Slave whip

“ The complaint now urged is not of the amount of the pain inflicted, but of its influence on the character when made the great motive to human labor. It is not the endurance, but the dread of the whip, it is the substitution of this for natural and honorable motives to action, which we abhor and condemn. It matters not whether few or many are whipped. A blow given to a single slave is a stripe on the souls of all who see or hear it. ”

“ It is remarkable that the white creole women are ordinarily more inexorable than the men. Their slow and languid gait, and the trifling services which they impose, betoken only apathetic indolence; but should the slave not promptly obey, should he even fail to divine the meaning of their gestures, or looks, in an instant they are armed with a formidable whip; it is no longer the arm which cannot sustain the weight of a shawl or a reticule—it is no longer the form which but feebly sustains itself. ”

“ What would you be, if you had been born and brought up a slave, with generations of slaves for ancestors? I admit that the black man is inferior. But what is it that makes him so? It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to live; it is the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him; it is the fierce bloodhounds of the South, and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds of the north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. They do the work. ”

“ Each negro is armed with a short whip, and their attitudes, as they stand, well-balanced on the revolving wheel, are rather striking. They were liberal of blows and of objurgations to the horses; but all their cries and whipping produced scarcely a tenth of the labor so silently performed by the invisible, noiseless slave that works the steam-engine. ”

“ Crew thinks the use of the whip formed a difference in the treatment of American and West Indian slaves greatly to the disadvantage of the latter. They have also, by means of the system recommended, the important advantage of a part of the afternoon and evening to themselves, in which they can cultivate their little portions of lands, prepare their provisions, and yet have sufficient time to rest: all which would greatly add to the comfort of their lives. ”

“ The long low waist was packed full of the slaves, some five or six to each oar, and down the center, between the two banks, the English could see the slave-drivers walking up and down a long gangway, whip in hand. A raised quarter-deck at the stern held more soldiers, the sunlight flashing merrily upon their armor and their gun-barrels; as they neared, the English could hear plainly the cracks of the whips, and the yells as of wild beasts which answered them; the roll and rattle of the oars, and the loud "Ha!" ”

“ To view the practice in a mere mercenary view, surely if the West Indian Gentlemen had been seriously and earnestly intent on superseding the necessity of purchasing from the Slave market, by rearing Negroes on their own estates, the younger women at least, if employed in field-work at all, would not be worked in this rude and undistinguishing manner, when a single inconsiderate lash of the driver’s whip, intended not as a punishment, but as a quickener, or a memento, may in its consequences, prevent the birth of a future infant. ”

“ Mr Martin thus invited, sprung upon his prey with a tiger's ferocity. But I have no inclination to disgust myself with another description of the horrid torment of which in America, the whip is the active and continual instrument. He who is curious in these matters, will do well to spend six months upon an American plantation. He will soon discover that the rack was a superfluous invention; and that the whip, by those well skilled in the use of it, can be made to answer any purposes of torture. ”

“ Even women were stripped naked on the sides of the streets, and their backs lacerated with the whip. It was a common practice, when a slave offended a white man, for the master to send for a public whipper, and order him to take the slave before the door of the person offended, and flog him till the latter was satisfied. White females would order their male slaves to be stripped naked in their presence and flogged, while they would look on to see that their orders were faithfully executed. ”

“ The subject of the preceding memoir appears to have retained all her life a feeling recollection of the effects of the whip in the hands of her youthful mistress. Considering the vigor and frequency of the application, this is not strange. Infinite cuffs and thwacks, more or less, pass into oblivion; but a flogging with a raw-hide is not easily forgotten. A slave's experience of the whip, however, was not confined to his or to her early days. A slave race must be controlled by fear and pain: and the discipline, it was naturally thought, could not begin too early. ”

“ It ain’t every nigger’s hide that’s fit for a stole. If they are too young, it is too much like kid; if they are too old, it’s like sole leather, it’s so tough; and if they have been whipt, as all on ‘em have a’most, why the back is all cut to pieces, and the hide ruined. It takes several sound nigger skins to make a stole; but when made, it’s a beautiful article, that’s a fact.
“It is used on a plantation for punishment. When the whip don’t do its work, strip a slave, and jist clap on to him the Black Stole. Dress him up in a dead man’s skin, and it frightens him near about to death. ”

“ The whip was only used on very rare occasions, and that rather for the punishment of the misdemeanors which the people committed against each other, than for those against the master; for said Mr Mason, "I am not only plantation manager, but judge and magistrate to settle all our internal disputes, and, in fact, to tell the truth, the very hardest worked slave in the whole establishment. How many planters in North Carolina do you suppose would accept my property on condition of managing it as I do?" The great stimulus employed to make the people work was emulation. ”

“ At half past four, a horn was blown by the overseer, which was the signal to commence work; and every one that was not on the spot at the time, had to receive ten lashes from the negro-whip, with which the overseer always went armed. The handle was about three feet long, with the butt-end filled with lead, and the lash six or seven feet in length, made of cowhide, with platted wire on the end of it. This whip was put in requisition very frequently and freely, and a small offence on the part of a slave furnished an occasion for its use. ”

“ The slave-holder's temptation to cruelty is too much for common men. His power is irresponsible. "'Tis easy to find a stick if you would beat a dog. The lash is always at hand; if a slave disobeys,—the whip; if he is idle,—the whip; does he murmur,—the whip; is he sullen and silent,—the whip; is the female coy and reluctant,—the whip. Chains and dungeons also are at hand. The slave is a thing; judge and jury no friends to him. The condition of the weak is bad enough everywhere, in Old England and in New England. ”

