In
1860 it was calculated that about 88 per cent of America's slave-owners
owned twenty slaves or less. However, large landowners would usually
own well over 100 slaves and relied heavily on overseers to run their
plantations. These overseers were
under considerable pressure from the plantation owners to maximize
profits. They did this by bullying the slaves into increasing productivity.
The punishments used against slaves
judged to be under-performing included the use of the cart-whip.
Not surprisingly the mortality-rate amongst the slaves was high. Studies
have shown that over a four-year period, up to 30 per cent of the
slave population in America died.
Slaves were in the fields from sunrise to sunset and at harvest time
they did an eighteen hour day. Women worked the same hours as the
men and pregnant women were expected to continue until their child
was born. Only a month's rest was allowed for recovery from child-bearing.
The women then carried the child on their backs while they worked
in the fields. Around the age of five, slave
children would also be expected to work on the plantation.
(1)
Moses
Grandy, wrote about his overseer in his autobiography, Life
of a Slave (1843)
MacPherson gave the same task to each slave; of
course the weak ones often failed to do it. I have often seen him
tie up persons and flog them in the morning, only because they were
unable to get the previous day's task done: after they were flogged,
pork or beef brine was put on their bleeding backs, to increase the
pain; he sitting by resting himself, and seeing it done. After being
thus flogged and pickled, the sufferers often remained tied up all
day, the feet just touching the ground, the legs tied, and pieces
of wood put between the legs. All the motion allowed was a slight
turn of the neck. Thus exposed and helpless, the yellow flies and
mosquitoes in great numbers would settle on the bleeding and smarting
back, and put the sufferer to extreme torture. This continued all
day, for they were not taken down till night.
In flogging, MacPherson would sometimes tie the slave's shirt over
his head, that he might not flinch when the blow was coming: sometimes
he would increase his misery, by blustering and calling out that he
was coming to flog again, which he did or did not, as happened. I
have seen him flog slaves with his own hands, till their entrails
were visible; and I have seen the sufferers dead when they were taken
down. He never was called to account in any way for it.
It is not uncommon for flies to blow the sores made by flogging. In
that case, we get a strong weed growing in those parts, called the
Oak of Jerusalem; we boil it at night, and wash the sores with the
liquor, which is extremely bitter: on this, the creepers or maggots
come out. To relieve them in some degree after severe flogging, their
fellow-slaves rub their backs with part of their little allowance
of fat meat.
(2)
Francis Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery
(1863)
Many masters possessing large plantations, and some hundreds
of slaves, being desirous to divest themselves as much as possible
of the cares of managing the estate, hire white men, at a salary of
from 1,200 to 1,400 dollars per annum, to look after the whole property.
These are the best and most humane overseers. But other slave proprietors,
in order to save the cost of an overseer, but chiefly to exact as
much work as possible out of the niggers, make a nigger an overseer,
who if he does not cruelly work the slaves is threatened with a flogging,
which the master cannot give to a white man. In order to save his
own back the slave overseer very often behaves in the most brutal
manner to the niggers under him.
My grandmother's master was one of the hard kind. He had made her
son an overseer. Consequently, my grandmother having committed the
crime of attending a prayer-meeting, was ordered to be flogged by
her own son. This was done by tying her hands before her with a rope,
and then fastening the rope to a peach tree, and laying bare the back.
Her own son was then made to give her forty lashes with a thong of
a raw cow's-hide, her master standing over her the whole time blaspheming
and threatening what he would do if her son did not lay it on.
(3) William
Box Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown (1851)
My master's son Charles, at one time,
became impressed with the evils of slavery, and put his notion into
practical effect by emancipating about forty of his slaves, and paying
their expenses to a free state. Our old master, about this time, being
unable to attend to all his affairs himself, employed an overseer
whose, disposition was so cruel as to make many of the slaves run
away. The change in our treatment was so great, and so much for the
worse, that we could not help lamenting that the master had adopted
such a change. There is no telling what might have been the result
of this new method amongst slaves, so unused to the lash as we were,
if in the midst of the experiment our old master had not been called
upon to go the way of all the earth. As he was about to expire he
sent for my mother and me to come to his bedside; we ran with beating
hearts and highly elated feelings, not doubting, in the, least, but
that he was about to confer upon us the boon of freedom - for we had
both expected that we should be set free when master died - but imagine
our deep disappointment when the old man called me to his side and
said, Henry yon, will make a good plough-boy, or a good gardener,
now you must be an honest boy and never tell an untruth.
