Mr. Gu had gone to church several miles from his house when he came back the first thing he did was to pour some tar upon my head then rubbed it all over my face took a torch with pitch on and set it on fire.
“He put it out before it did me very great injury but the pain which I endured was most excruciating nearly all my hair having been burned off.”
The sobering narrative of Moses Roer, son to Henry H. Roer, a white planter, and his house slave Nancy, who was partly Native American and African-American, features unflinching descriptions of the violence meated out on people of color at the time. Roer himself was sold out to John Gu, a cotton planter in Kershaw County, at the age of six by his own white father, who saw his light-skinned tone as an embarrassing resemblance to himself.
While living under Gu 1829 to 1832, Roer and Gu become locked in an apparently unending vicious cycle. The teenage Roer is determined to escape slavery at every available opportunity, while Gu is equally determined each time Roer is caught and returned to him to break Roer’s will to escape.
After one of his failed escape attempts, Roer writes that Gu gave 500 lashes on his bare back.
“He then chained me down in a log pin with a 40 lb chain and made me lie on the damp earth all night. In the morning without giving me any breakfast Gu tied me to a large heavy harrow which is usually drawn by a horse and made me drag it to the cotton field for the horse to use in the field later.”
After another escape attempt, Roer has 20 lb iron bars bent around his feet in order to limit his mobility and is then suspended from his wrists on a device called a cotton screw, a machine used for packing and pressing cotton. Finally, Roer and Gu’s escape punishment cycle culminates in Gu ordering Roer’s fingernails to be crushed in a vice and his toenails beaten off with a hammer. This too fails to quash Roer’s defiance and when Gu’s whole stock of cruelties seem to be exhausted, he sells Roer.
Black slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, muzzles or iron masks, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding, rape, imprisonment, and more. Punishment was often meed out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but most times extreme abuse was performed to merely reassert the dominance of the enslaver or overseer over the enslaved person.
Pregnancy was not a barrier to punishment. Methods were devised to administer lashings without harming the baby, not because they are empathic over the baby but because they need more hands in the field so the baby is protected and nurtured to grow and work as a slave. Enslavers would dig a hole big enough for the woman’s stomach to lie in and proceed with the lashings.
Slaves were punished for a number of reasons: working too slowly, breaking a law, for example running away, leaving the plantation without permission, insubordination, impudence as defined by the owner or overseer, or for no reason to underscore a threat or to assert the owner’s dominance and masculinity. And that lunatic reason alone was more.
Black slaves were often punished for their failure to demonstrate due deference and submission to whites. Slave owners greatly feared slave rebellions. Demonstrating politeness and humility showed that the slave was submitting to the established racial and social order while failure to follow them demonstrated insolence and a threat to the social hierarchy.
Whites did punish slaves publicly to set an example to others. These were miserably depressing times for blacks whose traumatic state was something beyond evil. Seeing that being treated as property rather than human beings was considered normal. The fact that they were forced to work long hours in brutal conditions without pay or reprieve was considered normal. The fact that they were subjected to physical and sexual abuse without recourse or protection was considered normal.
Here are 15 shocking things that were considered normal for black slaves.
- Muzzles or iron masks.
An iron mask and collar were used by the slave traders to keep field workers from running away and to prevent them from eating crops while working. The mask made breathing difficult and if left on too long would tear the person’s skin when removed. The mass’s principal purpose was to impose a sense of speechlessness and terror because the mouth served as both a sight of muteness and a location of punishment. While being utilized by white masters to prevent enslaved Africans from consuming sugar cane or cocoa beans while working on the plantations, this metal mask was used during slavery for three main reasons:
One, to prevent the slaves from eating fruits such as apples, pineapples, oranges, cashews, bananas, plantains, and sugar canes, etc., while harvesting them, yet they were made to work consistently in all the plantation farms.
Two, to stop the slaves from chanting African spiritual songs. Not only that those spiritual and war songs affected the slave masters, it also motivated some slaves to rebel and fight back not minding losing their lives.
Three, to stop slaves from teaching African local dialects to their children and by doing so they are alienated from their true mother tongues and forced to learn foreign languages.
