Thomas Jefferson believed that slavery had a terrible influence on slave-owners' children, who learned to order about other human beings from a young age. Such children, Jefferson wrote, were “nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny.”

People like Jacob had to find ways to cope with their enslavement. They did so by forming friendships and creating their own families, which they tried to keep together as best they could. They adapted what they remembered or was passed down from their parents and others from their native lands to their new circumstances. When people got together, they told stories, shared memories of their homelands, made instruments, and sang traditional songs. Over time, many adopted Christianity, sometimes combining it with their own African religious beliefs.