A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity

The debate over the health and nutrition of slaves has focused on the typical working adult. Height and mortality data, however, indicate that the greatest systemativ variation in health and nutrition occured by age. Nourishment was exceedingly poor for slave childrenm but workers were remarkably well fed. The unusayal growth-by-age profile for slaves has implications for views on the postwar economic fortunes of blacks, the interpretation of findings of other height studies, and conceptions of slaveowner decision making, the slave family, and the slave personality.