Q: How were enslaved African people usually punished during the time of institutionalized chattel slavery in the Americas?
Q: Why were these punishments used against them?
– Black History Questions and Answers Admin Team
A: Anything that could be done to a slave was done to a slave.
Take it from Henry Bibb (1815-1854), who was enslaved for almost 30 years in Kentucky.
In Bibb’s recollections of his time as a slave, we find these words:
Reader, believe me when I say that no tongue, nor pen ever has or can express the horrors of American Slavery.
Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1849)
Due to the controversial nature of race and slavery, much of the details concerning the punishments of slaves are missing from the historical record and many scholars have been fearful of broaching the subject.
The result has been that the average student of history is made familiar with very few of the punishments that were dealt to slaves.
Media portrayals of the experience of enslaved people are also to blame. The whip was the most common instrument of torture that Americans saw in the widely televised Roots (1977) saga with its most iconic scene being that of the protagonist, Kunta Kinte, having his back lacerated over and over until he accepts the master’s name in place of his own.
There is also the fact that whipping as a standard punishment for slaves was literally encoded in the laws that European governments drafted for their colonies. As independence for the Whites did not always equate to freedom for the Blacks, many of these laws carried over when new governments were born.
For all of the reasons identified above, many people continue to be under the impression that whipping was the only form of punishment used against slaves. But there is virtually no end to the punishments that slaves were subjected to during the history of chattel slavery in the Americas.
Here is a short list of other documented ways that African people were punished:
- insulting
- isolating
- fining
- deporting
- robbing
- widowing
- orphaning
- chaining
- pinching
- scratching (using cats)
- biting (using dogs)
- beating
- kicking
- raping
- humiliating
- starving
- stabbing
- maiming
- castrating
- burning (with fire or acid)
- branding
- crushing (typically of the fingers)
- waterboarding
- drowning
- strangling
- shooting
- hanging
- boiling (with water or any other liquid)
- skinning
- dissecting
- disemboweling
- decapitating
- dismembering
- burying (while alive)
Some of these punishments were used more often than others.
A Scottish surgeon named James Ramsey (1733-1789), who worked for several years on plantations in St. Kitts, published a book in 1784 in which he described the punishments of slaves in shocking detail:
The ordinary punishments of slaves, for the common crimes of neglect, absence from work, eating the sugar cane, [and] theft, are cart whipping, beating with a stick, sometimes to the breaking of bones, the [use of a] chain, an iron crook about the neck, a large iron pudding or a ring about the ankle, and confinement in the dungeon.
There have been instances of slitting of ears, breaking of limbs, so as to make amputation necessary, beating out of eyes, and castration; but they seldom happen, especially of late years, and though they bring no lasting disgrace on the perpetrator, have, for some time past, been generally mentioned with indignation. It is yet true, that the unfeeling application of the ordinary punishments ruins the constitution, and shortens the life of many a poor wretch.
From this, we can deduce that punishments which involved the application of brute force to produce pain in the body were more common, while those which involved the removal of body parts were less common.
You might be wondering: why were slaves punished so severely?
As mentioned before, there were certain laws which stipulated the ways that slaves were to be punished.
The existence of these “slave codes,” were cited as proof by pro-slavery activists that slavery was not so bad after all.
One of them was South Carolina representative William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) who wrote:
There are laws to protect [the slave], in his place, as inflexible as those which his proprietor is required to obey, in his place.
It is true that there were laws to regulate the punishment of slaves.
In most places, masters and overseers were simply told to bind their slaves and to use a whip or a stick to beat them.
But, in reality, these were taken as suggestions more than absolutes.
Each master made his or her own rules.
Here’s how one master in Louisiana outlined his methods:
My rule is to whip, or pull the ear, or twist the nose, or slap them for every offense…[and to have this] repeated at proper intervals until the most entire submission is obtained.
Just as governments today encounter more difficulties detecting crimes that are committed in secret and in remote places, the governments of this time period were not aware of the ways that every slave was being treated. Nor did that seem to concern them.
In 1846, a case was heard by the Alabama Supreme Court in which a slave caught stealing from his master’s neighbor was given ‘cruel and immoderate punishment‘ by an overseer in the master’s absence. In the end, the court felt it appropriate to exonerate the overseer and to congratulate him for his actions by declaring:
The good morals and quiet of the state are not concerned in the prosecution of every slave who may commit a larceny.* So far as it concerns the public, it is quite as well, perhaps better, that his punishment should be admeasured by a domestic tribunal. Certainly, this mode of procedure would be preferable for the master, as it would relieve him both from anxiety and the necessity of expending money.
There is no better indication that this sentiment was held across the nation than the finding by U. S. economist Jenny Bourne that less than 2% of published court cases concerning the lives of enslaved people from the 17th century until 1875 dealt specifically with their masters’ treatment (or mistreatment) of them.**
Trinidadian scholar C. L. R. James (1901-1989) laid down the hypocrisy of the law as follows:
Legislation passed for the protection of the slaves remained on paper in face of the dictum that a man could do as he liked with his own…Not only planters but officials made it quite clear that whatever the penalties for the ill-treatment of slaves, these could never be enforced.
The work of slaves often involved a monotonous series of tasks. These could be quite strenuous at times.
Only a person who was forced to complete this work could do it without compensation.
To justify this arrangement, it was commonly accepted among community leaders and members of law enforcement that people who were selected for slave labor were literally inhuman. Years of racist research had already convinced scientists and historians alike to teach their constituents that African people belonged to another “sub-species” altogether.
