The Southern states enacted black codes, laws resembling the slave codes that restricted the movement of the former slaves in an effort to force them to work as plantation labourers often for their former masters at absurdly low wages.
And Tamils from India working as plantation laborers in Malaysia may have had less malaria and dengue than their Malay and Chinese co-workers did because they never stored water near their houses, leaving mosquitoes no place to breed.
And, far away from New England or Europe, the two younger brothers, Wilkie and Bob, struggle to make a living in Florida or Chicago or Milwaukee, working as plantation owners or railroad clerks or in the iron business.
In the heedless fashion common during the colonial era, the British moved tens of thousands of indentured laborers from other poorer states in India to work the tea estates in Assam, since the indigenous population was content in its own culture and unwilling to work as plantation labor.
Few of the proud and relatively well-off Singhalese deigned to work as plantation labor, so the British imported tens of thousands of Tamils from India to work in their tea and rubber companies in Ceylon – a population that never assimilated with the native Buddhist Singhalese.
They probably worked as hard there as they had on the plantations.
Countless thousands of slaves were taken from Africa on British ships to the Caribbean, many to work as forced labor on sugar plantations.
Next day, at a new mooring, we toured St. Francisville (population 1,716) and headed for Catalpa Plantation, where John James Audubon worked as a tutor, and the Myrtles Plantation, said to be "one of America's most haunted houses".
Later, Easter Noble Hampton walked across several states to Texas, where she worked as a cook at a plantation.
"We were given a choice: our principles or our cooking pot," said Agustin Granada, 54, who worked as a carpenter on one plantation.
