If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness? ¨ Harriet Beecher Stowe

PREAMBLE

THERE WERE 15 STATES in the US that permitted slavery. These were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Of the four to five million slaves in America in the mid-nineteenth century, more than 99 percent were in these slave states. However, not every white family or household in these states owned slaves. An average of 30 percent of households ¡V probably less ¡V owned slaves.

In total, about 96 percent of all ethnic Africans in America were in these slave states, as were the majority of freedmen.

The south was predominantly rural, and the majority of whites were independent small farmers, called yeomen, with no slaves. Not all slave holders were landowners. Some owned slaves only for hiring out. The majority of slave-holders had less than 20 head of slaves, in the parlance of the time. About 1 percent owned plantations with more than 50 slaves. These proportions varied quite widely in the different slave states and territories. The 1 percent with more than 50 slaves had all the political power and controlled the state legislatures as well as the governorships. The representatives the slave states sent to Congress were usually slave-holders with slave interests

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to protect. The legislators at both the state and the federal level passed laws and enacted regulations that some of their descendants, not all, are ashamed to look at today.

Some states accepted that free Negroes could own slaves. More than three thousand Negroes or coloureds owned slaves in the south. These were mostly purchased family members who could not be freed under existing laws. A few Negroes were plantation owners who owned dozens of slaves.

What follows is but a very small flavour of the awful laws, rules, and regulations that guided slavery in slave territories of mainland America, with some brief notes on Portuguese and Spanish slave territories in another chapter. The British West Indian slave territories are also covered in a separate chapter.

The American slave states were many and they cannot be covered with one broad stroke. The statutes and customs were very similar, but there were some differences.

SLAVE LAWS AND SLAVE CODES IN

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The examples given below are principally from the following sources:

1. Stroud¡¦s Slave Laws: A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America, 1827 and 1856, by George M. Stroud.
2. A Key to Uncle Tom¡¦s Cabin, 1853, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
3. Slavery and The Internal Slave Trade in the United States of North America, 1841. Replies to Questions Transmitted by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Committee for the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade Throughout the World. Presented to The General Anti-Slavery Convention, held in London, June, 1840, by The Executive Committee of The American Anti-Slavery Society.
4. American Slavery As It Is, 1839. Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, by The American Anti-slavery Society.
5. The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the US, 1858, by J. C. Hurd.
6. The Peculiar Institution, 1956, by Kenneth M. Stampp.
7. Southern Slavery and the Law, 1996, by Thomas D. Morris.
8. A Practical Treatise on the Law of Slavery: Being a Compilation of All the Decisions Made on that Subject, in the Several Courts of the United States,

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and State Courts, 1837, Jacob D. Wheeler.

9. Slavery and Slave Codes in Overseas Empires, 2020. Patisso, Giuseppe and

Carbone Fausto Ermete.

INTRODUCTION

Slave laws were statutes that defined what and who was a slave. These laws

were promulgated to take away the liberty of the Negroes and to protect the

slave-holders from prosecution for torturing and killing Negroes. These

laws legalised the torture, and at times, the murder of African slaves and

their descendants. The laws also denied slaves the right to self-protection.

In some states, slaves were not considered as human beings and, therefore,

could not be murdered.

All slaves were moveable property subject to conveyance. Conveyance

meant that slaves could be dealt with exactly as one deals with property:

own it, sell it, use it as collateral, hire it out, lease it out, put it on a balance

sheet, pay tax on it, wait until it appreciates before selling, lose out when it

depreciates, etc. Slaves were bartered, deeded, willed, pledged, seized, and

auctioned. They were also used as prizes in lotteries and raffles and wagered

at gaming tables and horse races.

In the early years of the colonisation of America, slave-holders could kill

their slaves with impunity. A slave-owner could literally do anything to his

slave and was protected by their laws. Centuries later, a slave-holder could

torture his slave without any penalty. Only late during the antebellum period

did the slaving states adopt laws that were against the murder of slaves.

Murders done ¡§wilfully, maliciously, and deliberately¡¨ carried the death

penalty. If the slave was killed during moderate correction, this was considered

as second-degree murder and carried a lesser sentence. In some states, there

was no penalty. For killing a slave in a sudden heat of passion, the penalty was

a fine or a short prison term.

In some states, masters could kill their slaves without fear of prosecution

while in others, efforts were made to bring such culprits to courts of law.

Some jurisdictions had slap-on-the-wrist punishments for masters who were

excessively cruel. The reality, though, was that the majority of killers of slaves

received no punishment at all. It was exceptionally rare for juries to find

whites guilty of the murder of a slave. This was because the slave-holders did

not usually break ranks. A white person had to report the matter as a Negro¡¦s

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testimony was not accepted in court. Juries were also complicit as they did not usually convict because they thought that could lead to a breakdown of their slave society. At times the police did not bother to serve warrants to the purported offenders.

The courts were a tool to show the slaves that the whites were united and determined to punish erring slaves. Even today, police officers and other vigilantes who kill black people are rarely arrested or prosecuted; if they are prosecuted many are found not guilty. Clearly, many modern-day American establishments do not want to break ranks and appear to show weakness to black people.

In the slavery era, the rare cases of convictions were in the event of a white man killing another person¡¦s slave, then failing to pay compensation. Many slaves belonging to others were killed unintentionally. This could happen if the whites were on patrol and the hand developed a mind of its own. This usually warranted just paying off the owner of the slave. If the death occurred during the course of the slave refusing to surrender if he/she had escaped, there was 100 percent exoneration for whoever killed the slave. In a mutated form, the law in states like Georgia is still present to this day. In Georgia, and other so-called open carry states, armed white vigilantes can carry out citizen¡¦s arrests and shoot to kill black people. In these states, in AD 2015, an all-white group can shoot a black jogger and say he resisted arrest and that¡¦s it, case closed. There are many such places in America for African-Americans where things are no different from 150 years ago.

Sad.

Slaves who killed other slaves were usually lightly punished. The codes did not state this, but the whites who administered the codes thought so and did so. This was because of the little value they put on the life of Negroes. The story of Margaret ¡§Peggy¡¨ Garner illustrates this point. The short story is that a pregnant Margaret escaped from her master together with her husband, 4 children and her ¡§in-laws¡¨. They crossed the Ohio River into Ohio and went to a ¡§safe house¡¨ in Cincinnati. Marshals and slave catchers caught up with them. Rather than go back to slavery, Margaret took a knife and killed her two-year old daughter and started on the other children but she was stopped by the posse. Margaret was tried not for murder, but for damage to property, her daughter being the property of her master. She was sent back to her master. This was the same principle that was applied for the killers on the slave ship Zong.

The law on slaves who escaped or tried to escape was particularly harsh.

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The interference of the vile northern abolitionists, who insisted on poisoning

and decoying the servants in the south, was one of the reasons given for the

harsh escape laws.

Insurrections, or the mere suspicion of an insurrection, was dealt with

ruthlessly. Any whiff of insurrection was an excuse for brigades of poor whites

to legitimately inspect all slave quarters and terrorise the slaves, torture them

mentally and physically and steal their belongings. Insurrection panic led to

widespread torture of slaves, and some were compelled to confess to non-existent

plots. Many slaves were killed extra-judicially. Many were also killed

¡§legally¡¨ after hasty trials. The slave-holders, during such periods, were more

after revenge than justice, skewed as it was against the slaves. During real

or imagined insurrections, many slaves found guilty and sentenced to be

hanged were saved from the gallows because of money or the lack of it. The

owners of slaves who were hanged had to be compensated by the state. When

the compensation bill was found to be too onerous, the governors offered

pardons or jail terms instead, or the troublesome slaves were sold to other

slave territories. Capitalism in full flow.

Whites who stole slaves or who interfered with slave discipline or those

accused of aiding escape, rebellion, or insurrection were severely punished.

Aiding a rebellion or insurrection was punishable by death.

To maintain this awful system, the slave laws and the American white

society had to ensure that the master¡¦s subjugation of his slave was complete,

constant, and absolute. The slavers believed that any slackening could

encourage revolts or demands for emancipation. Therefore, slave-holders

ensured that overall slaves were treated as sub-human, just a cut above their

dogs and cows.

The wills of most of the southerners show how warped their minds were.

A few considered their slaves as persons and were humane when bequeathing

them to their legal heirs. Most considered slaves as things and left them to be

divided up equally or in all sorts of unfunny ways. Some specified that slave

d was to be auctioned at 13 years of age and monies given to heir g. Or they

willed that slave h was to be given to daughter d, but if h has any child, then

that child was to be given to grandchild k.

