Question/Problem 1: What was life like for slaves in the United States prior to the Civil War?

Education

Frederick Douglass, abolitionist leader and former slave, was taught to read by his master's wife. This was unusual. He described the typical opinion of southern whites toward teaching slaves in the following way:

If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-- to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now, if you teach that nigger to read, there would be not keeping him . It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.

From Walter Goodman, Black Bondage--The Life of Slaves in the South, p. 51.