Let a few cases be found sufficient to enlighten the reader upon this point. They are specimens from a list of horrors which eye-witnesses, inhabitants of the island, have preserved; and many of them, being found in more than one authority, French as well as colored, are to be regarded as current and unquestionable facts.
The ordinary brutalities of slaveholding were rendered more acute by this Creole temper. Whippings were carried to the point of death, for the slave-vessel was always at the wharf to furnish short lives upon long credit; starving was a common cure for obstinacy, brine and red-pepper were liberally sprinkled upon quivering backs. Economy was never a virtue of this profuse island. Lives were sauce piquante to luxury.
The incarceration of slaves who had marooned, stolen vegetables, or refused to work, had some features novel to the Bastille and the Inquisition. A man would be let down into a stone case or cylinder just large enough to receive his body: potted in this way, he remained till the overseer considered that he had improved. Sometimes he was left too long, and was found spoiled; for this mode of punishment soon ended a man, because he could not move a limb or change his attitude. Dungeons were constructed with iron rings so disposed along the wall that a man was held in a sitting posture with nothing to sit upon but sharpened stick: he was soon obliged to try it, and so oscillated between the two tortures. Other cells were furnished with cases, of the size of a man, that could be hermetically sealed: these were for suffocation. The floors of some were kept submerged with a foot or two of water: the negroes who came out of them were frequently crippled for life by the dampness and cold. Iron cages, collars, and iron masks, clogs, fetters, and thumb-screws were found upon numerous plantations, among the ruins of the dungeons.
The quatre piquet was a favorite style of flogging. Each limb of the victim was stretched to the stake of a frame which was capable of more or less distention; around the middle went an iron circle which prevented every motion. In this position he received his modicum of lashes, every muscle swollen and distended, till the blood dripped from the machine. After he was untied, the overseer dressed the wounds, according to fancy, with pickled pimento, pepper, hot coals, boiling oil or lard, sealing-wax, or gunpowder. Sometimes hot irons stanched the flow of blood.
M. Frossard[26] is authority for the story of a planter who administered a hundred lashes to a negro who had broken a hoe-handle, then strewing gunpowder in the furrows of the flesh, amused himself with setting the trains on fire.
M. de Crévecœur put a negro who had killed an inhuman overseer into an iron cage, so confined that the birds could have free access to him. They fed daily upon the unfortunate man; his eyes were carried off, his jaws laid bare, his arms torn to pieces, clouds of insects covered the lacerated body and regaled upon his blood.
Another planter, attests M. Frossard, after having lived several years with a negress, deserted her for another, and wished to force her to become the slave of her rival. Not being able to endure this humiliation, she besought him to sell her. But the irritated Frenchman, after inflicting various preparatory punishments, buried her alive, with her head above ground, which he kept wet with eau sucrée till the insects had destroyed her.
How piteous is the reflection that the slaves made a point of honor of preserving their backs free from scars,—so that the lash inflicted a double wound at every stroke!
There was a planter who kept an iron box pierced with holes, into which the slaves were put for trivial offences, and moved towards a hot fire, till the torment threatened to destroy life. He considered this punishment preferable to whipping, because it did not suspend the slave's labors for so long a time.
"What rascally sugar!" said Caradeux to his foreman; "the next time you turn out the like, I will have you buried alive;—you know me." The occasion came soon after, and the black was thrown into a dungeon. Caradeux, says Malenfant, did not really wish to lose his black, yet wished to preserve his character for severity. He invited a dozen ladies to dinner, and during the repast informed them that he meant to execute his foreman, and they should see the thing done. This was not an unusual sight for ladies to witness: the Roman women never were more eager for the agonies of the Coliseum. But on this occasion they demurred, and asked pardon for the black. "Very well," said Caradeux; "remain at table, and when you see me take out my handkerchief; run and solicit his life." After the dessert, Caradeux repaired to the court, where the negro had been obliged to dig his own grave and to get into it, which he did with singing. The earth was thrown around him till the head only appeared. Caradeux pulls out his handkerchief; the ladies run, throw themselves at his feet; after much feigned reluctance, he exclaims,—