American Commonwealth History

History of the American Commonwealth

Slavery

Slavery was more or less phased out. This most peculiar enterprise was not in favor of various British lords, so laws that were passed that would start emancipating slaves on a set schedule, so as to not greatly affect the Commonwealth's economy. A slave born in 1820, would be a free man by the 1850s. The last slave was freed in 1880, and he was already holding a job as a foreman on the plantation that had once owned him.

Plantations were encouraged to pay their slaves a wage so that when they were freed they wouldn't be a burden on the government or the economy. Wages were around 10 pence a day, but this law had an unintended consequence. Getting paid to work the fields encourage some slaves to work harder. Some plantations upped this wage by including performance bonuses of an extra pence for additional bushels of whatever they were growing. Some plantations became so productive, they discovered that they had too many slaves getting paid and not working during the other seasons. So a bean counter decision was made and whole plantations were free, but only those Blacks who did year round jobs were offered positions on the plantation at slightly higher pay. The rest were told that if they wanted to stay, they had to pay rent, and they only got paid if they did work.

This lead to an early Diaspora of freedmen to the big cities of the south, but not in great numbers. It was a steady stream, not big enough to swamp local economies. Many crossed the border to Louisiana, which had abolished slavery in 1814, and found a life along the Mississippi.

Now life as a slave wasn't all crumpets and tea, since being a slave meant that you were property, not people, so harsh treatment still occurred, sometimes at the hands of a freedman overseer. Killing slaves was illegal, but whipping them to the bone wasn't. Many a freedman and freedwoman bore the scars of their former slavery.