It was a common practice for slave children to be separated from their

mothers and gifted to young white children. Often this meant the slave child

moving to another county or even another state. The giver would feel a warm

glow that he was fulfilling the scriptures which teach that giving is better than

receiving. The poor mother and child would be in bemused agony, wondering

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what God these people prayed to.

In legal suits involving slaves, often legal precedents involving animals were brought up and used. In the south, anyone teaching a slave that he or she was a human being equal to their masters was regarded as a dangerous, blasphemous free radical. Slaves beginning to exhibit symptoms of equality to the white man were regarded as dangerous subversives, sacrilegious even. Such slaves would be firmly disabused mentally and physically with the help of a cow-hide scourging, while pilloried or staked to the ground or fastened to a pole. If they persisted, such slaves were killed.

When they matured, slave children became aware, or were made aware, of the white problem. Slave children were expressly made aware of their status as nothings, nobodies, nonentities. They were taught to respect and fear the white man if they were to survive into adulthood.

This is not to say there were no kind or considerate slave-holders; there were, and probably in the thousands. However, the Negroes were still slaves with no rights. The slaves were just property, chattels, like any other farm animal, only probably more valuable. Many slave-holders called their chattels servants or Negroes or even niggers. They hardly used the word slave. This is because servant, and not slave, is the favoured word in the Bible.

Kindness to slaves was used to get more work out of the slaves, less stealing from them, or purely as a humanitarian gesture. The kind masters treated their slaves well compared to most of the southern sadists. The more humane slavers usually gave their slaves enough to eat, enough time to rest, adequate clothing, and workloads that they could manage. But the poor souls were still slaves and were subject to horrendous vicissitudes should their kind masters die, fall into debt, or become impecunious. However, the non-ogres were the exceptions and not the rule. In how kind a master could be to his slaves, there was a line that was not supposed to be crossed. Slave-holders who were too kind to their slaves ¡V especially those who dispensed with the whip ¡V were often ridiculed and implored to conform. These slackers were told that they were making the niggers feel human, and this might cause the other niggers in nearby plantations to rebel.

The whole system was designed in such a way that those who exhibited too much empathy for slaves suffered social and legal consequences. For example, in many southern states, there were fines and imprisonment terms for white people who aided slaves to learn to read and write. To keep the whole from tearing at the seams, tyranny was the overriding and overarching currency.

Many of these kind southerners had their bread buttered by free Negro

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labour, and they still believed in Bible verses that they thought allowed them

to enslave Africans. Tellingly, despite their benevolence, many of these kind

masters did not free their benighted slaves. Many, not all.

Overall, in the words of William T. Allan, ¡§Cruelty was the rule and kindness

the exception¡¨.

The slave laws of America were, in many regards, worse than Roman slave

laws and the slave laws of the Old Testament. The treatment of the African

slaves by the Anglo-Saxon race was despicable, ungodly, and definitely

unchristian. And yet at the time, and even now, a huge proportion of these

sinners and their descendants were, and still are, mostly blase about the egregious

evil perpetrated on Africans and their descendants in slave territories.

By the mid-nineteenth century, most slaving states had some sort of

protective statutes against killing or flagrant mistreatment of slaves like

separating family members wantonly. These laws were a complete joke, a

window-dressing exercise made to counter the growing disrepute with which

the rest of America and the world regarded the slave-holders. The problem of

the protective statues, where they existed, were several-fold:

1 The society thought the laws were intrusive and ignored them.

2. The slave complainant had to have the time and the opportunity to

find a brave enough white person who would lay down the complaint

for him/her before a white judge or justice.

3. The slave complainant had to have a brave enough white person who

could give evidence for him/her before a white judge or justice.

4. The complainant could not give evidence to support his/her complaint.
5. All the defendant/slave-holder needed to do ¡V in the absence of a white

witness to whatever the slave was complaining about ¡V was to swear

before the court that the slave was lying.

6. The mother of all beatings would await the slave once they got back to

the plantation.

The whole exercise of slave protective statues was a parody of justice. The

onus of proof for a crime against a slave was indefensibly high. For instance,

a white slave-owner could murder his slave in the presence of hundreds of

other slaves and hundreds of freedmen and get away with murder. This was

because the evidence of slaves and freedmen was not admissible in American

courts.

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DEFINITION OF A SLAVE

The following were some of the definitions of what a slave was in the slave-holding southern states of America.

The law of Louisiana:

A slave is one who is in the power of a master, to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry and his labour; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master.

The law of South Carolina:

Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever.

The law of Georgia was very similar. The opinion of the Supreme Court of North Carolina:

A slave is one who is doomed in his own person, and his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits.

To toil that another may reap the fruits sums up slavery quite well. The fruit from slave women¡¦s wombs were prized assets. A slave woman could marry a free man, but the children from that union were slaves of the owner of the slave woman. In short, a slave mother could not call her child her own. The child was a slave to the owner of the woman. This was a principle called partus sequitur ventrem, meaning the children followed the condition of the mother.

In earlier times, during the colonial period, white settlers had followed a doctrine that stated that children followed the condition of the father. That meant that all children from black slave fathers were slaves: partus sequitar patrem. This was meant to discourage free white women from having children from enslaved Negroes.

In some northerly Atlantic American states in the mid-1620s, slaves and white indentured servants were almost at par in living conditions. In fact, at that time, Africans were treated as indentured servants and not as lifelong slaves; that came later. Interracial marriages between blacks and whites of

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either sex were not uncommon.

Indentured servants could be freed after two to seven years and be given

a few things to set them up. Some blacks became landowners with their own

indentured white and black servants. Antony Johnson, a black man from

the Kongo Empire (now Angola) was landed in Virginia around 1621. He was

bought and became an indentured servant and was later freed and given

land. He went on to become a landowner and slave-holder with some white

and black indentured servants of his own!

By the 1660s, things had changed, and lifelong indentured servitude ¡V

slavery ¡V was introduced, and the doctrine of children following the condition

of the father was also changed. When white men discovered that apart

from skin colour, African women were exactly the same as white women,

they started producing children from them. In fact, white men got more

sexual gratification from their women slaves than from their wives. This was

because with their slaves, the slaver-rapists could indulge in their sexual

fantasies without any inhibition, and there was absolutely nothing the slaves

could do about the abuse. Without effective contraception methods at that

time, many mixed-race children were born from enslaved women and free

white men. Therefore, this patrem doctrine could not work, for it meant that

all these children would follow the condition of their fathers, who were, of

course, free. So, they changed the doctrine to partus sequitar ventrem. They

then outlawed all sex between white women and any colour of male but

white, on pain of death to the guilty black male.

Precepts of Slave Laws

Many slave territories had one awful principle: that the law should not interfere

with the slave-holder for any amount of torture inflicted on his slave that

did not result in death. Since most of the offences by slaves were committed

against the owner, these were deemed private in nature and therefore left to

the owner to deal with. It was the policy of the law, in respect to the relation

of master and slave, and for the sake of securing proper subordination and

obedience on the part of the slave, to protect the master from prosecution

in all such cases. This was even if the punishment was malicious, cruel, and

excessive. There are numerous recorded instances when the punishment

meted out to some slaves was indescribably cruel.

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The law of the state of Louisiana was an illustration:

The condition of a slave being merely a passive one, his subordination to his master and to all who represent him is not susceptible of any modification or restriction (except in what can excite the slave to the commission of crime), in such manner that he owes to his master and to all his family a respect without bounds, and an absolute obedience.

In the Supreme Court North Carolina, in 1829, it was ruled that:

A master who shot at a female slave and wounded her, because she got loose from him when he was flogging her, and started to run from him, had violated no law, and could not be indicted.

It was decided by the highest courts of the slave states generally that assault and battery upon a slave was not indictable as a criminal offence. The Supreme Court of South Carolina stated that:

The criminal offence of assault and battery cannot, at common law, be committed on the person of a slave. For, notwithstanding ¡V for some purposes a slave is regarded in law as a person, yet generally he is a mere chattel personal, and his right of personal protection belongs to his master, who can maintain an action of trespass for the battery of his slave. There can be, therefore, no offence against the state for a mere beating of a slave, unaccompanied by any circumstances of cruelty, or an attempt to kill and murder. The peace of the state is not thereby broken; for a slave is not generally regarded as legally capable of being within the peace of the state. He is not a citizen, and is not in that character entitled to protection.

Besides, as stated earlier, in the courts of law, the evidence of slaves or freedmen against a white man was inadmissible in all but 1 or 2 slave states. The reasons given were that slaves had low moral character and would commit perjury against white people, a situation that could create chaos. These are the same slaver owners, who stripped the slaves of all humanity, then pontificated that the Negro was amoral. The slave-holders in the south treated slaves with no honour, no dignity, and no compassion. They then expected the slave to behave and have the same concept of social norms as a white brat raised in comfort!

