The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

According to the declaration of one of the special magistrates, "Barbadoes has long been distinguished for its devotion to slavery." There is probably no portion of the globe where slave-holding, slave driving, and slave labor, have been reduced to a more perfect system.

The records of slavery in Barbadoes are stained with bloody atrocities. The planters uniformly spoke of slavery as a system of cruelties; but they expressed themselves in general terms. From colored gentlemen we learned some particulars, a few of which we give. To most of the following facts the narrators were themselves eye witnesses, and all of them happened in their day and were fresh in their memories.

The slaves were not unfrequently worked in the streets of Bridgetown with chains on their wrists and ankles. Flogging on the estates and in the town, were no less public than frequent, and there was an utter shamelessness often in the manner of its infliction. 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. Mr. Prescod mentioned an instance which he himself witnessed near Bridgetown. He had seen an aged female slave, stripped and whipped by her own son, a child of twelve, at the command of the mistress. As the boy was small, the mother was obliged to get down upon her hands and knees, so that the child could inflict the blows on her naked person with a rod. This was done on the public highway, before the mistress's door. Mr. T. well remembered when it was lawful for any man to shoot down his slave, under no greater penalty than twenty-five pounds currency; and he knew of cases in which this had been done. Just after the insurrection in 1816, white men made a regular sport of shooting negroes. Mr. T. mentioned one case. A young man had sworn that he would kill ten negroes before a certain time. When he had shot nine he went to take breakfast with a neighbor, and carried his gun along. The first slave he met on the estate, he accused of being concerned in the rebellion. The negro protested that he was innocent, and begged for mercy. The man told him to be gone, and as he turned to go away, he shot him dead. Having fulfilled his bloody pledge, the young knight ate his breakfast with a relish. Mr. H. said that a planter once, in a time of perfect peace, went to his door and called one of his slaves. The negro made some reply which the master construed into insolence, and in a great rage he swore if he did not come to him immediately he would shoot him. The man replied he hoped massa wan't in earnest. 'I'll show you whether I am in earnest,' said the master, and with that he levelled his rifle, took deliberate aim, and shot the negro on the spot. He died immediately. Though great efforts were made by a few colored men to bring the murderer to punishment, they were all ineffectual. The evidence against him was clear enough, but the influence in his favor was so strong that he finally escaped.

Dungeons were built on all the estates, and they were often abominably filthy, and infested with loathsome and venomous vermin. For slight offences the slaves were thrust into these prisons for several successive nights--being dragged out every morning to work during the day. Various modes of torture were employed upon those who were consigned to the dungeon. There were stocks for their feet, and there were staples in the floor for the ankles and wrists, placed in such a position as to keep the victim stretched out and lying on his face. Mr. H. described one mode which was called the cabin. A narrow board, only wide enough for a man to lie upon, was fixed in an inclined position, and elevated considerably above the ground. The offending slave was made to lay upon this board, and a strong rope or chain, was tied about his neck and fastened to the ceiling. It was so arranged, that if he should fall from the plank, he would inevitably hang by his neck. Lying in this position all night, he was more likely than not to fall asleep, and then there were ninety-nine chances to one that he would roll off his narrow bed and be killed before he could awake, or have time to extricate himself. Peradventure this is the explanation of the anxiety Mr. ---- of ----, used to feel, when he had confined one of his slaves in the dungeon. He stated that he would frequently wake up in the night, was restless, and couldn't sleep, from fear that the prisoner would kill himself before morning.

It was common for the planters of Barbadoes, like those of Antigua, to declare that the greatest blessing of abolition to them, was that it relieved them from the disagreeable work of flogging the negroes. We had the unsolicited testimony of a planter, that slave mothers frequently poisoned, and otherwise murdered, their young infants, to rid them of a life of slavery. What a horrible comment this upon the cruelties of slavery! Scarce has the mother given birth to her child, when she becomes its murderer. The slave-mother's joy begins, not like that of other mothers, when "a man is born into the world," but when her infant is hurried out of existence, and its first faint cry is hushed in the silence of death! Why this perversion of nature? Ah, that mother knows the agonies, the torments, the wasting woes, of a life of slavery, and by the bowels of a mother's love, and the yearnings of a mother's pity, she resolves that her babe shall never know the same. O, estimate who can, how many groans have gone up from the cane field, from the boiling-house, from around the wind mill, from the bye paths, from the shade of every tree, from the recesses of every dungeon!

