Torture of slaves in the United States

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"Said the wife of an ex-negro trader in Virginia to a freedmen who was skinning a live catfish, 'How can you be so cruel!'—'Why,' said the intelligent contraband, 'Dis is de way dey used to do me, and I'se gwine to get even wid somebody.'"[1]

Torture of slaves in the United States was fairly common, as part of what many slavers claimed was necessary discipline. Slaves in the United States were considered chattel, meaning they were legally treated as personal property, akin to livestock.

Whips and similar[edit]

Accounts of torture come from both slavers and the enslaved, although accounts from the formerly enslaved were historically mistrusted or discounted. In one famous such case, retold in a reconsideration of the WPA Slave Narratives by historian Rebecca Onion, "In Virginia, Eudora Ramsay Richardson, the state director, refused to believe a story that Roscoe Lewis, the director of that state's Negro Writers Unit (and a professor at the Hampton Institute), recorded during an interview with ex-slave Henrietta King. King told Lewis that she had taken some candy at age eight or nine, and that her slaveholder had punished her by holding her head under a rocking chair while she whipped her. The incident had resulted in a crushed jawbone and permanent disfigurement. (King said the violence gave her 'a false face...What chilluns laugh at an' babies gits to cryin' at when dey sees me.') Disbelieving Lewis's account, Richardson went to King's home to fact-check it, thinking it was a 'gross exaggeration'. She found instead that "[King] looks exactly as Mr. Lewis describes her and she told me, almost word for word the story that Mr. Lewis relates.'"[2]

In the testimony of Peter of the scourged back he mentions "salt brine, which Overseer put in my back".[3] This practice, sometimes called salting, was attested in many accounts of slave torture reported over many decades.[4] Other substances, including turpentine, hot-pepper juice, and dripping candle wax, were also used.[5][6] An interview with Andrew Boone for the WPA's Slave Narrative Collection in the 1930 matter-of-factly described the practice: "By dis time de blood sometimes would be runnin' down dere heels. Den de next thing was a wash in salt water strong enough to hold up an egg. Slaves wus punished dat way fer runnin' away an' sich."[4] In an 1864 article about Nathan Bedford Forrest, a "Knoxville correspondent" of the New-York Tribune described whippings at the jail conducted by Bedford and John Forrest, including salting, and the secret burial of an enslaved man who had been whipped to death with a "trace chain doubled for the purpose of punishment".[7]

This Thomas Nast's illustration depicts the cat-o-nine-tails lash in use.

There was a form of whipping called hand sawing: "Jones figured that 'hand-sawing' probably meant 'a beating administered with the toothed-edge of a saw'."[8] In November 1838, J. R. Long reported that a slave who had runaway from his plantation had been caught. He added: "I gave him a real whipping and hand sawing and he has been a fine negroe ever since. I told him he might run off if he chosed and I would knock out one of his jaw teeth and brand him and I intend to stick to my promise."[9]

There are also reports of a practice called cat-hauling, in which a cat's claws were the means of inflicting pain.[10] Historian Charles S. Sydnor reported that "Paul, the headwaiter of the hotel" in Grenada, Mississippi was accused of helping slaves escape north (most likely by the town's two railroad connections); after whipping him with rawhide failed to elicit a confession, his accusers escalated to something called "the hot paddle," which was "a thin piece of wood with holes bored through it, and it was applied to the naked flesh." According to Sydnor, Paul never confessed.[11]

"Dead.—Esq. Horne was called upon as Coroner, yesterday..."[12]

In addition to whipping by owners and overseers, at least two slave traders are said to have engaged in systematic torture, reserving flogging rooms in their slave jails for this purpose: Theophilus Freeman of New Orleans, and the slavers of Poindexter & Little, where the lashes were administered by "Uncle Billy."

