Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  IX. While slaves turned the handmill they were generally chained, and had a broad wooden collar, to prevent them from eating the grain. The FURCA, which in later language means a gibbet, was, in older dialect, used to denote a wooden fork or collar, which was made to bear upon their shoulders, or around their necks, as a mark of disgrace, as much as an uneasy burden.

  The reader has already seen in Chapter V., that this instrument of degradation has been in use in our own day, in certain of the slave States, under the express sanction and protection of statute laws; although the material is different, and the construction doubtless improved by modern ingenuity.

  X. Fetters and chains were much used for punishment or restraint, and were, in some instances, worn by slaves during life, through the sole authority of the master. Porters at the gates of the rich were generally chained. Field-labourers worked for the most part in irons posterior to the first ages of the republic.

  The legislature of South Carolina specially sanctions the same practices, by excepting them in the “protective enactment,” which inflicts the penalty of one hundred pounds “in case any person shall wilfully cut out the tongue,” &c., of a slave, “or shall inflict any other cruel punishment other than by whipping or beating with a horse-whip, cowskin, switch, or small stick, or by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave.”

  XI. Some persons made it their business to catch runaway slaves.

  That such a profession, constituted by the highest legislative authority in the nation, and rendered respectable by the commendation expressed or implied of statesmen and divines, and of newspapers political and religious, exists in our midst, especially in the free States, is a fact which is, day by day, making itself too apparent to need testimony. The matter seems, however, to be managed in a more perfectly open and business-like manner in the State of Alabama than elsewhere. Mr. Jay cites the following advertisement from the Sumpter County (Ala.) Whig: —

  NEGRO DOGS.

  The undersigned having bought the entire pack of Negro Dogs (of the Hay and Allen Stock), he now proposes to catch runaway negroes. His charges will be Three Dollars per day for hunting, and Fifteen Dollars for catching a runaway. He resides three and one-half miles north of Livingston, near the lower Jones Bluff-road.

  WILLIAM GAMBEL. Nov. 6, 1845. 6m.

  The following is copied, verbatim et literatim, from the Dadeville (Ala.) Banner, of November, 1852. The Dadeville Banner is “devoted to politics, literature, education, agriculture, &c.”

  NOTICE.

  The undersigned having an excellent pack of Hounds, for trailing and catching runaway slaves, informs the public that his prices in future will be as follows for such services: —

  Dollars.

  For each day employed in hunting or trailing

  2.50

  For catching each slave

  10.00

  For going over ten miles and catching slaves

  20.00

  If sent for, the above prices will be exacted in cash. The subscriber resides one mile and a half south of Dadeville, Ala.

  B. BLACK. Dadeville, Sept. 1, 1852. 1tf.

  XII. The runaway, when taken, was severely punished by authority of the master, or by the judge at his desire; sometimes with crucifixion, amputation of a foot, or by being sent to fight as a gladiator with wild beasts; but most frequently by being branded on the brow with letters indicative of his crime.

  That severe punishment would be the lot of the recaptured runaway, every one would suppose, from the “absolute power” of the master to inflict it. That it is inflicted in many cases, it is equally easy and needless to prove. The peculiar forms of punishment mentioned above are now very much out of vogue, but the following advertisement by Mr. Micajah Ricks, in the Raleigh (N. C.) Standard of July 18th, 1838, shows that something of classic taste in torture still lingers in our degenerate days.

  Run away, a negro woman and two children. A few days before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron, on the left side of her face. I tried to make the letter M.

  It is charming to notice the naïf betrayal of literary pride on the part of Mr. Ricks. He did not wish that letter M to be taken as a specimen of what he could do in the way of writing. The creature would not hold still, and he fears the M may be illegible.

  The above is only one of a long list of advertisements of maimed, cropped, and branded negroes, in the book of Mr. Weld, entitled American Slavery as It is, .

  XIII. Cruel masters sometimes hired torturers by profession, or had such persons in their establishments, to assist them in punishing their slaves. The noses and ears, and teeth of slaves, were often in danger from an enraged owner; and sometimes the eyes of a great offender were put out. Crucifixion was very frequently made the fate of a wretched slave for a trifling misconduct, or from mere caprice.

  For justification of such practices as these, we refer again to that horrible list of maimed and mutilated men, advertised by slaveholders themselves, in Weld’s American Slavery as It is, . We recall the reader’s attention to the evidence of the monster Kephart, given in Part I. As to crucifixion, we presume that there are wretches whose religious scruples would deter them from this particular form of torture, who would not hesitate to inflict equal cruelties by other means; as the Greek pirate, during a massacre in the season of Lent, was conscience-striken at having tasted a drop of blood. We presume? — Let any one but read again, if he can, the sickening details of that twelve hours’ torture of Souther’s slave, and say how much more merciful is American slavery than Roman.

  The last item in Blair’s description of Roman slavery is the following: —

  By a decree passed by the Senate, if a master was murdered when his slaves might possibly have aided him, all his household within reach were held as implicated, and deserving of death; and Tacitus relates an instance in which a family of four hundred were all executed.

