Chesapeake planters treated their slaves less harshly than West Indian planters in the eighteenth century primarily because the Chesapeake economy was based on tobacco cultivation, which required less intense labor compared to the sugar plantations of the West Indies. Additionally, Chesapeake slaves had somewhat better conditions due to the growth of natural increase in the slave population, enabling family formations which were less common in the harsh West Indian slave systems. The nature of tobacco farming and the social dynamics led Chesapeake planters to impose less brutal labor regimes compared to the extremely harsh conditions on the sugar plantations in the West Indies, where a higher intensity of labor and a focus on large-scale sugar production demanded harsher treatment of slaves to maximize output.
Furthermore, Chesapeake planters used labor systems like the task system occasionally, which allowed slaves more autonomy compared to the gang labor system predominant in the West Indies that was much more physically demanding and strictly controlled. Chesapeake slavery was more likely to become a "slave society" with a growing African-descended population sustaining itself through natural reproduction, which affected the treatment compared to the West Indies, where the slave population was more often replenished by more brutal, extensive importation and higher mortality.
In sum, the reason for less harsh treatment was tied to the economic differences in crops (tobacco vs. sugar), labor requirements, population dynamics, and labor organization systems between the Chesapeake and the West Indies in the eighteenth century.
