing demand for slaves by encouraging the development of small, inland farms. The effort, however, was doomed after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Now the tedious and time-consuming effort to separate cotton fibers from seeds would no longer have to be done by hand. The gin did the work in a fraction of the time, significantly boosting potential profits from cotton and luring more planters into raising the crop.

Left: Washing laundry by hand and carrying it some distances in baskets and bundles atop their heads were common chores for African-American women. Archeologists have have learned that African traditions influenced much of the basketry, pottery, cuisine, and housing styles in the South.
 

It was only a matter of time before th Piedmont region of rolling hills in Georgia and South Carolina would be transformed into cotton country. Only political events slowed the transformation. Uneasiness over French aggressions led by Napoleon Bonaparte in Europe, embargoes prior to the War of 1812 between the fledgling United States and Great Britain, and disruptions fostered by the war itself moderated demand for the cotton. In 1809, growers could get only eight to ten cents a pound for their crop, but when peace seemed assured, the price skyrocketed to 19 cents a pound in the summer of 1815. And the figure just kept on rising. The seemingly unending demand caused the region called the Piedmont, including what is now Elbert and Abbeville Counties, to become the most productive cotton-growing section of the entire country by the early 1800's.

Despite the efficiency of cotton gins, planting, tending, and harvesting the plants remained extremely labor-intensive, fueling the demand for slaves. Statistics reveal how the slave population exploded. In 1790, in Abbeville County, the vast majority of residents were white. But by 1850, primarily because of slaves bought to work cotton fields, 60 percent of the population was black. Elbert County underwent a similar population change. In 1809, slightly more than half of the landowners in Elbert County owned slaves. By 1851, nearly 80 percent did.

The legacy of slavery was so deep in the two counties that even more than a century later recollections passed down through generations of African Americans about the "peculiar institution" remained vivid and plentiful. Contemporary residents of Georgia and South Carolina who shared their memories with oral historians recounted tales told to them as children by former slaves, usually relatives. Curled up in the laps of their parents, kneeling at the knees of grandparents, or walking beside a favorite uncle or aunt, they had heard about the dark days when freedom was denied to people because of their color.

Phoebe Turman remembered gaining insight into what slavery meant when she was crossing the Savannah River with her family. They were moving from a tenant farm in South Carolina to another tenant farm in Georgia on the other side of the water. During the boat ride, someone told Turman, a teenager at the time, to look at an overgrown place on the river bank. The spot, she was told, was where slaves were once sold. "Just a big open field on the Georgia side," she recalled. "They would go down there and the big shots order so many, and pay for 'em. It was a big field. They called it the quarter....They auctioned 'em off.They pay so much for a head."
 

Cotton was the dominant crop in the South for many years.  Planting, cultivating, and harvesting were extremely labor-intensive, fanning spiraling demand for slaves.

W.T. Smith remembered sitting with his grandmother, Laura Fortson, as she told stories about her life as a slave in Georgia. "Used to sell colored folk just like they do cars. Just sell 'em and folks were carried away from home. In slavery time, you had to do what the white folks say." Smith's memories included talk about the "slave codes," laws passed by Southern legislatures to prevent violent uprisings, laws which frequently included prohibitions against any slave leaving a master's land without signed permission. Most regions of the South also had groups called "The Patrol," armed men authorized to search blacks to find whether they carried stolen goods or firearms and determine whether they had written permission to travel.

Remembering his grandmother's words, Smith said, "Yeah. [She talked] about how colored people couldn't go nowhere in slavery time. She used to tell us, she'd say, 'If we live here and some colored folk live over yonder somewhere, the whites used to say we couldn't go by and visit unless we ask the white folks.' Yeah.. .you had to ask 'em."

Conditions slaves endured varied, depending upon the financial circumstances and dispositions of their owners. Some slave holders were inordinately cruel, meting out frequent punishments for the smallest infractions, while others were less harsh. Minnie Clark, a retired teacher whose grandmother had talked to her about her experiences as a slave, told investigators: "They [the white owners] wasn't mean. No, they wasn't mean people. [You] just had to work."

Other accounts reveal that how a slave perceived his or her lot was significantly affected by the work the master required. On large plantations, slaves were grouped into three categories: field hands, house servants, and skilled craftsmen, such as blacksmiths, masons, and carpenters. Craftsmen and house servants sometimes lived a bit more comfortably than other slaves because their work was valued more. But the predominant theme in most slaves' lives was day-to-day drudgery in the fields, often in blistering heat.

Randolph Davis, 111 years of age and the oldest person interviewed, recalled what he had heard about pre-Civil War life. "They had somebody on a horse working the blacks for nothing. Had a man on a horse ridin' along and making the blacks work in the field. Call 'em [the man on the horse] the boss. Yeah, had a horse riding 'long behind the others in the fields chopping cotton."

Samuel Calhoun, 86 years old, talked about conversations he and his father once had about slavery: "Oh yeah, some of 'em [the slaves] had a pretty good time in slavery time. Some of 'em house maids.. .some of 'em were janitors around the house, kept all that clean." His father told him how he had worked as a stable boy. "My father catch the horses, cut 'em off, put the harnesses on, take 'em up to the buggy. They had a gate to open, [he would open it], and then he'd be there when they come back. Open the gate and let 'em back in. Then he'd go back to the house, take the harness off." Once his father tried to run away: "Well, my father, he said they had whipped him. He said they got on him one evening, whipped him, and he run off in the woods." Hunger eventually forced the boy to return to the plantation where his masters fed him, but only after first humiliating him. "Next night, he went there. They told him to get up under the table and when they be eatin', he hollered like a cat and scratched their leg, you know. When he scratched their leg, they'd hand him a biscuit. They played around, you know," said Calhoun.

Slave owners included struggling farmers with small land holdings and fewer than five slaves, as well as wealthy plantation owners with hundreds and even thousands of acres. These well-to-do planters sometimes owned more than 100 slaves. While the less prosperous farmers might work in the fields beside their slaves and even share meals with them, planters often delegated much of slave management to overseers.

One of the most prominent planters in either Elbert or Abbeville Counties was James Edward Calhoun, brother-in-law and cousin of John C. Calhoun, the influential United States senator who ultimately became vice president of the nation. James Edward Calhoun was among the wealthiest white men in the region and his actions shaped the lives of many blacks, even long after his death.

James Edward Calhoun's base of operations for most of his life was Millwood Plantation, approximately 10,000 acres stretching for about seven miles on both sides of the Savannah River. The plantation was home to more than 100 slaves, and later, after the Civil War, to dozens of black tenant farmers. Many of those interviewed for this volume either once lived at Millwood or knew someone who had.
 

Millwood Plantation, shown here in an 1875 photograph, was home to many African Americans, some of whom remained after slavery ended. Many ultimately became tenant farmers.

While details about the ancestors of many of the African Americans were lost because of frequent involuntary separations of families and lack of written records, a good deal is known about Calhoun. He was born in the late 1700's into a family of pioneers who arrived early in the region when bloody skirmishes with Indians were common. Calhoun's maternal grandmother was killed in such a clash in the backcountry of South Carolina during an Indian raid. His father, John Ewing Calhoun, grew up not far from the Savannah River, amassed a fortune, and was elected to the U.S. Senate. When he died in 1802, he bequeathed large tracts of land and many slaves to James Edward, who steadily expanded his father's holdings (see Development of Millwood Plantation).

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Gaining Freedom

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