Yes, the plantation owners often had hired-hands or "overseers" to supervise their slaves.
Overseers or slave drivers were responsible for ensuring that slaves behaved on plantations. They were often employed by the slave owners and used physical or psychological coercion to maintain control over the enslaved individuals.
Life on plantations as a slave was extremely harsh and oppressive. Slaves were forced to work long hours in grueling conditions, often facing physical and emotional abuse from their owners. Families were separated, basic human rights were denied, and slaves had little to no control over their own lives.
Overseers or slave drivers were responsible for watching over and managing slaves on plantations and in other settings. Their role was to ensure that slaves worked efficiently and followed the orders of the plantation owner.
Europeans brought African slaves to work on plantations because native populations were decimated by diseases brought by Europeans and were not sufficient in number or adapted to the harsh working conditions. Africans were seen as a readily available and exploitable labor source due to the Atlantic slave trade.
Over 1000 slaves!
Abraham Lincoln got over 7500 people to protest against slave trade
Slave owners bought enslaved people to perform labor on plantations and in households. They controlled every aspect of the enslaved individuals' lives, including work assignments, living conditions, and punishments. Many slave owners used violence and other forms of coercion to maintain control over their slaves.
Nat turner
The chief crop grown on colonial plantations in the Caribbean was sugar cane. It was a highly profitable crop due to the demand for sugar in Europe. The development of plantations and the transatlantic slave trade were closely linked to the production of sugar in the Caribbean.
Until the Civil War ended the South's cotton exports, the southern US plantations were the world's biggest provider of cotton (during and after the Civil War, India and Egypt took over the market). Other southern plantations provided the world with Virginia tobacco and do so until this day. Another historical significance is that the US plantations and the slave labour it entailed were economically so important for the South that it caused the Civil War.
The ancestors of people of African descent in the Guianas today were primarily enslaved Africans brought to the region during the transatlantic slave trade. These individuals were forcibly brought to the Guianas by European colonizers to work on sugar plantations and other industries. Over time, their descendants have formed the diverse Afro-Guyanese, Afro-Surinamese, and Afro-French Guianese communities found in the region today.
People helped hide fugitive slaves along the Underground Railroad and wouldn't turn them over to slave catchers.