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By Root 464 0

’s room or on a palette outside the door in case he or his family should require services of any sort during the night. House servants were usually better clothed than their field counterparts, as they became representations to the outside world of the plantation’s order and wealth. Regarded by some as slavery’s elite, they often had the ear of the master or mistress and could petition and inveigle favors. They also were often members of one family and occasionally related to the master as well. They were usually given more privileges and occasionally better food. However, the favors came at a high price: lack of privacy of any sort and constant unrelenting service. Subject to the whims and personality foibles of the master and his family, they, in many cases, suffered as much as field hands, as they were at the beck and call of the master’s family all day and all night.

The slave community within the Big House itself had its own pecking order. Scullions and those who slept outside but worked in the house during the day were on the bottom of a pyramid that extended upward, depending on the size and “greatness” of the plantation, through maids and houseboys to butlers, culminating at the pinnacle of the Big House cook. The planter class took meals very seriously, and the Big House cook was tasked with preparing the meals for the members of the family, and depending on the size of the plantation, with preparing and overseeing meals for other slaves as well. On the more affluent plantations, the slave cook would command a battalion of underlings and produce meals the equal of any chef of the time. Often the cooks were male, because it was thought that men could withstand the searing heat of hearth cooking better than women.

Kitchens were primitive affairs; they were usually located in outbuildings to protect the main house from the fires that occasionally arose and also to keep the heat of the open fires from the main house in the summer. Floors were frequently brick or stone, so that they could be easily washed down, and there were few built-in cupboards or pantries. Dressers, open shelves, barrels, and chests held the ingredients used to prepare the meals, and other items were brought in as needed from the smokehouse, the icehouse, or other outbuildings. The dominant feature in every kitchen was the fireplace, in which most of the cooking was done. It was equipped with iron cranes and chimney bars from which a variety of pots and cauldrons were hung. Roasts were turned on spits by clockwork jacks, and pots were raised and lowered in the fireplace to adjust the cooking temperatures in a never-ending ballet. Three-legged frying pans and Dutch ovens offered added opportunities to use all the hearth’s heat, and a head cook had to be aware of the progress of each and every pot on the fire at all times to avoid ruining a meal.

The plantation system, with its dichotomy between field hands and house slaves, became the rural face of the developing colonies. This new way of life thrived in the marshy coastal areas of South Carolina. South Carolina’s settlers created a colony that in a brief time became a colonial jewel in the crown, with planters living a lavish lifestyle of luxury and profligacy that was equaled only in the Caribbean, from whence many of them hailed. Indeed Charleston itself had a Caribbean aspect, as reported by J. S. Buckingham in Journey Through the Slave States of North America.

It more resembles a West Indian than an American city— from the number of wooden buildings painted white, the large verandas and porticoes of the more stately mansions of brick, and the universal prevalence of broad verandas, green Venetian blinds, and other provisions to secure shade and coolness.

The Carolina colonists’ lives of unparalleled luxury depended on the labor of their slaves. Most boasted well-appointed houses in the city of Charleston as well as lavish rural plantations that were virtual mini fiefdoms and enjoyed a seasonal lifestyle that swung between the two. They lived in a colony that in the 1700s had a black majority,