And lastly, the mask was put on slaves to starve them as a punishment in the slave camps. It prevented them from eating or drinking. Sometimes the slave masters would force an apple a hole into the mouths of slaves before they wore the metal mask on them with the padlocks so that they could not talk.
- Amputation and mutilation.
Amputation and mutilation were brutal punishments inflicted upon enslaved Africans during the slave era. These cruel practices involved cutting off or removing body parts such as ears, toes, or limbs as a means of discipline and control. In cases where slaves had fought each other or resisted their owners or overseers, it was common for owners to order bodily mutilation. Sometimes it involved chopping bodily parts like ears or causing cuts. In more severe cases, victims suffered from having their eyes gouged out, their hamstrings severed, limbs amputated, and even both genders castrated.
Sadly, a large number of those subjected to such horrible abuse were refused access to medical care. As a result, several African-American slaves died as a result of branding due to infections, blood loss, and other consequences. Harriet Beecher Stowe, American author and abolitionist in her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, described an escape preacher who had been branded on both breasts and had toes cut off on both feet.
A runaway slave had published in Huntsville, Alabama in 1849 described 30-year-old Ben of Martin County, North Carolina as having no particular marks perceptible only the little toe of each foot is off. Another formerly enslaved black man in Alabama in 1839 was also described to have a small piece out of each of his ears.
In 1835, Henry, who was believed to be a runaway slave from Madison County, was put in the jail of Hines County, Mississippi. According to the jailer, Henry had toes of both feet burned off. The use of amputation and mutilation as punishments is a testament to the extreme cruelty and brutality of the transatlantic slave trade and its ongoing impact on the lives of black people.
- Punishment collar.
Africans resisted enslavement from the point of capture. When enslaved people tried to run away after being captured by the slave traders, this heavy iron collar was placed on them and weight of 56 lb fastened to the chain to inflict punishment. The collars are formed with two, three, or four projections. It stopped them from running away again as the spiked ends prevented the wearer from moving into any areas with trees or bushes.
Punishment collars such as these clearly marked out a person as having transgressed in some way and were often used to punish other crimes such as theft. The four spikes sticking out would have made it impossible for a person wearing it to lie down or to lean up against any surface.
- The hog’s head.
The hogs head punishment was a brutal form of punishment used during the transatlantic slave trade. A hog’s head was a large barrel or cask typically used for storing goods like sugar, rum, or tobacco. In the context of slavery, it referred to a punishment where an enslaved person was confined inside a hog’s head, often with limited space to move.
One of the heart-wrenching events recounted by Moses Roer after his escape from bondage was concerning a slaveholder who hammered nails into a hog’s head and left the nail points protruding inside. His slaves were stuffed into these barrels and rolled down long steep hills while the owner and other slaves watched.
A large farmer Colonel Mcquiller in Kershaw County, South Carolina, was in the habit of driving nails into a hog’s head so as to leave the point of the nail just protruding in the inside of the cask. Into this he used to put his slaves for punishment and roll them down a very long and steep hill. In this way he had killed six or seven of his slaves.
The conditions inside the hogs head were harsh with little to no ventilation leading to extreme temperatures, humidity, and confinement. Enslaved individuals were sometimes forced to remain in the hogs head for extended periods leading to physical and psychological suffering.
- Branding.
As a slave, the pain and humiliation of branding were all too real. The searing hot iron pressed into the skin left a permanent mark, a constant reminder of enslavement. This brutal practice was used to identify slaves as property to punish disobedience and to serve as a visible marker of their status. The brand often placed on the face, cheek, or forehead was a visible symbol of ownership, a constant reminder that they were nothing more than property.
Branding was a tool of control used to break the spirits of slaves and reinforce the power dynamics of slavery. The physical pain was excruciating but the emotional trauma was just as devastating. Slaves were forced to carry the mark of their enslavement, a constant reminder of their subjugation.
There are varieties of widespread evidence that branding was also another technique for punishing enslaved people. In 1806, Benjamin Ferrar, one of the most prosperous planters of the Natchez district, offered a $20 reward for the capture of 26-year-old Sam and according to his description, Sam was 5’9 or 10 inches high, had large prominent eyes. He has an impediment in his speech and is branded on the breast B F.