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Another reason given for slaves not to appear in court was that it would

mean some cotton somewhere not being picked. In addition, slaves lounging

and loitering around courthouses might just lead to them being enticed

away by abominable abolitionists from the north! Slave testimony could only

convict or clear other slaves, and perjury was a punishable offence.

Body, Shadow, and Soul of Slaves

The slave belonged to the master in toto. So, a slave could not own anything.

An example: If a slave in his free time accumulated a thousand dollars to pay

for freedom for himself or his wife and children, the master could ¡§borrow¡¨

that money, but had no obligation to pay it back. By law, this money belonged

to the master, and so technically, the slave would have no money to pay for his

freedom or the freedom of his family. This is where the society being rotten to

the core becomes germane.

Many mean southerners would often-times refuse their slaves to buy

themselves or for anyone else to redeem them even if the valuation price was

offered. The reason was that these types hated the sight of free Negroes.

However, not all cores were rotten. A few lucky slaves were paid by their

masters for working on Sundays. Some slaves would also get a few cents for

exceeding their targets. For instance, if a slave picked more cotton than allocated,

then he would be paid per pound weight for the extra cotton picked.

This was an incentive that probably put more money in the slave-holders

pockets than scourgings.

Labour and Rest

On average, slaves worked between 12 to 15 hours in 24 hours. In contrast,

in three of the slave states, the time allotted for work to convicts in prison,

whose punishment was to consist of hard labour, could not exceed 10 hours,

even in the summer months. The slaves got up just before sunrise and were

released just before or just after sunset.

The law of Louisiana required the master to allow his slaves two and a half

hours rest in twenty-four hours. In Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi,

there were laws professing to curtail, in some respects, the power of the

master over how long the slaves could labour. In some other slave states, the

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master was to determine the kind and degree, and time of labour to which the slave was to be subjected. Some of the slave states had no law on this subject. Consequently, the slave-holder violated none. In these states, the slave-holder could, if he wanted, drive the slave to the field and force him to work at the top of his strength night and day, till he dropped dead.

On some plantations, field hands would either work from sunrise to sunset or until a given task was completed. Non-completion of the task would mean a date with the whipping post. For the feeble, the sick, and the elderly, this was a date they kept frequently. If work was pressing, slaves would work before sunrise to well after sunset, and the sick and women at term and about to deliver would be forced to work. If need be, the slaves worked the whole night. For sugar and cotton plantations, this ¡§overworking¡¨ occurred at specific times annually. Slaves who were hired out to work at other plantations or other projects were worked laboriously.

Plantation owners used to lay bets on who would get the most crop out of their land and slaves. If this meant working some slaves to death to win the bet, so be it. For instance, the Cotton Brag was for which hand or hands picked the most cotton in a day. These competitions were run in newspapers.

If the slave-owner had no work and did not want to sell the slave or could not sell the slave, he would let him/her find whatever work was available. However, the slave was expected to give the master an agreed amount per week, month, or year. In states where slaves could buy their freedom, parents and older slaves often worked doubly hard to earn money to pay for this freedom. Some succeeded, but many failed.

Overall, the slaves got very little rest, except in pro-slavery books where the slaves apparently had time to frolic and gambol. During these 12- to 15-hour shifts, they got barely 60 minutes to eat something. They then went to their hovels and prepared their evening meals, washed and mended their clothes, had prayer meetings, and did other personal chores before lying down on the hard floor or board, usually between 10 and midnight. The rest hours to fall into a deep sleep and dream, to recoup their strength, and for their bodies and souls to mend, were hence very few. This was every day except Sunday. To ensure that dem niggers got enough sleep, the overseer would sometimes go round their quarters and force them indoors. Many would come out and finish their chores once the overseer departed. Often the system needed some drivers and foremen from the slaves to act as enforcers.

If a slave was perceived not to have worked enough hours in the week, or if he needed to make up after running away, he would be made to work on

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Sundays.

Pregnant and breastfeeding mothers were often treated tenderly, and most

masters allowed them enough time to rest to ensure that both properties were

in good order. Overseers were told to take care of pregnant women, breastfeeding

women, and children as these were like money in the bank earning

interest. A fine crop for the year was thus a good harvest and an increase in

the slave population of the estate.

To compel slaves to work, overseers would use a gang system or a task

system. In the gang system, a group of slaves would be given the work that

needed to be done in a certain period, and everyone would work towards

completing the work. In the task system, each slave would be given a finite

task that he/she needed to complete on their own. Non-completion of the

tasks would result in ¡V yes, you guessed right ¡V a lashing.

Slave-holders also had a system of rating slaves called Fractional Hands.

This was with regard to how much labour a slave could do. A fit adult slave

was rated as one full-hand. New-borns were zero-rated, but as they grew

older, they graduated to quarter-hand, half-hand, three-quarter hand, and

finally to full-hand. Slaves reached full-hand at about 16-18 years of age and

could then be deployed full time. As the slave aged, they reversed from one

full-hand until they regressed to zero. This guided the overseers in how to

deploy the slaves.

The zero hands were considered as useless articles. They were usually left

alone until about 5 or 6 years old when they might be used as water-toters,

taking drinking water to the slaves in the field. Sucklers ¡V breastfeeding

women ¡V were half-hands and would be put in a suckler¡¦s gang to do some

light work like feeding poultry, cooking, and washing. The fractional hands

of 10 to 12 years would start their training in farm work. They would be put in

a children¡¦s gang and learn things like weeding. The old would also do some

light work. The disabled could be used for whatever they could provide.

The Too Old to Work

As can be imagined, a ripe old age was not the normal expectation of a slave.

However, some defied the norm and lived to a ripe old age. Some very old

slaves were treated okay by the slave-owners, but some were left to fend for

themselves. If lucky enough to still have children who had not been sold to

faraway places, the old slave would be looked after by their family. It was not

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unusual for some slave-owners to contrive to get rid of such slaves permanently. Others would sequester these old slaves to some hut far away from the other hovels at the plantation, to fend for themselves, and to die by themselves. Such unchristian behaviour, in many slaving states and territories, was par for the course.

The Sick

Slaves who fell sick often depended on fellow slaves for treatment. At times the overseer would keep a sort of emergency medical bag for common ailments. However, to maintain productivity and protect their investment some slave-owners did try and seek medical help for their sick slaves, especially the valuable slaves like those with artisanry skills. For many, if they got seriously sick or terminally sick, nothing was done for them. The reason for the profligacy with slaves¡¦ lives was simple: a dead nigger was dead cheap to replace because, after five years, he or she would have earned his master a hundredfold in profit: pure black gold. In the American colonial period, it was cheaper to let the chattel die and replace it than to spend money on nostrums and physicians. However, by the mid-1840s in the antebellum period, slaves became too expensive for the practice of working them to death and replacing them.

Punishment ¡V Torture, Murder, Lynchings

The master could, at his discretion, inflict any punishment upon the person of his slave. By this, it was not meant that there were no laws professing to protect the life and limb of the slave. Some states had laws, but the slave derived no actual protection from them.

The state of North Carolina repealed a law making imprisonment the penalty for the wilful and malicious killing of a slave. In its stead, it enacted a law prescribing the same penalty, a fine, for the malicious killing of a slave as for the murder of a freeman:

¡§Provided always, this act shall not extend to the person killing a slave outlawed by virtue of any act of assembly of this state; or to any slave in the

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act of resistance to his lawful overseer, or master, or to any slave dying under

moderate correction.¡¨

Outlawed, referred to

¡§A slave who runs away, lurks in swamps, etc., and kills a hog or any other

domestic animal to keep himself from starving, is subject to a proclamation of

being declared an outlaw.¡¨

Whoever finds this outlaw may shoot him, tear him in pieces with dogs,

burn him to death over a slow fire, or kill him by any other means of torture.

Legally, with a few incantations and a paper from the sheriff¡¦s office, a runaway

slave could be outlawed. With this paper, if a slave resisted or raised his hand

against his pursuers, then killing him or her in any way they saw fit was legal.

In other words, if the pursuers finally caught the slave and let the hounds kill

him, state law was on their side.

In Virginia, it was clearly stated that to ensure the subordination of the

slave the master was legally protected from prosecution for any torture that

he inflicted on his slave, no matter how cruel, malicious, or excessive.

In North Carolina, the law granted full license to a master to kill his slave,

if the slave resisted him. The North Carolina bench decided that this law

contemplated not only actual resistance to punishment but also offering to

resist.

