Some remained on the old plantations as low-wage workers, but more took advantage of their sudden freedom by moving. A number moved north in search of a new life and still could not escape the legacy of slavery, a problem that plagues the character Sethe in Beloved.
Slavery in Kentucky. In Beloved, Sethe has escaped from life on a Kentucky farm called Sweet Home. Bordering the free states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, Kentucky offered a less sinister environment for slaves than in the Deep South. The products raised in Kentucky-livestock, tobacco, and hemp (manufactured into cotton bagging and rope for tying cotton bales) required relatively small labor forces. Kentucky was thus dotted with medium-sized farms rather than plantations, and in 1850 most of the 38,500 slaveowners of Kentucky possessed fewer than five slaves apiece. Historical records indicate that because of the less vicious form of slavery existing in Kentucky, its slaves lived in terror of being sold into the Deep South.
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