Child Slaves of The South

"If you were a slave child 150 years ago, your life would be hard. How hard? Harder if you worked on a huge plantation in the Deep South rather than on a smaller one in Virginia or Maryland. Harder if you worked in the fields rather than in the house. And hardest if your owner used cruel punishments or broke up your family by selling off a parent or sibling."

-- from "Life for slave children in 1861" 

The Washington Post

Young fugitive slave

Newly emancipated slave children.

In the above 2 images (from EastmanHouse.org)  are two slave children who were released by Union troops. They show a brother and sister who were freed from their owner, Thomas White of Mathews County, Virginia, by Captain Riley of the 6th U. S. 0.1. on February 20, 1864, and taken to the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Philadelphia to be educated at the Orphan’s Shelter. The cartes-de-visite were sold to raise funds to educate the children. The captions on the photographs explain that the children’s mother had been “beaten, branded and sold at auction because she was kind to Union Soldiers.” She had been taken away to be sold in Richmond only seven days before the children were freed. Their story puts the pain of the slave market into chilling perspective.

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