¡§If, for example, a slave undergoing the process of branding should resist by

pushing aside the burning stamp; or if wrought up to frenzy by the torture of

the lash, he should catch and hold it fast; or if he breaks loose from his master

and runs, refusing to stop at his command; or if he refuses to be flogged; or

struggles to keep his clothes on while his master is trying to strip him; or, if the

master attempts the violation of the slave¡¦s wife, and the husband resist his

attempts without the least effort to injure him, but merely to shield his wife

from his assaults; if, in these, or any one of a hundred other ways he resists, or

offers, or threatens to resist the infliction, this law does not merely permit, but

it authorizes the master to murder the slave on the spot.¡¨

What a sick society these people lived in.

Merciless whippings of both sexes were widespread occurrences in the

southern states. In one unbelievably callous case, a white Christian family

whipped their slave mercilessly. In this case, either because they were overcome

by guilt, or more likely because of the need to punish the slave further,

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they gave the slave a glass of cold water. Soon after, the slave expired. The sadists were prosecuted but the all-white jury decided that the cause of death was the cold water and discharged the murderers.

Wow.

In Jamaica a slave was given a thorough thrashing by the owner for being perverse and ill-minded. The slave never recovered from the beating and died a month later. An inquest passed a verdict of natural death. This kind of outcome was common in slave states, despite what they termed as statutes that protected the lives of slaves. The Law of North Carolina stated that:

¡§A slave endeavouring to entice another slave to run away, if provisions be prepared for the purpose of aiding in such running away, shall be punished with DEATH. And a slave who shall aid the slave so endeavouring to entice another slave to run away shall also suffer DEATH.¡¨

Another law of South Carolina provided that:

¡§If a slave shall, when absent from the plantation, refuse to be examined by any white person,¡¨ (no matter how crazy or drunk) ¡§such white person may seize and chastise him; and if the slave shall strike such white person, such slave may be lawfully killed.¡¨

The following was a law of Georgia:

¡§If any slave shall presume to strike any white person, such slave shall, upon trial and conviction before the justice or justices, suffer such punishment for the first offence as they shall think fit, not extending to life or limb; and for the second offence, DEATH.¡¨

The same law existed in South Carolina, with the difference that death was made the punishment for a third offence. In all states, striking a white man for any reason, even in self-defence, was punishable by the mother of all severe whippings, or death. The provision was that it did not matter how wantonly or viciously the slave was being assailed; he was to take all punishments meekly. Accounts of these whippings are spine-chilling. On a quiet night, the screams of those being whipped could be heard for miles. That is if the slave had the energy to scream.

The drivers, foremen, and overseers often had a limit on the number of lashes they could administer. Masters did also administer lashes, but their rule-book advised them to wait till their temper had cooled down. Cowhides

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were used for whippings, but these were stiff and tended to excoriate the skin

and so leather straps were preferred.

In most slave-holding states the penal code prescribed whipping for

numerous infractions of their law. For some of these offences, many slaves

did not even know that they were offences. The number of lashes or stripes

ranged from ten to five hundred. For some reason, thirty-nine and one

hundred lashes was a common number. However, for the same offence, the

punishment was far more severe for a slave or a freedman than for a white

law-breaker. If a slave stole a chicken and was scourged thirty-nine times, a

poor white would be given a small fine for the same offence. The same act

could be a misdemeanour if committed by a white person and a felony if

committed by black persons. Contrast with Islamic countries, where slaves

received half of the punishment of free people for the same offence.

In some states, the law contained this proviso on slaves striking a white

person:

¡§Provided always, that such striking be not done by the command and in the

defence of the person or property of the owner, or other person having the

government of such slave, in which case the slave shall be wholly excused.¡¨

According to this law, if a slave, by the direction of his overseer or master

strikes a white man who is beating said master¡¦s dog, ¡§the slave shall be

wholly excused¡¨. But if the white man has rushed upon the slave himself,

instead of the dog, and is furiously beating him, and if the slave strikes back

but a single blow, the legal penalty is, ¡§Any punishment not extending to life

or limb¡¨; and if the tortured slave has a second onset made upon him, and,

after suffering all but death, again strikes back in self-defence, the law kills

him for it. So, if a female slave, in obedience to her mistress, and in defence

of ¡§her property¡¨, strikes a white man who is kicking her mistress¡¦s pet kitten,

she ¡§shall be wholly excused¡¨; but if the unprotected girl, when being raped

raises her hand against her brutal white assailant, the law condemns her to

¡§any punishment, not extending to life or limb¡¨; and if the wretch assails her

again, and attempts to violate her chastity, and the girl, in her anguish and

terror, instinctively raises her hand against him in self-defence, she shall,

according to the law, ¡§suffer DEATH¡¨.

What a shining beacon of western civilisation American society was!

For the slaves, all this torture was physically and psychologically damaging.

Psychological damage resulted in slaves¡¦ self-destructive behaviour, and

violence and cruelty to other slaves and to animals. Truism: those abused are

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likely to become abusers themselves.

č č č č č

Nearly all the slave-holders treated their slaves worse than domestic animals. To paraphrase one anti-slave activist in the nineteenth century:

¡E Whoever heard of a farmer tying his cow to a tree and flogging it to death for ploughing only nine out of the allotted ten acres in a day?

¡E Whoever heard of a dog-owner tying his dog and hoisting it with its feet barely touching the ground and flaying it to death for stealing an egg because of being constantly hungry?

¡E Whoever heard of a hen being tied and singed with a hot iron until it expires for refusing to be sodomised by the massa¡¦s son?

¡E Whoever heard of a parrot being gagged and plunged in water until it drowned for talking back to its master?

¡E Whoever heard of a cat being set on fire for staying a night away from its home to procreate with a neighbouring tabby?

¡E Whoever heard of sheep being half-starved on a tiny portion of grass for not producing enough wool? If so done, will the sheep produce more wool?

¡E Whoever heard of a plantation farmer shooting his horse dead for failing to pull 10 tons of hay?

¡E Whoever heard of a pig being cat-hauled for producing 6 instead of 12 piglets?

Answer: no plantation owner ever treated their animals like that. Ever. But for slaves on the Caribbean islands and the Americas, this was their daily fare. Slaves were murdered for stealing eggs to satiate their persistent hunger due to insufficient food. Slave women were whipped to death for refusing to succumb to the licentious impulses of their masters, their masters¡¦ children, and the overseers. Slave women were tortured by wives of plantation owners for the mere suspicion that they were being sexually targeted by the plantation owner. A slave woman who was visually attractive was in for a very tough life: targeted by plantation owners and their sons and overseers; hated and abused by the wives and girl children of the owners; sought after by slave breeders; desired by brothel owners and pestered by male slaves.

On many plantations and urban slave households, the children and wives

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of the slave-owners were as cruel and evil as the masters and the overseers.

Clearly, many mistresses were not bystanders, but were also culprits who

abused and violated household slaves, especially black females. The patriarchal,

mysogynous, and parochial nature of the slave states were such that

white women were in a class below that of white men. Some of the white

women, it would seem, had their release by venting their ire on black women

slaves. Sexual liaisons, often forced, between white men and slave women,

sometimes ended up tragically for the slaves. For instance, women slaves

were scourged to death by wives of plantation owners for bearing mulatto

children whose resemblance to their husbands was irrefutable.

Slaves were tied to trees and burnt for reading the Bible. Slaves were

scourged, pilloried, and given laxatives and then left in dank cellars to wallow

in their filth for being caught trying to see their wives in nearby plantations.

Slaves were branded, mutilated, ears or noses slit, and pieces of their

person removed. Branding for ownership was done on shoulder or back. As

a punishment, brandings were done on the face, or anywhere as the sadist

owner desired. Slaves were blinded by whips, and limbs broken for getting

up late, even if it was just a few minutes after the wake-up horn had blown.

Slaves, with fevers raging, were mercilessly punished for failing to pick the

required tonnage of cotton for the day.

What a civilised society America was.

Runaway slaves who were caught could be lashed hundreds of times

at intervals for days, with salt-water and pepper being used like a garnish

until they died or survived. Achilles tendons were cut for slaves in the habit

of running away. Slaves were mutilated in such a way that they would still

¡§provide a service¡¨. With a cut Achilles tendon, the slave could still pick

cotton but not run away. With a broken knee cap, the slave won¡¦t run away, but

he won¡¦t pick cotton either. These problem slaves would also be chained to a

log while working in the field. Arabs added another weapon to slaves who ran

away more than once: they hammered thorns and nails into their feet.

Slaves would be punished by being starved, by being pilloried, by being

encased in neck braces with spikes and by cat-hauling. Cat-hauling involved

taking a cat by the neck and tail or the hind legs and dragging the claws on

the back of a slave. This invariably resulted in infected wounds, precisely

what the sadists wanted: maximum suffering of the slave.