Sometime before 1810, Claude Guo of Louisiana branded Pierre who was a native of Lap Franc with the initials CG. George C. Pervvis of Mount Pleasant explained in a runaway slave ads of 1819 and 1820 that Harry who sometimes called himself free Jim had been branded with Pervis’s initials GP because Harry was a noted runaway.
In 1832, a Mississippi County sheriff described a fugitive slave in his jail as branded on the forehead with something like LB. A man named Frank was branded on both cheeks which is plain to be seen when said negro is newly shaved. News reports of 1847 had it that an Englishman living at Cape Girardeau had branded a man named Reuben on the face with the words “A slave for life.”
In 1852, a planter living near New Carthage, Louisiana was looking for a 30-year-old man named Henry Owen, a runaway slave who could be readily identified if captured as he had been branded with his previous owner’s initials and had his current owner’s name written across his breast in India ink. This inhumane practice was considered normal in the context of slavery, a stark reminder of the brutal system that treated human beings as nothing more than commodities. The legacy of branding serves as a haunting reminder of the atrocities committed during this dark period in history.
- Picket scarring.
Sometimes as a mode of punishment, slaves were put on pickets long enough to scar their feet and hands. A negro man in Jamaica says Dr. Harrison was put on the picket so long as to cause a mortification of his foot and hand on suspicion of robbing his master, a public officer, of a sum of money which it afterwards appeared the master had taken himself. Yet the master was privy to the punishment and the slave had no compensation.
- Being smoked alive.
On so many occasions, fire ignited the torturous brutalities of plantation slavery. It heated the irons that branded enslaved people, disfiguring their skin and outwardly stripping them of legal personhood. Fire lit the torches of slave hunters chasing fugitives in the rural periphery, and they provided light to the slave traders who conducted nightly raids in the quarters.
Worse still, a much more devastating experience for these black slaves was being literally smoked alive. This was a gruesome and inhumane punishment inflicted upon enslaved black people. This brutal practice involved binding and suspending victims over slow burning fires, subjecting them to prolonged exposure to intense heat and smoke. The agonizing pain, suffocation, and asphyxiation that accompanied this torturous method were designed to break the spirit and crush the will of those who dared to resist or disobey.
As enslaved individuals were subjected to this horrific treatment, their skin would burn and char causing unimaginable suffering. The psychological trauma inflicted by this punishment was equally devastating, leaving survivors with lasting emotional scars. Being smoked alive was a tool of control and intimidation used to maintain the power dynamics of slavery and reinforce the notion that enslaved people were nothing more than property.
One man formerly enslaved in Alabama was forced to light a fire to prepare a mixture of salt, pepper, and water used to punish a man caught fleeing the plantation. Such mixtures were a sadistic method in treating the wounds of the enslaved as testimonies throughout the diaspora note, such a concoction was poured over the backs of enslaved people who acquired their wounds through corporal punishment.
While specific examples of enslaved individuals who endured this brutal punishment are scarce due to the lack of documentation and records, historical accounts suggest that being smoked alive was a common practice in various slaveholding societies. The transatlantic slave trade was marked by unimaginable cruelty and brutality and being smoked alive was just one of the many horrific methods used to terrorize and subjugate enslaved people.
After an unsuccessful escape, Moses Roer had passionately recounted how an enslaver rubbed his face with tar and lit a match over it. He described it thus:
“He put it out before it did me a very great injury but the pain which I endured was most excruciating nearly all my hair having been burnt off.”
It is impossible to know how one might interpret great injury in this context, but just as dog bites and lash marks forever reminded victims of slavery’s physical violence, the scars acquired through such burns were doubtlessly etched in the memories of their victims be they enslaved or free. There’s the incident narrated by R. Hildreth:
“The slaves had been promised their freedom by the will of their master but it was not given to them and their anger turned against the overseer. They were hung and burned alive for this crime.”
- Suspended beneath a cooking fire.
Another notable punishment that was part of the slave’s daily life was how they were tied up like a bundle of sticks and subjected to the intense heat of a raging fire. To add to the torture, a fatty piece of pork was often cooked on the same fire allowing the scorching hot fat to drip onto their skin, causing unbearable pain and further mutilation.
