# A History of Slavery and its Abolition/Section 12

SECT. XII.—INSTANCES OF AGGRAVATED CRUELTY.
It is truly painful to perpetuate the remembrance of the crimes of our fellow-creatures, and the writer has felt some hesitation in giving these melancholy details: yet, without a specimen at least, and more will not be given, of the cruelties practised by individuals under this horrid system, the work would be very incomplete, and our reasons for joy and gratitude on its abolition would not be duly estimated. There is not one of the annexed anecdotes but is indisputably authenticated, and they are but a few out of a mass.
A wretch in Barbadoes had chained a negro girl to the floor, and flogged her till she was nearly expiring. Two gentlemen, hearing her cries, burst open the door and found her. The cruel tyrant retreated from their resentment, but cried out exultingly, that he had only given her thirty-nine lashes (the number limited by law) at any one time, and that he had only inflicted that number three times since the beginning of the night; but added, he was resolved to give her the fourth thirty-nine before morning, and would flog her to death if he pleased, as well as prosecute the gentlemen, whose humanity led them to interfere, and, in so doing, to trespass, by breaking open his door.
​A master had wantonly cut the mouth of a child six months old, almost from ear to ear. It must surely have been to punish the mother, for such a babe was incapable of offending, except by its cries for want of nourishment and attention, to which it was very probably exposed. The master was convicted of the offence, but the jury doubted whether a master was indictable for the immediate correction of his slave, and left it subject to the opinion of the court. The result was, that he was sentenced to pay a fine of forty shillings currency; about twenty-five shillings sterling.
An overseer, for some trifling offence, threw a negro into a copper of boiling cane-juice; the poor creature, of course, perished: and what was the punishment of the murderer? He was discharged from his situation, and compelled to pay the value of the slave.
A girl, fourteen years of age, was dreadfully whipped for coming too late to her work; she fell down motionless, and was then dragged along the ground by the legs, to an hospital, where she died. The murderer, though tried, was acquitted, upon the idea that a man would not be so foolish as to destroy his own property.
In the island of Barbadoes, a British general met a youth, about nineteen, entirely naked, with an iron collar about his neck, having five long projecting spikes; his body was covered with wounds, his belly and thighs almost cut to pieces, and covered with ulcers, a finger might have been laid in some of the weals; he could not sit down, because his hinder part was mortified: he could not lie down on account of the prongs of the collar. He supplicated the general for relief. On being ​asked who had punished him so dreadfully, he replied, his master had done it, and then, as he could not work, had turned him out to starve or beg.
A slave, under hard usage, had run away; to prevent a repetition of the offence, his owner sent for his surgeon and directed him to cut off the man's leg. The surgeon refused. The owner then broke the man's leg, and said to the surgeon, "Now you must cut it off, or the man will die."
A gentleman hearing the most piercing shrieks proceeding from an out-house, went to see what was going on; there he perceived a young female, entirely naked, tied up to a beam by her wrists, and involuntarily writhing and swinging, while the author of her torment stood below with a lighted torch, which he applied to all the parts of her body as it approached him. What was the crime of this wretched creature he did not know, but the worst that could be conceived would not justify such treatment.
The owner of a female slave beat her in the most cruel manner, only because, being desirous of selling her, he could not find a purchaser.
The manager of a plantation laid a negro on the ground, with two drivers over him, who gave him fifty lashes. It was afterwards proved that he was innocent of the crime laid to his charge, and he applied to the manager for redress; the reply was, "If you do not hold your tongue I will put you in the stocks." He, however, appealed to his owner, who answered, "I cannot help it; it is not my fault; the punishment you had was the manager's fault." Thus, disappointed of obtaining redress either from the manager or master, he next applied to the fiscal, or magistrate, appointed for the ​protection of slaves. The manager endeavoured to justify himself, admitting, however, that he had flogged him, but only to the extent of thirty-nine lashes, and had confined him to the stocks every night for a week. And what was the redress which the suffering negro obtained? and what was the punishment inflicted on the overseer? Simply, that the latter was reprimanded for punishing a negro on such slight grounds!