To acknowledge the wrongs that were being committed against enslaved African people would be to recognize their humanity. Any recognition that Black people were equal to the Whites who ruled them would serve to undermine the very system that brought those politicians, judges, and constables to power in the first place.
A slave who knew their master would be punished for excessive force could threaten to have their master reported for any use of force until they got lucky. And any slave who could manipulate their master was no longer under their control. Thus, they were no longer a slave.
The solution? Masters who had the most to lose went to the greatest lengths to prevent the people they enslaved from challenging their position. To ensure that no help would ever come to their slaves, every effort was made to convince them they were helpless.
James put it this way:
The slaves might understand that they had rights, which would be fatal to the peace and well-being of the colony. That was why a colonist never hesitated at the mutilation, the torture or the murder of a slave who had cost him thousands…
Besides, if a slave died, a master could always buy a “new” one to replace them.
“The Ivory Coast is a good mother” was a colonial proverb. Slaves could always be bought, and profits were always high.
A slave could be given as many lashes as a master saw fit.
Sadistic tortures were generally frowned upon, but with very few exceptions, whenever they were brought to light, the law ruled in the master’s favor.
James used the infamous Le Jeune case of 1788 to highlight the incompetence of the “justice” system on matters pertaining to the abuse of enslaved African people.
When 14 slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) reported their master, Nicolas Le Jeune, for the murder of four men and the torture of two women, the authorities had seen and heard all of the evidence. The evidence demonstrated that Le Jeune had gone far beyond what the Code Noir prescribed as the proper punishment for slaves and he had based his decision to punish them on false accusations. ‘The case was clear,’ James noted. Le Jeune believed as much when he fled to escape his arrest. Yet, under considerable pressure from the White plantocracy, they declared that he had done nothing to warrant a criminal charge.
This was the situation of slaves in the Caribbean.
Meanwhile, in the United States, where slaves were in lesser abundance and fewer masters were as wealthy, there was a higher value placed on the bodies of individual slaves. Therefore, the more unusual punishments that Dr. Ramsey witnessed in St. Kitts were not recorded as often by American abolitionists and survivors of American slavery.
From a business perspective, slave-holding Americans understood that the slaves who sustained more permanent injuries were going to be the least productive on the plantation. After all, it is harder to pick cotton when you are missing a hand or two. And it was harder to sell a slave who was disabled. These slaves were seen as less valuable at auction because injuries were usually a sign of rebellion. A slave who had been beaten many times was assumed to be a very difficult slave to manage. This is a big part of the reason why slaves were examined so closely at auctions.
This also explains why a wooden paddle was preferable to the use of a “horse-whip” by those who maintained the pens attached to auction houses. While the sharpness of the whip left deep gashes in the skin that were always visible, the marks of a flat paddle could be gone in a few days.
As Bibb explained:
When spectators would come in the yard, the slaves were ordered out to form a line. They were made to stand up straight, and look as sprightly as they could; and when they were asked a question, they had to answer it as promptly as they could, and try to induce the spectators to buy them. If they failed to do this, they were severely paddled after the spectators were gone. The object for using the paddle in the place of a lash was, to conceal the marks which would be made by the flogging. And the object for flogging under such circumstances, is to make the slaves anxious to be sold.
Some masters were masters of punishment. And some slave-drivers were so brutal in their regular dealings with enslaved people that masters near and far sent them their most “unruly” slaves.
But governments, too, were responsible for the punishments that were dealt to the enslaved.
Bourne argues that the courts adopted a policy which left the full responsibility of slave discipline on the owners out of economic considerations. Allowing slave-masters more authority to make these decisions meant that they could allocate government resources towards other matters of business and save taxpayers money. U. S. historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage adds that it was when a slave’s actions were considered a threat to the community at large that the government stepped in to punish them.
Because slave rebellions presented the greatest danger to slave-holding societies, with the potential for death and destruction on a massive scale, slaves who led rebellions were given the worst punishments of all.
Capital punishments for rebel leaders usually consisted of a suffocating of their airways at the gallows, a scorching of their flesh at a wooden post, a breaking of their bones on a wooden rack/wheel or a very public withering of their senses in a cramped metal cage.
In order to discourage others from following in their footsteps, these executions did not always stop at death.
U. K. historian Michael Craton writes that ‘decapitation was almost a rule’ in the British colonies. After the heads of the rebels were removed from their corpses, they would be stuck on wooden poles and posted on the very plantations where they lived so that their friends and families could see them.
When rebel slaves were not killed, they could still be mangled so severely that death was more preferable.
In many cases, slaves who were convicted of participating in rebellions were sentenced to be deported outside the country. This meant one of two things: either they were dropped off in a deserted area to fend for themselves or they were sold into colonies that flew a different flag and used a different language entirely.
– Omri Coke, Black Researchers United Admin Team
*This is even more significant because theft by a slave or a common citizen was a crime punishable by law. Furthermore, the neighbor, who trespassed on the master’s property and openly threatened the relationship between the overseer and his employer, was entirely forgotten.
**This study from 1993 was based on court records from 15 slave states, including the nation’s capital, or what is now Washington D.C.
Read More about the punishments of Black slaves in the Americas here:
https://theblackresearcher.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-worst-punishment-ever-given-to-a-slave.html
For more on the punishments of enslaved African people throughout the Americas, check out the books Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (1982) by Michael Craton, Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition (2020) by W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Bondsman’s Burden: An Economic Analysis of the Common Law of Southern Slavery (1997) by Jenny Bourne Wahl, and The Black Jacobins (1989) by C. L. R. James.