Harriet Jacobs, a freed slave and renowned American abolitionist and writer who had encountered such ordeals while living as a slave, wrote about them in her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. She described falling into the possession of a slave owner who sexually harassed her on a regular basis. Despite the protests of his wife to avoid him, Harriet had to hide in the crawl space in her grandmother’s ceiling for seven years before fleeing to England.
In another harrowing account, Harriet talked about a slaveholder who lived close to her. He had hundreds of slaves. His favorite punishment was to tie up a slave, suspend him above the ground, and start a fire above him while a fatty piece of pork was being cooked on the fire. Then the burning fat would drip onto the bare skin of the slave.
This brutal punishment was often given to those who disobeyed their enslavers or refused to follow orders. Other enslaved individuals who attempted to escape or were caught trying to flee might also be subjected to this form of torture. Additionally, those who were deemed lazy or not working efficiently enough could be punished in this manner. Even simply displeasing the enslaver or failing to meet their expectations could result in this cruel treatment.
The purpose of this punishment was multifaceted. It was designed to intimidate and control enslaved individuals, making them fearful of disobeying their enslavers. The intense heat and pain caused by the cooking fire were meant to break the enslaved person’s spirit and will. This punishment was often carried out in public, serving as a warning to other enslaved individuals of the consequences of disobedience or attempted escape.
Enslaved individuals who underwent this punishment were left with physical and emotional scars. The experience was meant to assert the enslaver’s dominance and reinforce the power dynamic between the enslaver and the enslaved. The use of this punishment highlights the extreme measures taken to maintain control and suppress any form of dissent or resistance among enslaved individuals.
- Ear cropping.
Ear cropping was a brutal punishment inflicted upon enslaved people, particularly in the Caribbean and the United States. This practice involves cutting or removing part of an enslaved person’s ear as a form of punishment, often for perceived disobedience or attempted escape. It was part of a broader system of physical punishments designed to control and intimidate enslaved people, which also included whipping, branding, and mutilation.
A pillory was often used and is composed of a vertical post with two horizontal pieces of wood attached to the top containing holes for a person’s hands and head to be placed within while he or she stood or knelt. Such punishments were meant to encourage public humiliation and were thus usually erected in a public square or at a marketplace, since passers-by were expected to throw trash, garbage, or fecal matter at the person locked within the stocks.
Some individuals placed within a pillory did have their nose slit, tongue bored through with a red hot iron, and were then branded on the cheek or hand with the initial letter for the crime for which the offender was being punished. For instance, a slave who committed the crime of seditious libeling is branded with the initials SL, M for manslaughter, T for thief, and R for a rogue.
In 1755 in Charles County, Maryland, a young African-American female was subjected to the pillory for perjury and was not only flogged but had her ears cropped close. The document Maryland Gazette contains a frequent number of incidents of individuals during the decades of the 1760s and 1770s who were either burnt in the hand or ordered to be whipped and stood in the pillory.
Both in 1776 and in 1794, two slaves in Virginia were ordered to be taken by the sheriff to the pillory where their ears will be nailed. One of the slaves was being punished for running away from his master and lying, and the other for hog stealing. The latter slave named Caleb had one ear nailed and in one hour thereafter to cut it loose from the nail then to nail the other and in another hour’s time to cut that loose from the nail, this being the second offense.
These brutal practices were often used to assert dominance and maintain power over enslaved individuals. Ear cropping caused significant physical and emotional trauma to enslaved people. The procedure was often performed without anesthesia or proper medical care leading to infection, scarring, and lifelong disfigurement. The emotional impact of such a brutal punishment was equally devastating as enslaved people were forced to endure humiliation, shame, and fear.
- The demotion or sale of slaves.
In the antebellum South, enslaved individuals were subjected to a rigid system of control. Slave owners and overseers wielded significant power and perceived disobedience was met with severe punishment. Demotion or sale was a common consequence for enslaved individuals who failed to meet expectations or committed infractions. Although this type of punishment may seem less significant than the previous horrors, it could mean the difference between life and death for a slave.