A domestic female slave was charged both with theft and negligence, (but let the reader remember these charges might, or might not, be well founded. The masters and mistresses of slaves were under no obligation to prove the crime for which they inflicted punishment.) She was confined in the stocks seventeen days. The stocks were so constructed that she could not sit up or lie down at pleasure, and she was confined to them night and day. During this period she was flogged five or six times, and red pepper was rubbed in her eyes to prevent her sleeping. Tasks were given her which she was incapable of performing, sometimes because they were beyond her powers, and at other times because she could not see to do them, on account of the pepper in her eyes; she was then flogged for failing to accomplish those tasks. An epidemic fever was prevalent during her confinement in the stocks, by which she was affected, and, of course, weakened. When taken out of the stocks she appeared to be cramped, and was then again flogged. The very day of her release she was sent to field-labour, although before accustomed to work in the house. On the evening of the third day she was brought to her owners as being ill and refusing to work. She then complained of having fever. Her ​master and mistress did not believe this complaint, but directed the driver, if she should be ill in the morning, to bring her for medicine. The driver took her to the negro-house and again flogged her. Next morning she was taken to work in the field, where she died at noon! The master and mistress were imprisoned and fined for their cruelty: O that their spared lives may have been employed in humble penitence, and application to that precious blood which alone can deliver and cleanse from blood guiltiness!
These instances will more than suffice to show the dreadful extent of bodily suffering to which these victims of oppression were exposed when they fell into the hands of individuals of a cruel and malignant disposition. One or two samples of the yet more cruel disregard to relative ties.
The following is given in the words of a missionary who witnessed the affecting fact. "A master of slaves exercised his barbarities on a sabbath morning, while we were worshiping God in the chapel, and the cries of the female sufferers have frequently interrupted our devotions; but there was no redress for them or for us. This man wanted money; and one of the female slaves having two fine children, he sold one of them, and the child was torn from her maternal affection. In the agony of her feelings she made a hideous howling, and for that crime was flogged. Some time afterwards he sold her other child; this turned her heart within her, and impelled her into a kind of madness: she howled night and day in the yard, tore her hair, ran up and down the streets rending the heavens with her cries, and literally watering the earth with her tears. Her constant cry was, "De ​wicked massa, he sell me children. Will no buckra massa pity poor nego? What me do? me have no child!" As she stood before my window, she said, lifting up her hands to heaven, "My massa, do my massa minister pity me! me heart do so, (shaking herself violently,) me heart do so because me have no child. Me go a massa house, in massa yard, and in me hut, but me no see um;" and then her cry went up to God. I durst not (adds the missionary) be seen looking at her.
Another missionary relates the case of a husband and wife being sold into different islands, after having lived twenty-four years together, and reared a family of children.
A few years ago it was enacted that it should not be legal to transport once established slaves from one island to another. A gentleman resolving to do so before the act came in force, effected the removal of a great part of his live stock. He bad a female slave, highly valuable to him, not the less so for being the mother of eight or nine children; her husband was the property of another owner in the neighbourhood: both of them were pious persons. Their masters not agreeing on a sale, separation ensued. Their minister accompanied them to the beach to be an eye-witness of the parting scene. One by one the father kissed his children with the firmness of a hero, and blessing them, gave, as his last words, "Farewell, be honest and obedient to your master." At length he had to take leave of his wife, there he stood, five or six yards from the mother of his children, unable to speak, or move, or do any thing, but gaze, and still to gaze, on the object of his long affections, about to cross the blue wave for ever from his ​aching sight. The fire of his eyes alone gave indication of the passion, until, after some minutes standing there, he fell senseless on the sand, as if suddenly struck down by the hand of the Almighty. Nature could do no more. The blood gushed from his nostrils and mouth, as if rushing from the terrors of the conflict within; and, amid the confusion occasioned by this circumstance, the vessel bore off his family for ever from the island!