Did an American slave owner provide food and clothing to his slaves?

You probably need to read some books to get a detailed answer to this but yes the slave owner provided food and clothing or the materials to make food and clothing to the enslaved. But, as you can imagine, there would have been a wide range in the quality of what they provided and most would have probably only provided what were minimal requirements for keeping their enslaved people healthy enough to work.

Some of the enslaved had vegetable gardens and could supplement their diets. Some sewed or quilted in their spare time. Some were taught to read and some were whipped for trying to learn.

In an oppressive system, they was a variety of ways in which the oppression was enforced. The novel The Underground Railroad which ventures into magical realism will give you some ideas in its first section of how slaves were treated. Another good novel about slavery and abolitionists is The Invention of Wings about the abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke.

GA @janbb. The slave owners viewed the slaves as property, much like a horse or a dog. They would feed and house the horse or the dog, do what they needed to protect their investment, but that was about it. Slaves were about the same, though they also required clothes. I wasn’t there so I don’t know all the details. My guess is that there were some “good” slave owners and some “bad” ones…ones that cared a little and those that were sadists. If the slaves got a “good” owner, they might be given better housing, food and/or clothing that those owned by a “bad” owner.

As slaves were considered property their owners could treat them pretty much as they chose. Some owners were kinder than others but the system itself was a hellish one. Some freed slaves such as Frederick Douglass wrote about their experiences. There is nothing like a first hand account

Hope the link works.

There was a huge range, from the very minimal, to owners who would let slaves buy themselves free, kind of a retirement benefit.
If owners were savvy businessmen, they would recognize the cost of keeping the elderly was no benefit. Letting them buy their freedom would have been a very good incentive, and cost effective. However, it would have been admitting the slaves were actually people, and owners tended to not want to believe that.
Some were not only allowed to buy themselves free, but we’re also allotted a parcel of land.
That is the very top of the spectrum.
There were owners who chose, which slaves would breed, for optimum offspring.
Women were used, well, women were used, lots.
Have you ever seen the miniseries Roots? It is a docudrama based on the actual family history of slaves from one particular young man taken from Africa, right up to current times. Alex Haley followed the family stories of his heritage through generations, finding documentation to support those stories, right back to a teen boy stolen from Africa.
It is an amazing story, and the miniseries is chock full of stars.

Generally the slaves who worked the fields would get the entrails and whatever else the owners didn’t want. They certainly didn’t get the good meat from an animal. Clothing was little more than rags. The “house niggers” were treated somewhat better. They may have gotten better food and absolutely better quality clothing.

Odd question. We were not te only country to have slaves by a long shot. (not to justify but to make aware)

Slaves are still bought, sold, and abducted.

Didn’t Canada have any slaves at all? Yeah..in today’s world also it is being done in the form of human trafficking..very sad. Their condition is also very bad.

@seawulf575 No one disagrees that there is massive disregard for the sanctity of our Southern borders. But to simply regard those violating the border as criminals and treating them as such will not quench the flood, and falsely impying that the flood is built around substantial numbers of murderers, rapists and gangsters is so patently dishonest an exaggeration that it detracts considerably from the credibility of your position and any valid arguments you would have us consider. In addition, you have an unfortunate tendency to draw sweeping conclusions from insufficient evidence. Your claim that opposition to the brutalization of people at the border is equivalent to a passion for flinging the gates open to all comers is of course ridiculous, just as is the accusation that those opposed to such policies are the dupes of rapists and MS-13. The naked truth is that labeling people criminals, and the ludicrous propaganda effort to drive public perception toward the portrayal of desperate people with their kids in tow as vicious criminals—these “remedies” will do nothing to stem the tide. Objectively, one need merely consider the hazards and perils risked in arriving here to understand that whatever is behind the exodus must be both powerful and terrible indeed. As I see it, villification of these people is not only a waste of time, but a distraction from an honest and logical approach to the problem. One solution to our problem would be to render punishment to these people more severe than the conditions driving them here. Thank God THAT is not who we are (yet). So we continue to go about “baling out the ocean” while we argue about solutions. The way I see it, we should seriously consider the gargantuan task of eliminating the conditions driving the migration before our frustations drive US to be those people REALLY brutalizing our fellow desperate human beings.

It can’t be all bad.
They still keep coming.