George Washington was a declared fan of whipping and other corporal punishments for slaves, but he also supported the demotion of slaves who did not work hard enough and the sale of repeat runaways. Many slaves who worked in less physically demanding conditions, such as in the house or in a skilled trade, could be demoted to work in the fields. This resulted in harsher physical conditions, more demanding physical work, and often more violent treatment from owners and overseers.
In the worst cases, slaves were sold at cheap prices to owners who were known to treat their slaves poorly or even work them to death. Famous enslaver George Washington’s punishment of last resort was to sell enslaved people to other plantations usually when they kept trying to run away. He sold at least three men to the West Indies: Tom in 1766, Will Shag in 1772, and Jack in 1791. Even after stating his opposition to selling enslaved people, Washington did sell those he deemed troublesome.
For Tom, Will, and Jack, being sold meant never seeing family or friends at Mount Vernon again. Given the treacherous conditions and high mortality rate on Caribbean sugar plantations, their sales could just be taken as death sentences. These atrocious and extremely horrific act further resulted in the separation of families and communities, causing emotional distress and disrupting social ties, because they were often sold to distant plantations making it impossible for them to maintain connections with loved ones.
This practice had a profound impact on the lives of enslaved individuals. The constant threat of demotion or sale created a climate of fear and anxiety. Enslaved individuals lived in a state of limbo, never knowing when they might be punished or separated from their loved ones, and the legacy of this practice continues to affect the lives of descendants of enslaved individuals and communities today. The historical trauma caused by the demotion or sale of slaves as punishment remains a painful reminder of the brutalities of slavery and the ongoing struggles of marginalized communities.
- Sexual assault on plantations.
A group of women were labeled Jezebels by their owners. These women were alleged to be more promiscuous than their counterparts and were often subjected to sexual abuse several times throughout the day. While white men forced these Jezebels to have sex with them, they claimed that it was the enslaved woman’s fault for being so loose. Although female slaves are the ones who suffers for this the most, sometimes male slaves are also subjected to sexual abuse by promiscuous mistresses or forced to have sex with fellow slaves to produce more children who will work for their masters.
Slaves were raped without having anyone to report to. Instead, the white slave owners expect them to be grateful for having sex with them, proudly saying they are doing them a favor. On several occasions, they may be impregnated and this will in no way exempt them from their normal daily routines and punishments as slaves. Neither will their masters take ownership or responsibility of the child when born. Instead, the children only increase the number of slaves and hands to work on the field which is to the advantage of the slave masters.
Also, the mistresses transfer their anger and aggression for their husband’s infidelity to the abused slave woman by beating and maltreating them. Some of them are forced into marriages without being elevated to the normal position of a wife. Rather, in order for her husband to avoid witnessing when they are punished or tortured for one offense or the other, he’ll send her to a distant plantation where she’ll continue her slavery practice.
- Breaking the bones on the wheel.
The breaking wheel, also known as the execution wheel or the St. Catherine’s wheel, was a torture method used for public execution, primarily in Europe from antiquity through the Middle Ages up to the 19th century by breaking the bones of a criminal or bludgeoning them to death. Those caught participating in rebellions or uprisings against their enslavers, attempting to escape or flee from their captors multiple times, committing acts of sabotage or damaging property that threatened the livelihood of their enslavers, engaging in activities that challenged the authority of their enslavers, or showing disrespect or insolence towards their enslavers in a way that was perceived as a threat to their power would often face this brutal form of execution.
The execution wheel was typically a large wooden spoked wheel, the same as was used on wooden transport carts and carriages, often with iron rim, sometimes purposely modified with a rectangular iron thrust attached and extending bladelike from part of the rim. The primary goal of this punishment was for the agonizing mutilation of the body not death. Therefore, the most common form would start with breaking the leg bones. To this end, the executioner dropped the execution wheel on the shin bones of the enslaved offender and then worked his way up to the arms. Here, rhythm and number of beatings were prescribed in each case. Sometimes also the number of spokes on the wheel to increase its effect. Often sharp-edged timbers were placed under the convict’s joints. Later, there were devices in which the enslaved offender could be harnessed.
