I was part of the team of curators that furnished the Carter's Grove Slave
Quarters at Colonial Williamsburg in 1989.  One of our goals was to show
visitors that enslaved people lived in all kinds of physical and material
surroundings--from field workers who may have had very few possessions, to
an overseer who had a bed, table, chairs and even a copper stewpan to
prepare meals.  It was a challenge to explain these contradictions to
visitors, who often equate enslavement with few, if any, material goods,
when, in fact, enslaved people lived at all levels of the material culture
spectrum.

But in the most important aspects of their lives, free people had what
slaves never did:  control over their own lives without fear of punishment
or reprisal.  I think that would have been worth far more than any material
goods or comfort that enslaved people might have had.

Martha Katz-Hyman