  To this alone, of all the atrocities of the slavery of old heathen Rome, do we fail to find a parallel in the slavery of the United States of America.

  There are other respects, in which American legislation has reached a refinement in tyranny of which the despots of those early days never conceived. The following is the language of Gibbon: —

  Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom. * * * Without destroying the distinction of ranks, a distant prospect of freedom and honours was presented even to those whom pride and prejudice almost disdained to number among the human species.*

  The youths of promising genius were instructed in the arts and sciences, and their price was ascertained by the degree of their skill and talents. Almost every profession, either liberal or mechanical, might be found in the household of an opulent senator.*

  The following chapter will show how “the best comfort” which Gibbon knew for human adversity is taken away from the American slave; how he is denied the commonest privileges of education and mental improvement, and how the whole tendency of the unhappy system, under which he is in bondage, is to take from him the consolations of religion itself, and to degrade him from our common humanity, and common brotherhood with the Son of God.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  THE MEN BETTER THAN THEIR LAWS.

  Judgment is turned away backward,

  And Justice standeth afar off;

  For Truth is fallen in the street,

  And Equity cannot enter.

  Yea, Truth faileth;

  And HE THAT DEPARTETH FROM EVIL MAKETH HIMSELF A PREY.

  ISAIAH lix. 14, 15.

  THERE is one very remarkable class of laws yet to be considered.

  So full of cruelty and of unmerciful severity is the slave-code — such an atrocity is the institution of which it is the legal definition — that there are multitudes of individuals t
oo generous and too just to be willing to go to the full extent of its restrictions and deprivations.

  A generous man, instead of regarding the poor slave as a piece of property, dead, and void of rights, is tempted to regard him rather as a helpless younger brother, or as a defenceless child, and to extend to him, by his own good right arm, that protection and those rights which the law denies him. A religious man, who, by the theory of his belief, regards all men as brothers, and considers his Christian slave, with himself, as a member of Jesus Christ — as of one body, one spirit, and called in one hope of his calling — cannot willingly see him “doomed to live without knowledge,” without the power of reading the written Word, and to raise up his children after him in the same darkness.

  Hence, if left to itself, individual humanity would, in many cases, practically abrogate the slave-code. Individual humanity would teach the slave to read and write, would build school-houses for his children, and would, in very, very many cases, enfranchise him.

  The result of all this has been foreseen. It has been foreseen that the result of education would be general intelligence; that the result of intelligence would be a knowledge of personal rights; and that an inquiry into the doctrine of personal rights would be fatal to the system. It has been foreseen, also, that the example of disinterestedness and generosity, in emancipation, might carry with it a generous contagion, until it should become universal; that the example of educated and emancipated slaves would prove a dangerous excitement to those still in bondage.

  For this reason, the American slave-code, which, as we have already seen, embraces, substantially, all the barbarities of that of ancient Rome, has added to it a set of laws more cruel than any which ancient and heathen Rome ever knew — laws designed to shut against the slave his last refuge — the humanity of his master. The master, in ancient Rome, might give his slave whatever advantages of education he chose, or at any time emancipate him, and the State did not interfere to prevent.*

  But in America the laws, throughout all the slave States, most rigorously forbid, in the first place, the education of the slave. We do not profess to give all these laws, but a few striking specimens may be presented. Our authority is Judge Stroud’s “Sketch of the Laws of Slavery.”

  The legislature of South Carolina, in 1740, enounced the following preamble:

  [Stroud’s Sketch, .]

  “Whereas, the having of slaves taught to write, or suffering them to be employed in writing, may be attended with great inconveniences;” and enacted that the crime of teaching a slave to write, or of employing a slave as a scribe, should be punished by a fine of one hundred pounds, current money. If the reader will turn now to the infamous “protective” statute, enacted by the same legislature, in the same year, he will find that the same penalty has been appointed for the cutting out of the tongue, putting out of the eye, cruel scalding,&c., of any slave, as for the offence of teaching him to write! That is to say, that to teach him to write, and to put out his eyes, are to be regarded as equally reprehensible.

  That there might be no doubt of the “great and fundamental policy” of the State, and that there might be full security against the “great inconveniences” of “having of slaves taught to write,” it was enacted, in 1800, “That assemblies of slaves, free negroes,&c., * * * * * * * for the purpose of mental instruction, in a confined or secret place,&c.&c., is [are] declared to be an unlawful meeting;”

  and the officers are required to enter such confined places, and disperse the “unlawful assemblage,” inflicting, at their discretion, “such corporal punishment, not exceeding twenty lashes, upon such slaves, free negroes,&c., as they may judge necessary for deterring them from the like unlawful assemblage in future.” [Stroud’s Sketch, . 2 Brevard’s Digest, p-5.]

  The statute-book of Virginia is adorned with a law similar to the one last quoted. [Stroud, p, 89.]