Colonel Barrow, of Edgecome estate, declared, that the habit of flogging was so strong among the overseers and book-keepers, that even now they frequently indulge it in the face of penalties and at the risk of forfeiting their place.

The descriptions which the special magistrates give of the lower class of overseers and the managers of the petty estates, furnish data enough for judging of the manner in which they would be likely to act when clothed with arbitrary power. They are "a low order of men," "without education," "trained up to use the whip," "knowing nothing else save the art of flogging," "ready at any time to perjure themselves in any matter where a negro is concerned," &c. Now, may we not ask what but cruelty, the most monstrous, could be expected under a system where such men were constituted law makers, judges, and executioners?

From the foregoing facts, and the still stronger circumstantial evidence, we leave the reader to judge for himself as to the amount of cruelty attendant upon "the reign of terror," in Barbadoes. We must, however, mention one qualification, without which a wrong impression may be made. It has already been remarked that Barbadoes has, more than any other island, reduced slave labor and sugar cultivation to a regular system. This the planters have been compelled to do from the denseness of their population, the smallness of their territory, the fact that the land was all occupied, and still more, because the island, from long continued cultivation, was partly worn out. A prominent feature in their system was, theoretically at least, good bodily treatment of the slaves, good feeding, attention to mothers, to pregnant women, and to children, in order that the estates might always be kept well stocked with good-conditioned negroes. They were considered the best managers, who increased the population of the estates most rapidly, and often premiums were given by the attorneys to such managers. Another feature in the Barbadoes system was to raise sufficient provisions in the island to maintain the slaves, or, in planter's phrase, to feed the stock, without being dependent upon foreign countries. This made the supplies of the slaves more certain and more abundant. From several circumstances in the condition of Barbadoes, it is manifest, that there were fewer motives to cruelty there than existed in other islands. First, the slave population was abundant, then the whole of the island was under cultivation, and again the lands were old and becoming exhausted. Now, if either one of these things had not been true, if the number of slaves had been inadequate to the cultivation, or if vast tracts of land, as in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Demerara, had been uncultivated, or were being brought into cultivation; or, again, if the lands under cultivation had been fresh and fertile, so as to bear pushing, then it is plain that there would have been inducements to hard driving, which, as the case was, did not exist.

Such is a partial view of Barbadoes as it was, touching the matter of cruelty. We say partial, for we have omitted to mention the selling of slaves from one estate to another, whereby families were separated, almost as effectually as though an ocean intervened. We have omitted to notice the transportation of slaves to Trinidad, Berbice, and Demerara, which was made an open traffic until prohibited in 1827, and was afterwards continued with but little abatement by evasions of the law.

From the painful contemplation of all this outrage and wrong, the mind is relieved by turning to the present state of the colony. It cannot be denied that much oppression grows out of the apprenticeship system, both from its essential nature, and from the want of virtuous principle and independence in the men who administer it. Yet it is certainly true that there has been a very great diminution in the amount of actual cruelty. The total abolition of flogging on the estates, the prohibition to use the dungeons, and depriving the masters, managers, overseers and drivers, of the right to punish in any case, or in any way whatever, leave no room for doubt on this subject. It is true, that the laws are often violated, but this can only take place in cases of excessive passion, and it is not likely to be a very frequent occurrence. The penalty of the law is so heavy,[[A]] and the chances of detection[[B]] are so great, that in all ordinary circumstances they will be a sufficient security against the violence of the master. On the other hand, the special magistrates themselves seldom use the whip, but resort to other modes of punishment less cruel and degrading. Besides, it is manifest that if they did use the whip and were ever so cruelly disposed, it would be physically impossible for them to inflict as much suffering as the drivers could during slavery; on account of the vast numbers over whom they preside. We learned from the apprentices themselves, by conversing with them, that their condition, in respect to treatment, is incomparably better than it was during slavery. We were satisfied from our observations and inquiries, that the planters, at least the more extensive and enlightened ones, conduct their estates on different principles from those formerly followed. Before the abolition of slavery, they regarded the whip as absolutely necessary to the cultivation of sugar, and hence they uniformly used it, and loudly deprecated its abolition as being their certain ruin. But since the whip has been abolished, and the planters have found that the negroes continue, nevertheless, industrious and subordinate, they have changed their measures, partly from necessity, and partly from policy, have adopted a conciliatory course.