“ The whip is always in sight. "Nothing can be done without it," said an Englishman to me, who had lived eleven years on the island, "you can not make the negroes work by the mild methods which are used by slaveholders in the United States; the blacks there are far more intelligent and more easily governed by moral means." Africans, the living witnesses of the present existence of the slave-trade, are seen everywhere ”

“ The overseer on the plantation, was very hard on the slaves and practiced striking them across the back with a whip when he wanted to spur them on to do more work.
Irene says, one day a crowd of women were hoeing in the field and the overseer rode along and struck one of the women across the back with the whip, and the one nearest her spoke and said that if he ever struck her like that, it would be the day he or she would die. The overseer heard the remark and the first opportunity he got, he rode by the woman and struck her with the whip and started to ride on. ”

“ Having now cited both the ordinary and extraordinary punishments inflicted upon the slaves, it may be presumed that some one will ask here, whether, under these various acts of cruelty, they are wholly without redress? To this the following answer may be given—That, with respect to the ordinary punishments, by the whip and cowskin (where they do not terminate in death) the power of the master or overseer is under little or no controul. ”

“ Each of these drivers, who are always the most active and vigorous Negroes on the estate, has in his hand, or coiled round his neck, from which by extending the handle it can be disengaged in a moment, a long, thick, and strongly platted whip, called a cart-whip, the report of which is as loud, and the lash as severe, as those of the whips in common use with our waggoners, and which he has authority to apply, at the instant when his eye perceives an occasion, without any previous warning. ”

“ How far the slave laws are conducive to the enjoyment of those they govern, each individual can judge for himself. In the Southern papers, we continually see pictures of runaway negroes, and sometimes the advertisements identify them by scars, or by letters branded upon them. Is it natural for men to run away from comfort and happiness, especially when any one who meets them may shoot them, like a dog? and when whipping nearly unto death is authorized as the punishment? I forbear to describe how much more shocking slave whipping is than anything we are accustomed to see bestowed upon cattle. ”

“ The slaves were then each given a switch, rawhide, strap or whip, and each one was compelled to cut at the poor victim as he ran around the ring. The ring was composed of men, women and children; and, as they numbered from forty to fifty, each circuit of the ring would result in that number of lashes, and by the time the victim had made two or three rounds his condition can be readily imagined. The overseer was always one of the ring, vigorously using the whip, and seeing that all the slaves did the same. ”

“ I never seed my white folks whip anybody in my life. They just never whipped anybody. They never whipped me. I have seen the white folks next to us whip their Negroes and I asked grandma about it. She said that those were their Negroes and she would explain what they was being whipped for. They was on another farm. I don't remember what they was being whipped for.
"My young master told the slaves when he notified them they was free that if they didn't want to stay with him, he would give them enough to go on till they could make it, you know, to keep them from starving. He was a good man. ”

“ And in case any person or persons shall wilfully cut out the tongue, put out the eye, castrate, or cruelly scald, burn, or deprive any slave of any limb or member, or shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than by whipping or beating with a horse-whip, cow-skin, switch or small stick or by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave, every such person shall, for every such offence, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds, current money. ”

“ The slave owners thought that slavery was right and nothing was wrong about selling and buying human beings if they were colored, much as a person would purchase a horse or automobile today. The owners who whipped their slaves usually stripped them to the waist and lashed them with a long leather whip, commonly called a blacksnake. ”

“ One of them goes with every gang when set to work, whether in the field or elsewhere, and whether men or women, and watches and directs them, and enforces labor from them. The drivers carry under the arm, at all times, the short, limber plantation whip, the badge of their office and their means of compulsion. They are almost always Negroes; and it is generally thought that Negroes are not more humane in this office than the low whites. On this plantation, it is three years since any slave has been whipped; and that punishment is never inflicted here on a woman. ”

“ The motives of pride, shame, interest, ambition, and affection may be appealed to, and the minor punishments of degradation in duties, deprivation of food and sleep, and solitary confinement may be resorted to; but the whip, which the driver always carries, reminds the slave that if all else fails, the infliction of painful bodily punishment lies behind, and will be brought to bear, rather than that the question be left unsettled. ”

“ The need for slave labor for such work was greater than the supply. Much of the slave population was unfit for anything but the simplest and rudest tasks, and could be kept at work only by the constant use of the whip. ”

“ Handsome women are expected to bring home more money than the ordinary. They are punished if they return without the full wages of their prostitution.
Ordinary Punishments of the Slaves by the Whip & Cowskin. Having now described the labour, food, clothing, houses, property, and different kinds of employment of the planation, as well as the situation of the In-and-out-door slaves, as far as the evidence will warrant, it may be proper to advert to their punishments; and, first, to those that are inflicted by the cowskin or the whip. ”

“ The universal practice of working under the whip. The next particular which must be mentioned, is, like all the rest, at once an evidence and an effect of the degraded state of the 141Negroes. It is that universal and established practice of working them under the whip like cattle. ”

“ Course whippin' made a slave hard to sell, maybe couldn' be sold, 'cause when a man went to buy a slave he would make him strip naked and look him over for whip marks and other blemish, jus' like dey would a horse. But even if it done damage to de sale to whip him, dey done it, 'cause dey figgered, kill a nigger, breed another—kill a mule, buy another. ”