Restraints[edit]

American slaves were commonly chained and restrained by various means. A fugitive slave named John or Jack was put in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi jail in 1850; when he was captured he had an iron collar with bell attached.[13] The Bullock Museum in Texas holds a belled slave collar.[14] The Henry Ford holds a hooked collar used on slaves; "Slaves known for running away might have had to wear an iron collar like this, for punishment or to prevent them from running away again. The hooks caught on bushes or tree limbs, causing a violent jerking to the individual's head and neck."[15] A runaway slave, named Henry (Hal for short) was picked up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee at which time he "had on his wrists a pair of negro traders' hand cuffs broken."[16] A runaway slave ad placed in a New Orleans newspaper in 1839 mentioned that the missing man, "WILLIAM, or BILL, a cook by trade...had a chain to his leg when he left the City Hotel, Common Street."[17] In Slave Life in Georgia John Brown described accompanying Bob Freeman when he took prisoners to and from the blacksmith to have shackles put on and removed.[18]

Mutiliation and branding[edit]

Wilson Chinn was enslaved by Volsey B. Marmillion (recte Valsin B. Marmillion),[19] who made a standard practice of branding his slaves on the face with his initials, V.B.M.
Three Marmillion family plantations, include that of V. B. Marmillion, pictured on Norman's chart of the lower Mississippi River (1858).

According to historian Michael Tadman, "Persistently troublesome slaves were often to be identified by whip marks, while reclaimed runaways were often identifiable by brandings, by cropped ears, or by the absence of front teeth."[20] For example a black man arrested in Alabama in 1839 had "a small piece out of each of his ears."[21] Branding of enslaved people was known. For example in 1832, a Mississippi county sheriff described a fugitive slave in his jail as "branded on the forehead with something like LB".[22] A man named Frank was branded on both cheeks "which is plain to be seen when said negro is newly shaved".[23] News reports of 1847 had it that an Englishman living at Cape Girardeau had branded a man named Reuben on the face with the words "A slave for life".[24][25]

Harriet Beecher Stowe described an escaped preacher who had been branded on both breasts and had toes cut off on both feet.[26]

The January 12, 1856 issue of The Creole newspaper of Louisiana reported on a jury's conviction of "slave owner William Bell for branding a runaway slave he had repossessed. He was fined $200 and 'the jury decreed the slave should be sold away from him.'"[27]

Sexual abuse[edit]

