Robert Liston

In his book Slavery in America, author Robert Liston offers an overview of slave life in the Old South in the first half of the nineteenth century. He acknowledges that some slaves were treated relatively well by their masters, but also notes that some were treated with sadism and brutality. Between these extremes, he writes, the typical slave lived a life of constant toil. Whipping was the most common punishment for unproductive slaves. Most slaves lived in shacks and were chronically undernourished. Mortality rates and average lifespans were significantly worse for blacks in the Old South than for whites. Beyond these oppressive living conditions, concludes Liston, the worst part of slavery was that slaves were treated as property rather than as human beings.

By 1860, when the last census prior to the Civil War was taken, there were just...