Running away and theft from the master were viewed as very serious

crimes. Stealing from neighbouring plantations, especially if not caught, was

tolerated, and often not punished. Only a poor capitalist would incapacitate

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his slave when he did not suffer any loss. An unenviable job was to be a watchman to guard against thefts by fellow slaves from the fields, store houses, and other places. Watchmen were licensed to kill any thief caught in the act.

Slaves caught without passes (tickets in the West Indies) by patrols were often whipped then put in guard-houses or similar places till morning. If not claimed by 9 am, they were taken to the local jail or calaboose. From the calaboose, the owner would come and pay a fee to have the slave released.

To keep up the terror, overseers and masters would punish slaves for no offence at all or for the most minuscule of infringements. Some invented new ways of torture or adopted one of the many medieval torture methods from Europe. A teacup poured to overflowing by a nervous slave-boy, a biscuit baked a millimetre thicker than the mistress liked, an exhausted maid failing to hear a child¡¦s first cry, and many such small infringements would result in a battering, especially if the slave-owners felt the slave or slaves were slackening.

To ensure that the ¡§other¡¨ stayed in their lane, language, manners, and etiquette were enforced. The niggers were expected to speak and behave in a certain way. Niggers who changed lanes and tried to speak and behave like their masters risked being whipped. Cruelty was so contagious that northerners from free states who settled in the south became as cruel or even more cruel than the residents.

In many slave states and territories, what was done to the slaves, if done to animals, would have resulted in prosecution. This was because by then, laws for prevention of cruelty to animals were in existence in the ¡§civilised¡¨ world. Cruelty to slaves, however, was still legal, in the same ¡§civilised¡¨ world.

If I were a dog, my massa would not starve me.

If I were a cat, my massa would not whip me.

If I were a horse, my massa would not geld me.

If I were a cow, my massa would not scald me.

If I were a pig, my massa would not cat-haul me.

But I am only a slave, and my massa¡¦s gonna kill me!

¡V Anon

In the rare instances where, God forbid, a master who killed his slave ended up in prison, a pardon from the state governor was a possible finale. These governors could pardon slave-holders who killed slaves but not whites who helped slaves to escape. That was anathema.

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For many southern whites, the blood pooling at the feet of the flagellated,

mingled with the screams of ¡§massa massa pliz pliz fil pity on de pur me¡¨

enthralled the authors of the whippings and their voyeuristic family members

and neighbours into the realm of a sort of orgasmic release. At the same time,

the second objective was achieved: slaves cowered and were cowed. There

is no way generation after generation of whites would look at the flaying of

hundreds of thousands of Africans, with the attendant splatter of blood and

pieces of flesh flying all over the place, and not be totally put off, unless… they

enjoyed the spectacle.

Perverts.

The English language has a term for such behaviour: sadism. There is

another term for the practitioners of this base behaviour: sadists. The Simon

Legrees were in the thousands in the slave states. Which pit were such people

dug from? Such inhumanity as practiced then is very difficult to fathom.

Large plantations had their own whipping posts, jails, health posts, and

churches. For the small slave-holders, brutality was not universal. A slaveholder

with a few slaves might hesitate to kill or punish a slave to the extent

of making him or her incapable of doing work. On huge plantations with

hundreds of slaves, often, that was not a concern. At these establishments,

slaves were ruthlessly punished or murdered to serve as a warning to others.

Not all punishments were of a corporal nature. Domestic slaves could be

demoted to be field hands, denied passes, or denied inclusion in Saturday

dances. Some punishments were psychological. Guilty male slaves would be

made to wear women¡¦s clothes or do women¡¦s duties like washing.

Like the slave catchers who took slaves to the African ocean coasts and

through the deserts, and the whites who transported slaves across the

Atlantic, American slave-holders invested in slaves to get a return. No matter

how hard-hearted they were to their slaves, in the end, the slave-holders were

after making a profit in whatever enterprise they used their slaves. Therefore,

their cruelty had to be tempered with the common sense that in the end they

had to make a profit or go broke. Not infrequently, both small and large slaveholders

failed to balance their books and went broke. That notwithstanding,

the conclusion one draws is that the slavery enterprise must have had very

high returns for it to withstand the cruelty and deaths heaped on the slaves at

each and every stage of their nefarious journey.

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The Condition of Slaves in America

Food, Clothing, and Shelter

The quality of the food, clothing, and shelter the slaves stayed in were not uniform. On average, the food, clothing, and housing were abysmal, but there were exceptions. It¡¦s these exceptions that, disingenuously, the pro-slavery writers portrayed as the norm. The provision of the three items depended on how knowledgeable and educated the slave-owner was, the type of job the slave did, and the geographic region of the masters¡¦ enterprise. In general, slaves who were in towns were better looked after than those on plantations. In turn, slaves who were on established plantations were better looked after than those in frontier regions. The status of the slave, whether a field worker, a domestic worker, a slave driver, or an artisan also impacted on how well the slave was looked after.

The character/personality of the master was also a factor. If the slave-owner or his/her overseer was a psychopath, then woe betide the slaves. There was a huge number of utterly ruthless overseers and plantation masters. These made the practice of cruelty in the south, though not the exception or the rule, a rather common occurrence. Every society has within its confines many psychopaths, waiting for release at the opportune time. The psychopaths have always been there and will always be there. In fact, not less than 1 percent of people in most societies are certifiable psychopaths. The psychopathic personality is always yearning to be released, to find a way out of its confines. All that is needed is someone or something to release that inner devil. African slaves pressed that particular button in New World slave territories. In these slave societies, the whip and the helpless, cowering, dark skinned African slave at their mercy let out the psychopaths in their midst. However, to the psychopaths, mercy was a word that was not in their lexicon.

Of the estimated four hundred thousand slave-holders in 1860 in American slave states, at least four thousand were psychopaths. Then, of the estimated five and a half million non-slave-holders in the same states, sixty thousand were probably psychopaths who the slaves had to contend with. With approximately four million slaves at the time, the ratio of white psychopaths per slave was about 1 to 65.

With no legal restraints, the slave states¡¦ psychopaths were in seventh heaven. However, in the miasma of the slave territories, even the mentally balanced crossed the line on many occasions. If the slave-owner or his/her overseer was an evangelical Christian, then this was good tidings for the bondspeople. Then there were gradations in-between.

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Food

Though dietary knowledge was not like today, people still understood that

some variety in food intake was healthy. Most slaves in the south lived on corn

and pork or corn only. Though for some, the quantity was often enough, the

variety was not.

The field hands were usually nutritionally very deprived. The house

Negroes fared a little better. Those whose slaves did not have enough to eat

were usually those who depended on food purchases rather than grew or

raised their own food. Ignorance probably played a part in what food was

given to the slaves because self-interest in their enterprise would prevent

them from deliberately starving the slaves.

Most slaves were given corn (maize) on a weekly or monthly basis. By all

the evidence, this amount of food was highly insufficient for a labourer. The

slaves then had to mill this corn after work hours. Depending on the plantation,

the milling would be done manually, or a mill would be provided where

the slaves would queue to get their turn. Once the corn was milled, they

would make a mush with boiling water or bake it into a cake. Alternatively,

the slaves would boil the corn to make hominy (samp). If corn (maize) was in

short supply, the slaves would be given sweet potatoes or rice. Most slaves did

not find these two filling and preferred corn (maize). Some plantation owners

provided strips of cured hog (pig) to go with the carbohydrate meal. However,

this was not always the case. At sugar plantations, molasses would be added

to give additional calories. Some slavers included meat when available. Slaves

had a name for these days: meat-days. This would be at Christmas or after a

particularly good harvest.

If the slaves were not too many, during the busy season, food would be

prepared from the main house¡¦s kitchen and taken to the fields to save on time.

Alternatively, slaves too old to work would prepare the food at the slave quarters

and then take it to the fields. At times the slaves would take to the fields

maize-meal wet with water to bake for their meal at around 11 o¡¦clock in the

morning. Those slaves who had breakfast and lunch prepared for them still

had to prepare their own supper. This meant looking for firewood after work.

Slaves were constantly hungry, and if the opportunity presented itself,

they stole food to shore up their collapsed stomachs. Vegetables were not

provided except at plantations where slaves were allowed to have their own

gardens. If salt was a problem to procure, then it was not provided. The slaves

had to work extra on Sundays to buy the salt. The irony was that some of the

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slaves may have been bought with salt back in Africa.

On some plantations near rivers, fish would be provided. On Saturdays, some benevolent slave-owners allowed their slaves to work a half-day. Some also allowed slaves to hunt and fish in the environs to supplement their meagre diet. In the southern states, the animals hunted included rabbits, turkey, raccoons, and opossums. In some instances, ¡§kind masters¡¨ looked the other way and allowed their slaves a few forbidden fruits, like alcohol.

