“In the literature of the slave trade,” says Metcalff, “the horrors of the path of commerce stand out as prominently as the persecutions of the Roman emperors in the history of Christianity. When the sea gives up its dead there will come from this highway of cruelty a prodigious army of martyrs to man’s inhumanity to man. The best authorities agree in estimating that of all the slaves taken from Africa at least one-eighth—some authorities say more than a quarter—died or were killed in transit. It staggers the imagination to think of how thickly the traffic in these helpless savages, continued through almost four centuries, must have strewn with corpses the lower depths of the Atlantic.
“Of course it was necessary, if any part of the cargo was to be delivered alive, that the negroes should occasionally be brought on deck and exercised. This was done with a few at a time, although their masters never went so far as to free even these from their irons. Often it was found when a couple was to be brought up that one of them had died and that his mate had spent hours, days even, in the stifling atmosphere of between-decks, manacled to and in constant contact with a corpse. It is small wonder that, as often happened, when the slaves were brought on deck they began jumping overboard in couples, sooner than return to the heat, thirst, stench, and filth of the hold, where the scalding perspiration of one ran to the body of another and where men were constantly dying in their full view. Sooner than endure these tortures even the savage Africans sought refuge in death by starvation. This was a contingency provided for in advance by the experienced trader, and if the gentle persuasion of the thumb-screw failed to cure the would-be suicide, the ships were always provided with a clever device to compel the human animal to take the nourishment which kept in him the life without which he ceased to possess any pecuniary value. This instrument consisted of a pair of iron compasses, the legs of which were driven into the mouth when closed and then forced open and held open by the action of a screw. Even the African negro, stoic to the pains incident to a life of savagery, would renounce the privilege of death by starvation to escape the immediate agony of forcibly distended jaws, especially when at the same time his thumbs were under the pressure of the screw with blood exuding from their ends.”
Branded like cattle, the negroes, after their arrival in the American harbor, were sold by auction. And now the slave was, as the Civil Code of Louisiana said, “subject to the power of his master in such a manner that the master may sell him, dispose of his person, and of his labor. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything but that may belong to his master.”
Of course this master had also the right to punish the slave for any neglect or wrong. To be sure, there were laws against excessive punishment, but as most of the plantations were far from the cities, such laws were practically ineffective against those who wished to violate them.
We quote once more J. S. Metcalff: “Almost every plantation had its whipping post, consisting of an upright set in the ground with a short crosspiece near the top. The thumbs or wrists of the negro to be whipped were securely tied together, and placed around the upright above the crosspiece, so that the toes barely touched the ground. Sometimes the offending slaves were sent to the nearest jail to be whipped by the jailor, who was an expert in his line of work, and provided with the right kind of whips as well as a strong arm and an accurate eye to make his blows inflict the most pain. In other cases, this official paid regular visits to the plantation, and inflicted the punishments accumulated since his preceding visit. Thus the terror of anticipation was often added to the agony of realization. These events were occasions on the plantations, and the other slaves were compelled to witness the punishments and sufferings of their fellows as a deterrent to wrongdoing on their own part. In the case of some offenders which seemed cardinal against the foundation principles of slavery, such as striking a master, engaging in a conspiracy with other slaves, or aiding a fugitive, the punishments were made extraordinarily severe, and slaves from surrounding plantations were obliged by their masters to gather to witness them.
“A case of this latter sort was the one of a negro and his wife, who had given their owner a severe beating. In spite of the fact that the first cause of the trouble was the rejection by the woman of the master’s advances, the offence was so flagrant that neighboring slave-owners feared to let it go by without severe and public punishment. At the time set the slaves from neighboring plantations were gathered, and the man and woman fastened to posts near each other. The man was to receive a hundred and fifty lashes and the woman a hundred. As the first strokes fell on the man’s back and loins he gave no sound, but the agony betrayed itself in the ashening of his dark skin, and in the involuntary contortion of his features. Meanwhile the woman encouraged him with crude expressions of pity and love. As the blows increased in number the torture became unbearable, and the sound of the regularly landing lash was punctuated with the shrieks of its agonized victim. Finally a blessed unconsciousness came to his relief, and he hung from the post a limp, unfeeling mass of bruised and bleeding flesh. While his back was being washed, the whipping of the woman began. The first blows brought shrieks of anguish from her lips, but as the whipping went on these subsided into a murmur of sobs, prayers, and appeals for mercy. With the exception of an occasional rest for the tired arm of the man wielding the whip, her punishment was carried to its end without her losing consciousness, although it was apparent that there had come some numbing influence to her faculties closely akin to insensibility. The man had now been restored to his senses and his punishment was resumed. When it was finished the wounds of both were washed with salt water, to intensify the effect of the blows, to prevent blood-poisoning and to heal the wounds more quickly, so that the slaves could resume their accustomed labor. This matter of the slave’s ability to work was always taken into account, and we have one instance of two economical lady slave-owners in Georgia who always inflicted their punishments Sunday mornings, so that by Monday the slaves would be able to go into the fields.”
As the slave-holders were absolute masters over the negroes, they made their dusky female slaves only too often the objects of their passions. The effects of this intermingling were soon seen in all slave-holding countries of America in the mixed character of the population, which, gradually extending itself as time wore on, resulted in the race of the mulattoes. From the intercourse of these again with the whites or among themselves, innumerable shades of color sprang up, giving rise to the distinctions of octoroons, quadroons, terceroons, quinteroons, etc. To all these people, regular or irregular in birth, light or dark in color, were given the various names of “people of color,” “sang melée,” or “mulattoes.” Notwithstanding the fact, that some of these quadroons and octoroons could hardly be distinguished from white people in appearance, their condition followed always that of their mothers, and they were therefore chattels to be bought or sold.
“On the plantations where negro children were brought up to be sold, it was,” as Metcalff states, “not an unheard-of thing for a master to sell his own son or daughter. In the break-up of family estates it sometimes happened that the heir was compelled to sell his own half-brother or half-sister. These relationships were seldom or never recognized.”
In the slave-markets of New Orleans and the other large cities the personal appearance of the younger women was a decided element in fixing their value. The languorous beauty of the Southern quadroon and octoroon is famous the world over, and on the auction block and at private sale they brought the highest prices.
The glory of having written the first formal protest against slavery and its countless cruelties, belongs to a small band of Mennonites from Germany, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1683, in the neighborhood of which city they started a settlement called Germantown.