It would be inaccurate to state that slavery and labor were uniform across the South correct?
How would a slave's who planted tobacco workday differ from a slave who picked cotton?
Before King Cotton, what would have been the dominant crop in the south?
A professor of mine once stated that different States and plantations had different labor usage. They stated for example a slave in South Carolina would work from sun up to sun down, but a slave in Louisiana would work until they picked n pounds of crop
Finally, as a child, I was taught that the master of the plantation would give the scraps to their slaves.
How true is this? The "scraps" of the master couldn't ever feed a large plantation obviously. Would slaves have been responsible for growing their own crops? Or was this on a case-by-case, state-by-state basis?
I'll try to answer this as best as I can. I'm mostly going off memory from books/class lectures since my books are in moving boxes.
1)The conditions of slave labor were dependent on the size of the plantation, or even if the slaves were on a plantation or rather just a farm or in an urban area, the type of crop their master planted, the temperament/personality of their master.
3)It depends on the region. In the Virginia tidewater there was a lot of tobacco and that was the original cash crop there. In South Carolina, at least in the low country, you had indigo and rice.
The labor depended on the plantation's master and the plantation's crops. Some slaves worked tasks and had the rest of the day to their own time as soon as they finished their tasks. Other slaves worked in labor gangs. Some slaves had to work from sun up to sun down.
I don't really know what you mean by scraps. Some masters would provide basic foodstuffs for their slaves, while the slaves were responsible for anything extra, which they procured in a number of ways. Some slaves had their own plots of land they were able to work. They either grew food crops or, in some cases, cash crops to sell on the side. Some slaves could hire out their labor and their masters would allow them to keep part of the money. With this money they could buy other food. Some slaves went hunting and fishing in the surrounding areas. Others stole from their master's larders.