In the second act, the body was braided into another wooden spoked wheel, which was possible through the broken limbs or tied to the wheel. The wheel was then erected on a mast or pole like a crucifixion. After this, the executioner was permitted to decapitate or garrote the convicted if need be. Alternatively, fire was kindled under the wheel or the wheeled convict was simply thrown into a fire. Occasionally, a small gallows was set up on the wheel, for example if there were a guilty verdict for theft in addition to murder. Since the body remained on the wheel after execution left to scavenging animals, birds, and decay, this form of punishment like the ancient crucifixion had a sacral function beyond death. According to the belief at that time, this would hinder transition from death to resurrection.
- Whipping.
Black slaves were publicly punished by whipping during the 18th century in order to teach the accused or guilty slave a lesson as well as to set an example for the other slaves on the plantation. In Afra Behn’s novella, after Oroonoko had led the rebellion in his quest for freedom for himself, his wife Imoinda, their unborn child, and the other enslaved black people, he was bound to a stake and whipped in a most deplorable and inhumane manner, rending the very flesh from his bones. And to complete his rage, he saw everyone of those slaves that he wanted to save were ordered to whip him on their master’s command.
Here the English playwright, poet, and novelist Afra Behn paints a detailed image which exposes slavery as being evil and deplorable. Behn also gives the reader a deeper understanding of the pain and humiliation that slaves underwent through this type of physical punishment.
The 1853 case of Humphrey versus Utz in the Louisiana Supreme Court awarded civil damages to a Madison Parish plantation owner whose overseer nailed a man’s penis to a bedstead and then whipped him until he ripped his penis off the nail. The man who was called Ginger Pop or Bob was about 30 years old. He died shortly thereafter and was buried on the grounds of the plantation.
The whip that was used to do such damage to the slaves was called a cat of nine tails. It was a whip that was woven and flowed into nine separate pieces. Each piece had a knot in the middle and broken glass and nails at the very end. This whip was once used by the Romans on their slaves and it was what the white masters used on their slaves years later. And this was a cruel and savage way of punishing people.
William Box Brown, a slave in Richmond, later wrote about an overseer on his tobacco plantation, Steven Bennett, who had a wooden leg and who used to creep up behind the slaves to hear what they had to talk about in his absence. But his wooden leg generally betrayed him by coming into contact with something which would make a noise and that would call the attention of the slaves to what he was about. He was a very mean man in all his ways and was very much disliked by the slaves. He used to whip them often in a shameful manner.
On one occasion, I saw him take a slave whose name was Pinkney and make him take him off his shirt. He then tied his hands and gave him 100 lashes on his bare back and all this because he lacked three lb for his task which was valued at 6 cents.
There was also another form of whipping called handsawing. This was a beating administered with the toothed edge of a saw. In November 1838, a slave master J.R. Long reported that a slave who had run away from his plantation had been caught. He added:
“I gave him a real whipping and handsawing and he has been a fine negro ever since. I told him he might run off if he chose and I would knock out one of his jaw teeth and brand him and I intend to stick to my promise.”
Another slave owner named B.T.E. Mabry of Bey’s Bluff, Madison County, Mississippi, placed a runaway slave ad in 1848 that described the missing man as has been severely whipped which has left large raised scars or welts in the small of his back and on his abdomen nearly as large as a person’s finger.
In the testimony of Peter of the scourged back, he mentions salt brine which the overseer put on his back. This practice sometimes called salting was attested in many accounts of slave torture reported over many decades. Other substances including turpentine, hot pepper juice, and dripping candle wax were also used.
An interview with Andrew Boone for the WPA’s slave narrative collection in the 1930s matter-of-factly described the practice. By this time the blood would often be running down their heels. The next step was a wash in salt water strong enough to hold an egg. Andrew Boone said:
“Slaves were often punished in this manner for running away and other similar offenses.”
Another account also stated there was a puddle of blood on the floor as if a hog had been slaughtered. He then took a paddle and beat her with it until she was nearly dead and ordered me to wash her wounds with a strong brine solution. The brine was used to prevent the raw flesh from rotting and to promote healing. They mixed it to a thick consistency and applied it with corn husks, rubbing it.
