Torture of slaves in the United States



Torture of slaves in the United States was fairly common, as part of what many slavers claimed was necessary discipline. As one history put it, "Stinted allowance, imprisonment, and whipping were the usual methods of punishment; incorrigibles were sometimes 'ironed' or sold." Slaves in the United States were considered chattel, meaning they were legally treated as personal property, akin to livestock.

Whips and similar
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.'"

A slave owner named B. T. E. Mabry of Beatie's Bluff, Madison County, Mississippi placed a runaway slave ad in 1848 that described the missing man as "has been severely whipped, which has left large raised scars or whelks in the small of his back and on his abdomen nearly as large as a persons finger". In the testimony of Peter of the scourged back he mentions "salt brine, which Overseer put in my back". This practice, sometimes called salting, was attested in many accounts of slave torture reported over many decades. Other substances, including turpentine, hot-pepper juice, and dripping candle wax, were also used. 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." 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".

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'." In November 1838, J. R. Long reported that a slave who had run away 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."

There are also reports of a practice called cat-hauling, in which a cat's claws were the means of inflicting pain. 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.

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
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. The Bullock Museum in Texas holds a belled slave collar. The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan 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." 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." Lamb was wearing a leg iron when he escaped a plantation near Pinckneyville, Mississippi in 1818. 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." 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. A plantation record book from Georgia records the fees charged by the blacksmith for this service: "May, 1852, Taking off Irons from Negro, $2.00; Ironing a Negro, $3.50".

Mutiliation and branding
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." For example a black man arrested in Alabama in 1839 had "a small piece out of each of his ears." 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". A man named Frank was branded on both cheeks "which is plain to be seen when said negro is newly shaved". 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". 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.'"

Harriet Beecher Stowe described an escaped preacher who had been branded on both breasts and had toes cut off on both feet. A runaway slave ad published in Huntsville, Alabama in 1849 described 30-year-old Ben of Martin County, North Carolina as having "no particular marks perceptible, only the little toe of each foot is off."

Sexual abuse
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. In June 1863, New York Times correspondent "De Soto" (William George) 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."

Methods of execution
James Roberts, an enslaved veteran of both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, described a capital punishment on the Mississippi River plantation of Calvin Smith. A slave called Ben killed overseer Bird Carter. A cylindrical casket was made "just his length" and spiked through with sharpened nails. Ben was taken to the top of a hill, put inside the casket, and "was rolled down to the bottom. Of course his whole body was a perfect jelly, or perfect mince meat. Every particle of flesh was torn from his bones. The cask was opened, and the jelly, for his flesh was nothing else, was thrown into the river."