  The offence of teaching a slave to write was early punished, in Georgia as in South Carolina, by a pecuniary fine. But the city of Savannah seems to have found this penalty insufficient to protect it from “great inconveniences,” and we learn, by a quotation in the work of Judge Stroud, from a number of The Portfolio, that “the city has passed an ordinance, [Stroud’s Sketch, p, 90.] by which any person that teaches any person of colour, slave or free, to read or write, or causes such person to be so taught, is subjected to a fine of thirty dollars for each offence; and every person of colour who shall keep a school, to teach reading or writing, is subject to a fine of thirty dollars, or to be imprisoned ten days, and whipped thirty-nine lashes.”

  Secondly. In regard to religious privileges: —

  The State of Georgia has enacted a law, “to protect religious societies in the exercise of their religious duties.” This law, after appointing rigorous penalties for the offence of interrupting or disturbing a congregation of white persons, concludes in the following words: —

  No congregation or company of negroes, shall, under pretence of divine worship, assemble themselves, contrary to the Act regulating patrols. [Stroud, . Prince’s Digest, .]

  “The Act regulating patrols,” as quoted by the editor of Prince’s Digest, empowers every justice of the peace to disperse ANY assembly or meeting of slaves which may disturb the peace,&c., of His Majesty’s subjects, and permits that every slave found at such a meeting shall “immediately be corrected, WITHOUT TRIAL, by receiving on the bare back twenty-five stripes with a whip, switch, or cow-skin.” [Stroud, . Prince’s Digest, .]

  The history of legislation in South Carolina is significant. An Act was passed in 1800, containing the following section: —

  [Stroud, . 2 Brevard’s Digest, 254, 255.]

  It shall not be lawful for any number of slaves, free negroes, mulattoes, or mestizoes, even in company with white persons, to meet together and assemble for the purpose of mental instruction or religious worship, either before the rising of the sun, or after the going down of the same. And all magistrates, sheriffs, militia officers&c.,&c., are hereby invested with power, &c., for dispersing such assemblies,&c.

  The law just quoted seems somehow to have had a prejudicial effect upon the religious interests of the “slaves, free negroes,” &c., specified in it; for, three years afterwards, on the petition of certain religious societies, a “protective Act,” was passed, which should secure them this great religious privilege; to wit, that it should be unlawful, before nine o’clock, “to break into a place of meeting, wherein shall be assembled the members of any religious society of this State, provided a majority of them shall be white persons, or otherwise to disturb their devotion, unless such person shall have first obtained * * * a warrant,&c.”

  Thirdly. It appears that many masters, who are disposed to treat their slaves generously, have allowed them to accumulate property, to raise domestic animals for their own use, and, in the case of intelligent servants, to go at large, to hire their own time, and to trade upon their own account. Upon all these practices the law comes down with unmerciful severity. A penalty is inflicted on the owner, but, with a rigour quite accordant with the tenor of slave-law, the offence is considered, in law, as that of the slave, rather than that of the master; so that, if the master is generous enough not to regard the penalty which is imposed upon himself, he may be restrained by the fear of bringing a greater evil upon his dependant. These laws are, in some cases, so constructed as to make it for the interest of the lowest and most brutal part of society that they be enforced, by offering half the profits to the informer. We give the following, as specimens of slave legislation on this subject: —

  The law of South Carolina.

  It shall not be lawful for any slave to buy, sell, trade,&c., for any goods, &c., without a license from the owner,&c.; nor shall any slave be permitted to keep any boat, periauger,* or canoe, or raise and breed, for the benefit of such slave, any horses, mares, cattle, sheep, or hogs, under pain of forfeiting all the goods, &c., and all the boats, periaugers, or canoes, horses, mares, cattle, sheep, or hogs. [Stro
ud, p, 47. James’ Digest, 385, 386, Act of 1740.] And it shall be lawful for any person whatsoever to seize and take away from any slave all such goods, &c., boats, &c., &c., and to deliver the same into the hands of any justice of the peace, nearest to the place where the seizure shall be made; and no doubt the other, and such justice shall take the oath of the person making such seizure concerning the manner thereof; and if the said justice shall be satisfied that such seizure has been made according to law, he shall pronounce and declare the goods so seized to be forfeited, and order the same to be sold at public outcry, one half of the money arising from such sale to go to the State, and the other half to him or them that sue for the same.

  The laws in many other States are similar to the above; but the State of Georgia has an additional provision [2 Cobbs, Sig. 284.], against permitting the slave to hire himself to another for his own benefit; a penalty of thirty dollars is imposed for every weekly offence on the part of the master, unless the labour be done on his own premises. Savannah, Augusta, and Sunbury, are places excepted.

  In Virginia, “if the master shall permit his slave to hire himself out,” the slave is to be apprehended,&c. [Stroud, p 47.], and the master to be fined.

  In an early Act of the Legislature of the orthodox and Presbyterian State of North Carolina, it is gratifying to see how the judicious course of public policy is made to subserve the interests of Christian charity — how, in a single ingenious sentence, provision is made for punishing the offender against society, rewarding the patriotic informer, and feeding the poor and destitute: —