This, however, is not considered a very great privation.
There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be considered such, and none but the men and women had these. Children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of the year. When these failed them, they went naked until the next allowance-day. The children unable to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year. The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the old women having the care of them. Their yearly clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars. …The men and women slaves received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. …Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred slaves on his home plantation, and owned a large number more on the neighboring farms belonging to him.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (Boston: the Anti-Slavery Office, 1845).
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