Sunday was usually a rest day, but only after preparatory work was done for the chores of the coming week. Industrious slaves with kind masters would make trinkets, baskets, or straw hats to sell to white folk and keep the money or buy a few essentials like salt. Because they were slaves, the white customers would sometimes take the items and not pay, if they so wished. By law, the small cents the slaves earned in actuality belonged to their masters.

The first meal of the day would be around mid-morning. The next meal would be at midday or soon after. In the field, slaves would be given a few minutes to eat, then continue with their work. The last meal would be late at night before sleeping. This would be a meal they prepared in the evening after toiling the whole day. If near enough, the slaves would rush to their homes for a quick bite at lunchtime. Between plantations, there were differences in the timings, the nature, the amount, and the type of food the slaves were given.

The meal breaks depended on the type of work. In cases where slaves had to start very early, say 4 am, they might get a hasty meal at around 9 am and a hasty lunch at around 1 pm, then their supper after work prepared by themselves.

Breastfeeding mothers carried their infants to the field and nursed them during brief breaks. Children too young to work were fed communally directly from troughs, or given wooden utensils where available. Many slaver owners fed their dogs far better than they fed their slaves.

Nutritional diseases due to multiple deficiencies of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients were common. In addition to the arduous labour, these deficiencies contributed to the average working life span of 5 to 7 years for field slaves in America and 4 years in the West Indies.

The law of North Carolina required the master to furnish his slave a quart of corn (maize) per day. No meat or vegetables were stated. A quart is equivalent to one litre. No legal provisions were made for feeding slaves in most southern slave states.

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This constant state of hunger in the fathers¡¦ and mothers¡¦ lines, we now

know, can have a deleterious effect on children and grandchildren. These

effects include a higher prevalence of diabetes, some cardiovascular disorders,

and probably mental health problems; probably.

Perversely, a field slave looking too healthy or too oleaginous, would

immediately arouse suspicion that he must be stealing food from the master.

This slave was in danger of a whipping to reveal why he was so healthy! In

America, the physicians had a name for the poor physical state of the halfstarved

slaves: cachexia Africana.

They spite you, and then blame you¡K

This denial of enough food was one of the most unconscionable aspects

of slavery. Everyone reading this wakes up every day, and in no time at all, the

stomach starts having a conversation with you: Boss, feed me. For the slaveholders

to stuff their faces and let the people who produce that food go half

hungry for their lifetimes is cruel beyond belief. It¡¦s extremely difficult to

comprehend the state of mind of these slave-holders. Why not give enough

sustenance to the slave so that he can give maximum output?

Clothing/Raiment

Generally, there was gross indifference and the desire to cut costs in the provision

of clothing to slaves. Many slaves, especially the field hands, wore rags,

and in winter, they would be trembling with cold and frost-bitten feet were

common. Some slave-holders provided ¡§decent¡¨ clothing and even gave socks,

shoes, and wool caps to men and hats, kerchiefs, and stockings to women.

In a year, most slaves got one light trouser and shirt for summer and a

thicker set for winter. On some plantations, cloth of different types was

issued to the slaves, who then made their own trousers, shirts, coats, frocks,

and bedding. Some slaves had shoes while others had none, even in winter.

Women slaves were provided with a petticoat and gown but no undergarments,

and nothing for their monthly periods for those of child-bearing age.

The younger slaves had a long shirt/gown with no shoes. In the summer,

many slave children went about butt-naked, hungry, and cognitively unstimulated.

What kind of humans would let small boys and girls move around

completely naked? The same ones who would leave the adults half-naked:

the slave-holders.

The allowance of clothing prescribed by the law of Louisiana for a half-year

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was one linen shirt and one trouser for men. For many slaves, the vestments were often in tatters. When the slaves assembled, they looked a real wretched crew of humanity, a tatterdemalion party.

In some states, a master was required to provide his slaves with food and clothing of quantity and quality as he deems proper and convenient.

Bedding

Most slaves had to do with one blanket every two years. Slaves had to do extra work on Sundays to buy extra blankets, clothing, and furniture.

Housing/Shelter

Many of these sadists kept their slaves in the most rudimentary of dwellings, made up of stakes and poles, and covered with palmetto leaf. The doors were made of the same materials. Reasonable dwellings were the exception that ¡V you guessed right ¡V the pro-slavery writers pontificated as the norm. The dwellings often had no windows, no floors, no beds, and no partitions. Some slaves slept sitting up the whole night as that was more comfortable than lying on the hard ground. With time, some slaves made beds from hard boards and mattresses stuffed with hay, straw, or corn husks or shucks.

In areas near forests, slave houses were made of logs. Some of these slave dwellings built with logs had floors and a cooking area with a clay chimney for indoor cooking during winter. In summer, the slaves cooked outside. Many slaves did not have a single piece of furniture. But after many years, some slaves would endeavour to ¡§furnish¡¨ their hovels through monies earned by extra work, or from pieces of castaway timber. The generally poor construction of slave houses meant that when it rained, or when it was cold, the poor slaves had no real protection. For lighting, the slaves used the resin residue of pine trees called fatwood or pine knot. Slave-holders often discussed, in puzzlement, the inability of slaves to stand the cold!

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Wet-nursing

Tens of thousands of children of slave-holders in the southern slave states

and the slave isles survived because of the breast milk of African women

slaves. The descendants of these thousands must be in the millions now.

Undoubtedly, millions of these descendants are part of the ungrateful milieu

of far-right, Alt-right, neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan racist Americans of today. The

practice was that if a white mother was poorly or died at or after childbirth,

they would seek any slave in the vicinity who was breastfeeding. The white

child would then be nourished by the breast of the slave woman. It was not

unusual for these wet-nurses to be told to stop breastfeeding their own children

so that the white baby got more milk. The poor slave mother had to obey

these instructions on pain of her own child being sold. These racists believed

that the white milk coming out of a black woman¡¦s breast was the same as

the white milk coming out of a white woman¡¦s breast. These sadists were not

colour blind, so they also saw that the blood coming out of the stripes from

the slaves they tortured was the same as theirs.

For wet-nursing and as tools of sexual gratification, slave women were

rated highly. In all other aspects, slaves were considered as sub-human. So,

to square the circle, the slave-owners had to warp their minds to live with this

reality. This, many managed to do by bending reality.

Illnesses

The living conditions were so poor that most slaves had a short, disease-filled

lifespan compared to their captors. Most diseases came from working all day,

sleeping in dank crowded, dirty hovels, and eating poorly all the days of their

lives.

The diseases that afflicted slaves depended on the region. In the summer

months, fevers due to malaria and yellow fever were common. Cholera,

dysentery, and typhoid were also prevalent. In the winter, pleurisy and

pneumonia due to exposure to cold or wet weather were common. Viral

and bacterial diseases like TB, influenza, scarlet fever, and diphtheria were

common. Tetanus was a big killer for all slaves, especially babies, through

umbilical cord infections. Infant mortality was so high that out of three live

births only one child grew up to be a prime adult nigger for the master. Slaves

also suffered from dental caries, mental, and nervous disorders like epilepsy

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and neuroses. Nutritional diseases like pellagra, beriberi, and scurvy were common. Occupational illnesses like lung diseases from hemp and industrial accidents were common. Many women had painful irregular periods, prolapsed uteri from bearing too many children, sterility, stillbirths, death in childbirth, and pelvic inflammatory diseases. Many slaves had hernias due to stressful work with poor nutrition. Many slaves also had sores and infected fingers from picking cotton.

Rape and Sexual Abuse

As has been pointed out in numerous passages in this book, rape and sexual abuse of both male and female slaves was a grim reality for slaves in colonial America, the antebellum south, and all other slave-holding territories. Implicitly, in all American slave states, white men could legally rape their black female slaves. This was because the bodies of slave women were considered as properties of their masters and so there was no statute to support such a charge. The southern whites did not consider the raping of black women as constituting a threat to the peace of the society at large. That peace was only threatened if a black man lusted after a white woman. The white Christians in the south had droit du seigneur, which was their own version of Islam¡¦s ¡§Those whom the right hand possess¡¨. Incidentally, going by their statutes, a slave could not rape another slave.

What enlightened people they were.

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

Except in Utah, all other slave states banned the education of slaves. This criminalisation of education was one of the worst laws in slave territories. This was because, without education, the chances of improvement in the social and living standards of Negroes were virtually zero. The slavers had anticipated the words of Marcus Garvey: ¡§Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.¡¨

However, as good Christians, the southerners insisted on introducing the Word of God to the heathens from Africa, orally, and selectively. One of the reasons given by the heretic southern Christians for preventing the education of slaves was the ¡§fear¡¨ that if they learned to read their barbaric and

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simple minds would then be exposed to the wicked and incendiary doctrines

of abolition and emancipation.