(4)
Jacob
Stroyer ,
My Life in the South (1898)
Gilbert was a cruel overseer. He used to strip
his fellow Negroes while in the woods, and whip them two or three
times a week, so that their backs were all scarred, and threatened
them with severer punishments if they told; this state of things had
been going on for quite a while. As I was a favorite with Gilbert,
I always managed to escape a whipping. But finally, one day, Gilbert
said to me, "Jake," as he used to call me, "you am
a good boy, but I'm going to whip you some today, as I whip the other
boys." Of course I was required to strip off my only garment,
which was an Osnaburg linen shirt, worn by both sexes of the Negro
children in the summer. As I stood trembling before my merciless superior,
who had a switch in his hand, thousands of thoughts went through my
little mind as to how to get rid of the whipping. I finally fell upon
a plan which I hoped would save me from a punishment that was near
at hand. I commenced reluctantly to take off my shirt, at the same
time pleading with Gilbert, who paid no attention to my prayer.
(5)
Harriet
Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
There was a planter in the country, not far from us, who had six hundred
slaves, many of whom he did not know by sight. His extensive plantation
was managed by well-paid overseers. There was a jail and a whipping
post on his grounds; and whatever cruelties were perpetrated there,
they passed without comment. He was so effectively screened by his
great wealth that he was called to no account for his crimes, not
even for murder.
Various were the punishments resorted to. A favorite one was to tie
a rope round a man's body, and suspend him from the ground. A fire
was kindled over him, from which was suspended a piece of fat pork.
As this cooked, the scalding drops of fat continually fell on the
bare flesh. On his own plantation, he required very strict obedience
to the eighth commandment. But depredations on the neighbors were
allowable, provided the culprit managed to evade detection or suspicion.
If a neighbor brought a charge of theft against any of his slaves,
he was browbeaten by the master, who assured him that his slaves had
enough of every thing at home, and had no inducement to steal. No
sooner was the neighbor's back turned, than the accused was sought
out, and whipped.
His brother, if not equal in wealth, was at least equal in cruelty.
His bloodhounds were well trained. Their pen was spacious, and a terror
to the slaves. They were let loose on a runaway, and, if they tracked
him, they literally tore the flesh from his bones. When this slaveholder
died, his shrieks and groans were so frightful that they appalled
his own friends. His last words were, "I am going to hell; bury
my money with me."
(6)
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
My first master's name was Captain Anthony - a title which, I presume,
he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered
a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about thirty
slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The
overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard,
a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with
a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the
women's heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his
cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself.
Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary
barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel
man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding.
He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave.
I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending
shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist,
and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood.
No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move
his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the
harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped
longest.
(7)
Austin
Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave (1857)
It was usual for men and women to work side by side on our plantation;
and in many kinds of work, the women were compelled to do as much
as the men. Captain William Helm employed
an overseer, whose business it was to look after each slave in the
field, and see that he performed his task. The overseer always went
around with a whip, about nine feet long, made of the toughest kind
of cowhide, the but-end of which was loaded with lead, and was about
four or five inches in circumference, running to a point at the opposite
extremity. This made a dreadful instrument of torture, and, when in
the hands of a cruel overseer, it was truly fearful. With it, the
skin of an ox or a horse could be cut through. Hence, it was no uncommon
thing to see the poor slaves with their backs mangled in a most horrible
manner. Our overseer, thus armed with his cowhide, and with a large
bull-dog behind him, followed the slaves all day; and, if one of them
fell in the rear from any cause, this cruel weapon was plied with
terrible force. He would strike the dog one blow and the slave another,
in order to keep the former from tearing the delinquent slave in pieces,
- such was the ferocity of his canine attendant.
(8)
James
Pennington, The
Fugitive Blacksmith (1859)
We had an overseer named Blackstone;
he was an extremely cruel man to the working hands. He always carried
a long
hickory whip - a kind of pole. He kept three or four of these, in
order that he might not at any time be without one.
I once found one of these
hickories lying in the yard, and supposing that he had thrown it away,
I picked it up, and boy-like, was using it for a horse; he came along
from the field, and seeing me with it, fell upon me with the one he
then had in his hand, and flogged me most cruelly. From that, I lived
in constant dread of that man; and he would show how much he delighted
in cruelty by chasing me from my play with threats and imprecations.
I have lain for hours in a wood, or behind a fence, to hide from his
eye.
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