Never would a plantation lack tasks for slaves of either gender, and a slave's day would span from dawn to dusk. Slaves would tote cotton bales to the ginhouse, gather wood for supper fires, and fed the mules when darkness made fieldwork impossible. They all had to sleep in log cabins on wooden planks. Even though all antebellum Americans worked long hours, no one experienced the harsh discipline along with the long hours that slave field hands endured. American slavery encouraged repulsive brutality. Despite the systems brutality, some slaves advanced, and even though it wasn’t to freedom, it was to semiskilled or skilled indoor work. Masters thought of slaves as promiscuous and flattered themselves into thinking they held slave marriages together. The keenest challenge to the slave family came not from the slaves but from slavery. There was nothing to protect slave families. Even though some slaveholders were reluctant to break apart slave marriages by sale, economic hardships might force their hand. The buying and selling of slaves disrupted attempts to create a stable family