Good Lawd, how dare the northerners confuse these simpletons and weaponize

them against us! Sentiments like these might just bring down the whole

of Western Civilisation! Don¡¦t these low-life abolitionists know that slavery

was authorised by God, permitted by Jesus, and sanctioned by the Apostles?

There was, of course, the added danger that slaves reading the Bible on

their own would wonder why the whites chose to emphasise a few scriptures

only and left out so many, like: Thou shalt love thy neighbour, as thyself; In as

much as you have done it to the least of these my brethren you have done it

unto me; Do not take back to the master the slave who has escaped.

Barbaric minds might misinterpret the scriptures and think that these

passages also pertain to them. Heaven forbid! Surely that was not what

Jehovah intended! Look, that Ham and his son Canaan, what did they expect

God to do, after making Noah¡¦s nakedness go viral? Just desserts! Nothing,

absolutely nothing, was going to change until God manifested his will.

Manumission

Manumission was difficult in all British slaving territories and in all American

slave states it was very rare. In some American slave states freeing slaves was

expressly forbidden. In these states, slavery was regarded as hereditary and

hence perpetual. The state of Georgia in the early 1800s had a law that anyone

who freed a slave would be fined $200, equivalent to $20,000 in today¡¦s money.

In the same Georgia in 1818, anyone who executed a will freeing a slave could

be fined $1,000 equivalent to $100,000 in today¡¦s money.

There were different laws for how a slave could be manumitted in

America, the Caribbean, and South America. In America, most slave states

had a law guiding this, though in most cases, the framers of the laws ensured

that the process was a very difficult one. During the colonial period, some

states allowed manumission of slaves to be a matter between the master and

his slave. In the antebellum period, most states required the state government

to approve of any manumission.

The promise of freedom after the death of the master was not uncommon.

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Kind masters often promised their faithful bondsmen and bondswomen fetter-free existence if and when they were called to heaven. Some masters actualised the promise and freed their slaves after their death. But many a time, the slaves tasted the bitter tears of disappointment. After the passing on of the master or mistress, it was not uncommon to find that there was no will to free the slaves, and the slaves would be divided among the heirs. This was a frequent occurrence. On occasion, it would be found that the estate of the deceased was in debt and so the slaves would not be freed but sold to settle the debts.

The presence of a widow/widower complicated things. If the widow¡¦s entitlement of the estate was not met, then she could claim the freed slaves and enslave them as hers. The same applied for a widower. However, even a valid will could be challenged, and if taken to an all-white jury, it could be nullified. The hoping-to-be-free slaves would be plunged back into the despairing darkness of slavery. Occasionally the courts would rule in favour of the slave(s). Those were the exceptions. It was also not unusual for administrators and heirs of estates to try and cheat slaves who were freed in a will after the death of their master. Such heirs would hide or destroy the wills. The poor slaves would die as slaves despite having been freed in the missing wills. On occasion, the heirs would prey on the testator¡¦s weak mental and physical condition when nearing death and make them change their minds about freeing their slaves. The state could also invalidate a will to free people who God had apparently tinctured too darkly. One instance was if the will was made in a state that allowed manumission, but the master and the slave moved to a state that did not allow manumission, and the master died there and the will was executed there.

Lawyers usually advise parents not to let their children know the contents of their wills in case a helping hand is rendered to them to meet their Maker a little quicker than the Maker had planned. So it was occasionally with slaves. To motivate slaves to work harder, some masters intimated to slaves their intentions to free them in their wills. This was not always a wise move. In case the commencement of the trip to see The Just One took too long to start, it was not unknown for the expectant slave or slaves to help their master towards the starting line.

In some states, an application had to be made to the state legislature to free a slave who had done exemplary duties to his master or to the state. The slave would be freed if and when the majority in the legislature voted to do so. In other states, this application had to be made to a court. Some of the slaves

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who got manumitted for exemplary duties to the state were snitches, who

had given information that foiled insurrections. The heroic snitch would be

manumitted by the state, and the owner of the snitch would be compensated.

Some benevolent masters had honourable intentions to free their slaves

during their lifetimes. But there were many encumbrances if the stars did

not align. The master could fall into debt and lose his plantation or business

and all the slaves. On the other hand, the master could suffer a sudden death

before freeing his slaves. Usually, in such cases, without any written instructions,

the heirs and administrators of the deceased would not free the slaves.

Occasionally, slaves were manumitted if the owner, for whatever reason,

failed to sell them and, for whatever reason, could not look after them. Less

occasionally, slaves were freed if they were too old, too sick, or too disabled to

contribute further to making the owner richer. A guilty conscience at times

led owners to free their slaves just before they died so that when they met

their Maker, the ledger containing their sins would be a little thinner.

In some territories, a slave could buy his freedom and that of his family,

but his master was at times required to post a bond to cover claims from those

he might owe money. A Negro freedman could purchase his family, but these

then became his slaves, unless there was a route through which he could free

them. His family could be re-enslaved if, at any time, a creditor could prove

that he was owed money by the person from whom the freedman bought his

family.

Wow.

Some Caribbean islands had heavy levies for owners to free slaves while

others did not. In Barbados, slave-holders who wanted to manumit their

slaves had to pay the state ¢G200 for male slaves and ¢G300 for female slaves.

That¡¦s equivalent to about ¢G20,000 today. In addition, they had to satisfy the

territorial government on the reasons. The reason for this draconian law was

to limit the number of free blacks on the island.

In Alabama, it was illegal for slaves to be manumitted in any way, be it sale

or emancipation. In this state, no slave could buy himself or herself. In such

states, anyone talking about liberty for slaves risked life and limb.

In many states in America, it was ridiculously easy to convert free Negroes

back to slavery. Offences of harbouring or aiding runaway slaves carried fines,

which were impossible for freedmen or free Negroes to pay. All convicted free

Negroes unable to pay were sold at auction and the money put in state coffers.

Fines were prescribed for many misdemeanours, and failure to pay meant

enslavement or re-enslavement. So, for a misdemeanour, which was so slight

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as to incur a fine, a free Negro could be enslaved!

Through the American Colonization Society, some states freed their slaves on condition they left the country and relocated to Liberia. That meant leaving everything that was familiar, and the vast majority did. In some states, a slave could be manumitted or buy his freedom, but then had to leave the state within a specified number of months. If he did not, he could be caught and auctioned and the money put in state coffers for use on poor whites. Virginia was one state where a slave could be manumitted. However, the freedman had to leave the state and all his friends and relatives who would remain in bondage. That was the catch. So, some decided not to part with their spouses and children and were therefore re-enslaved. In any case, after a lifetime of giving free labour some slaves had no money to pay for the relocation to another state. The fact for these slaves was that if freed in their dotage and then forced to move to another state that meant sure starvation and death. The majority were glad to be manumitted, but there were exceptions who refused freedom. Some freed men petitioned to be re-enslaved rather than be separated from their families. The pro-slavery writers left out the small print on the reasons and stated such cases as slaves preferring continued slavery over freedom. The pro-slavery writers took the exceptions and made them into generalisations. They took the few cases of banal slave life and tried to convince the world that all slaves had the same carefree existence.

Specious.

One perceptive southern gent likened some offers of freedom as choosing between a pig pen with the swill that was given free or being released into a potato field with a mouth muzzle.

What a choice.

Some states passed laws to bar freed slaves from other states from settling there.

Sickos.

Quakers and those opposed to slavery would own slaves who they would leave to work for themselves. Such people, both the nominal master and the nominal slave, were abhorred by the slave society.

The vast majority of slaves knew next to nothing about the outside world. Therefore, to some, freedom was scary. This dependency on their masters made some slaves want to go back to their masters after the end of slavery. The new relationship was based on a wage or some agreement like share-cropping or tenant farming. Complete freedom meant that the now free Americans had to have a job to survive. No work meant no food and no roof over one¡¦s head.

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Slave Codes

In addition to the statutes, all slave-owning colonies and states had sub-laws

governing the control and punishment of slaves. These were known as

Slave Codes. These were by-laws, which were derived from the main laws

of the state or colony. The primary colonial powers all had slightly different

Slave Codes. The French, after 1685, had the Code Noir. The Spanish and

Portuguese had their own codes. The English colonies in mainland America

also had their own local Slave Codes, mostly based on the codes of either

Barbados or Virginia.

In America, in addition to state-level Slave Codes, there were city ordinances

and other local restrictions regarding slaves.