Sexual cruelty is documented: The 1853 case of Humphreys vs. Utz in the Louisiana Supreme Court awarded civil damages to a Madison Parish plantation owner whose overseer nailed a man's penis to a bedstead and then whipped him until he ripped his penis off the nail. The man, who was called Ginger Pop or Bob, was about 30 years old. He died shortly thereafter and was buried on the grounds of the plantation.[28] In June 1863, New York Times correspondent "De Soto" (William George)[29] reported witness statements describing genital burning and breast mutilation on a Black River plantation in Catahoula Parish, concluding his account "If any one, upon reading this...says he does not believe it, I have only to reply, I do."[30]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Waynesboro Record". Waynesboro Record. Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. March 9, 1866.
  2. ^ Onion, Rebecca (July 6, 2016). "Is the Greatest Collection of Slave Narratives Tainted by the Racism of Its Collectors?". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2023-09-05.
  3. ^ Bostonian (December 3, 1863) [1863-11-12]. "The Realities of Slavery: To the Editor of the N.Y. Tribune". New-York Tribune. p. 4. ISSN 2158-2661. Retrieved 2023-07-27 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ a b Dickman, Michael (2015). Honor, Control, and Powerlessness: Plantation Whipping in the Antebellum South (Thesis). Boston College. hdl:2345/bc-ir:104219.
  5. ^ Sebesta, Edward H. (November 26, 2016). "Robert E. Lee Park: Robert E. Lee Has His Slaves Whipped and Brine Poured Into the Wounds". Robert E. Lee Park. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
  6. ^ Weld, Theodore (1839). "Floggings". American Slavery As It Is. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society. p. 63. Retrieved 2023-07-28 – via utc.iath.virginia.edu.
  7. ^ "The Butcher Forrest and His Family: All of them Slave Drivers and Woman Whippers". Chicago Tribune. May 4, 1864. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-12-04.
  8. ^ Gutman, Herbert G. (1975). Fogel, Robert William; Engerman, Stanley L. (eds.). "Enslaved Afro-Americans and the "Protestant Work Ethic"". The Journal of Negro History. 60 (1): 65–93. doi:10.2307/2716796. ISSN 0022-2992. JSTOR 2716796. S2CID 150340537.
  9. ^ Tadman, Michael (November 1977). Speculators and Slaves in the Old South: A Study of the American Domestic Slave Trade, 1820-1860 (PDF). University of Hull (Thesis). p. 159. Retrieved 2023-09-05.
  10. ^ Thornton, Richard Hopwood (1912). An American Glossary. J.B. Lippincott.
  11. ^ Sydnor, Charles S. (Charles Sackett). Slavery in Mississippi. State Library of Pennsylvania. D. Appleton-Century Co.
  12. ^ {{cite news | newspaper=Memphis Daily Appeal | title=Memphis Daily Appeal | date=July 14, 1858
  13. ^ "Slave record". Natchez Daily Courier. November 26, 1850. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-09-12.
  14. ^ "Slave collar with bells | Bullock Texas State History Museum". www.thestoryoftexas.com. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
  15. ^ "Slave Collar, circa 1860 - The Henry Ford". www.thehenryford.org. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
  16. ^ "Committed to the Jail of Rutherford county". The Weekly Monitor. January 18, 1834. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  17. ^ "25 Dollars Reward". The Times-Picayune. April 19, 1839. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
  18. ^ Brown, John (1855). Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Now in England. Xerox University Microfilms. p. 121.
  19. ^ Bitikofer, Sheritta (July 15, 2021). "Untangling the Marmillions, Part 1". Emerging Civil War. Retrieved 2023-12-14.
  20. ^ Tadman, Michael (November 1977). Speculators and Slaves in the Old South: A Study of the American Domestic Slave Trade, 1820-1860 (PDF). University of Hull (Thesis). Retrieved 2023-09-05.
  21. ^ "Ranaway". Cahawba Democrat. June 29, 1839. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-08-30.
  22. ^ "Southern Planter 13 Oct 1832, page 4". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2023-08-30.
  23. ^ McDougle, Ivan E. (1918). "Slavery in Kentucky: The Development of Slavery". The Journal of Negro History. 3 (3): 214–239 (223, branding). doi:10.2307/2713409. ISSN 0022-2992. JSTOR 2713409. S2CID 149804505.
  24. ^ "St. Louis". The Vermont Patriot and State Gazette. February 25, 1847. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-08-30.
  25. ^ "Cape Girardeau". The Liberator. September 3, 1847. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-08-30.
  26. ^ Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1853). A key to Uncle Tom's cabin: presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded. Boston: J. P. Jewett & Co. p. 429. LCCN 02004230. OCLC 317690900. OL 21879838M.
  27. ^ "A good inheritance; a genealogical record of ten generations of descendants of John Harmon of Scarboro, Maine ... Compiled and edited by Francis Stuart ..." HathiTrust. p. 33. Retrieved 2024-03-22.
  28. ^ Schafer, Judith (June 1, 1993). "Sexual Cruelty to Slaves: The Unreported Case of Humphreys v. Utz - Symposium on the Law of Slavery: Criminal and Civil Law of Slavery". Chicago-Kent Law Review. 68 (3): 1313. ISSN 0009-3599.
  29. ^ Smith, Myron J. Jr. (April 26, 2017). Joseph Brown and His Civil War Ironclads: The USS Chillicothe, Indianola and Tuscumbia. McFarland. p. 209. ISBN 978-1-4766-2680-2.
  30. ^ De Soto (June 14, 1863). "Horrors of the Prison-House". The New York Times. Vol. XII, no. 3657. "De Soto" was pen name of war correspondent William George. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
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