How was plantation slavery different from slavery in the cities?

There were around 2000 plantations that had 100 tp 500 slaves. These plantation slaves did the heavy manual labor on the plantations (of course there were also house workers and skilled laborers like carpenters and so on too). The field workers normally woke at 5:30 or 6 am and worked until breakfast time, which was around 9. They then worked again until they finished their work at about 2 in the afternoon (or three at the latest). They had lunch and then had free time do do household and gardening tasks for themselves until dinner.

The usual work day was 8 or 9 hard hours. They had the Sabbath and other holidays like Christmas "off". That sort of work can burn up to 4,000 calories a day so the laborers were well fed, but the food was simple. They were well fed because they were worth from about $100,000 to $200,00 each in today's money value. Slavery was abhorrent, but the owners wanted to keep the slaves healthy so they could work hard. It was in the afternoons and evening that the workers did their own gardening, food preparation for their families, clothes mending and the like. The children, elderly, and ill all ate, were clothed and had roofs over their heads. The healthy worked hard, but civil rights were unknown to the slave.

City slaves generally worked as house slaves in the homes of rich merchants, assisted business owners, or worked as highly skilled laborers and artisians They were black smiths, carpenters, furniture builders, pottery makers, basket makers, silversmiths, seamstresses, and in many other skilled jobs. Normally a family would have only one or two slaves, since they were worth about the same as a person owning a second or third home today. Some actually lived in a separate home as a family, did their work and turned their profits over to their owners. House slaves were trusted with the children and sometimes close relationships develped.

Still, at the time, blacks were considered inferior and so there is no way to rationalize slavery in the twenty first century. Many whites knew it was wrong and wrote about it, even in the south. Thomas Jefferson, for example wanted to free all of his slaves upon his death, but was not able to do so, because he owed so much money that to do so would have left his children in debt and with no means of support. He did free Sally Henning's chidren though, and Jefferson's daughter allowed Sally to live with her chidren as though she were free after Jefferson's death.