The codes were designed to maintain public order in the colonies, minimise

insurrections and maximise the smooth conversion of slave labour into

wealth for their owners. This was done by terror. At times a few sweeteners

were added. In all codes even the mere intention to retaliate or strike a white

man was severely punished to instil mortal fear. The slavers did not allow

slaves to freely assemble. This was to discourage the slaves from practicing

African religions and dances because of the danger of creating bonds that

could lead to insurrections. After all, non-humans did not need cultural

expression; they were there to do the master¡¦s bidding, and naught else.

South Carolina established its Slave Code in 1712, based on the 1688 English

Slave Code of Barbados. The South Carolina Slave Code was a model for

other North American colonies. In 1770, Georgia adopted the South Carolina

Slave Code, and Florida adopted the Georgia Code.

The 1712 the South Carolina Slave Code had the following preamble:

The Negroes are of wild, barbarous, savage nature and are wholly unqualified

to be governed by the laws, customs, and practices of this province. They

are to be governed by special laws, as may restrain the disorders, rapines and

inhumanity to which they are naturally prone and inclined and as may also

tend to the safety of the people of this province and their estates.

They then went on to include the following provisions:

¡E Slaves were forbidden to leave the owner¡¦s property unless accompanied

by a white person, or with permission.

¡E If a slave left the owner¡¦s property without permission, every white

person was required to chastise them.

¡E Any slave attempting to run away and leave the colony (later, the state)

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The Condition of Slaves in America

received the death penalty.

¡E Any slave who evaded capture for 20 days or more was to be publicly whipped for the first offense; branded with an ¡§R¡¨ on the right cheek on the second offense; lose one ear if absent for thirty days on the third offense and castrated on the fourth offense.

¡E Owners refusing to abide by the Slave Code were fined or forfeited their slaves.

¡E Slave homes were to be searched every two weeks for weapons or stolen goods. For slaves caught with contraband, punishment escalated from loss of an ear, branding, nose-slitting to death on the fourth offense.

¡E No slave could work for pay; plant corn, peas or rice; keep hogs, cattle, or horses; own or operate a boat; buy or sell or wear clothes finer than ¡§Negro cloth¡¨.

The South Carolina Slave Code was revised in 1739, with the following amendments:

¡E No slave was to work on Sunday or work more than 15 hours per day in summer and 14 hours in winter.

¡E The wilful killing of a slave attracted a fine of ¢G700, and ¡§passion¡¨ killing ¢G350.

¡E The fine for concealing runaway slaves was $1,000 and a prison sentence up to one year.

¡E A fine of $100 and six months in prison were imposed for employing a freeman or slave as a clerk.

¡E A fine of $100 and six months in prison were imposed for selling (or giving) alcoholic beverages to slaves.

¡E A fine of $100 and six months in prison were imposed for teaching a slave to read and write.

¡E The death penalty was imposed for circulating incendiary literature.

¡E Freeing a slave was forbidden except by deed (after 1820, only by permission of the legislature; Georgia required legislative approval after 1801).

¡E Slaves were prohibited from possessing weapons.

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CITY ORDINANCES FOR SLAVES IN TOWNS

There were city ordinances for slaves living in towns. These included the

following restrictions:

¡E Not to be on streets after a set time in the evenings.

¡E Not to live separately from their masters.

¡E Not to ride in the same carriages as white people.

¡E Not to smoke, swear or walk with a cane.

¡E Not to assemble at military parades.

¡E Not to make joyful demonstrations.

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Back then, to enforce the Slave Codes, violence, threatened and actual,

was the currency. Whites on slave patrols rode around the southern states,

especially at night, checking that slaves were securely quarantined until the

following morning. Blacks were ruthlessly abused by slave patrols, even if

they had a written pass from their owners. Free blacks getting entangled

with these slave patrols would often end up dead or seriously hurt. For slaves

caught out of bounds without a pass, the patrols or police would be paid by

the community for each slave so caught and also paid for flogging the slave.

It was not unknown for literate slaves to make a little side business making

passable passes for slaves to go up and about.

There was hardly any daylight in the slave laws and Slave Codes between

the British West Indies and the USA. The French in the West Indies, the

Portuguese, and the Spanish treated their slaves slightly better than the

British and the Americans. In this inglorious hierarchy of cruelty, the

Americans were probably at the top. On the surface, it may seem that slavery

was more humane in other territories compared to America. However, the

reality of being a slave anywhere was that of a horrid existence.

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The Condition of Slaves in America

Black Codes

Black Codes were enacted by southern American states that lost the Civil War and ran from 1865 to 1877. The codes were a reaction to the Thirteenth Constitution Amendment of 1865, which freed all slaves and also the Fourteenth Amendment of 1866, which gave citizenship rights to all Americans by birth or naturalisation. Black Codes were state and local authority rules. They were meant to restrict the freedom of freedmen and make them continue providing free labour to plantation owners and to other white businesses. The different states had slightly different Black Codes, but they were all premised on one theme: the black man is inferior and does not deserve to be free. Black Codes followed Slave Codes. They were in turn, followed by Jim Crow laws.

Examples of Black Codes

¡E The presence of any amount of black blood made one black.

¡E Interracial marriages were strictly forbidden.

¡E Marriages between freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes were deemed legal.

¡E Negroes not employed by a white person were treated as vagrants.

¡E Negroes found drunk were fined or were whipped or in default worked on public works.

¡E Negroes were not allowed to carry firearms or any other kind of weapon except in special circumstances.

¡E Negroes were not permitted to preach to congregations of coloured people without a special permission.

¡E Negroes were not allowed to assemble during day or night.

¡E Negroes were not allowed to become artisans, mechanics, or shopkeepers unless they obtained a license at a steep fee.

¡E Negroes were to have separate public facilities.

¡E Negroes were not to be taught to read or write.

These codes were enforced by fines, imprisonment or corporal punishment (whipping). In essence, the whites criminalised being black.

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Jim Crow Laws

Prejudice to people of colour has always been present in America from the

very first time ¡§people of colour¡¨ landed there in 1619. This prejudice became

worse after the America Revolution, the so-called antebellum period. As plantation-

grown cotton and sugar became more widespread in the southern states,

and fabulous profits were made, sentiments hardened, and slavery concretised.

As the American Union was being negotiated, the northern states decided

not to have slaves, and the southern states entered the Union as slave states.

That apart, the prejudice of race, leading to segregation, was quite strong in

the northern states as well. The north, like the south, was still a white man¡¦s

country. There was also overt tolerance and tacit support for slavery by many

Americans in the north.

The northerners facilitated southern slavery through the supply of manufactures

and investments in slave-trading and slave-holding. Both southerners

and northerners were making money from slavery. This led to massive prejudice

against people of colour in both territories, resulting in the well-known

segregation laws that followed the end of slavery. These were called Jim Crow

laws. The name was from a pantomime character called Jim Crow. This character

was played by a white man wearing blackface telling jokes, dancing, and

singing with a Negro accent. The name also meant a black person.

Jim Crow laws started in 1877, after the Reconstruction Era that followed

the Civil War. The laws were still in force during the Second World War, as

Negroes died for the Western Allies that had enslaved them. Negroes who

survived the Second World War went back to a country that treated them

like dirt, or worse. Segregation in the US military only ended in 1948, by an

Executive order of President Harry Truman, in theory. In practice, desegregation

was widely resisted by white military commanders, even as Negroes

died in the Korean War from 1950 till the armistice in 1953. During this war,

Negroes were treated abominably by the US military commanders. Those

captured by the Chinese also received special attention in their POW camps.

Jim Crow laws followed Black Codes. Black Codes did not stay for long

because of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875. These Acts were meant to

enforce constitution amendments that freed all slaves and gave them full

citizenship and the vote. However, in 1883 the US Supreme Court declared

the 1875 Civil Rights Act more or less unconstitutional (see below under

SCOTUS). This emboldened the southern states to enact Jim Crow laws that

enforced racial segregation.

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The Condition of Slaves in America

Examples of Jim Crow Laws

The states enforced:

¡E Segregated buses or separate seats in public buses.

¡E Segregated housing.

¡E Segregated public railway transportation.

¡E Segregated hotels.

¡E Segregated schools.

¡E Segregated sex lives.

¡E Segregated toilets.

¡E Segregated spittoons.

¡E Segregated wash facilities.

¡E Segregated restaurants.

¡E Segregated bars and other alcohol drinking facilities.

¡E Segregated public cemeteries.

¡E Segregated parks.

¡E Segregated boating.

¡E Segregated theatres.

Even a white man playing a board game with a black man in public was an offence. These codes were enforced by fines, imprisonment, or corporal punishment by whipping.

Woodrow Wilson, the most dangerous racist before George Wallace, was the first southerner elected president after the Civil War. Wilson was born before the Civil War, and was elected as the 28th president, his term running from 1913 to 1921. Wilson went to the