ABSTRACT
The page for whipping and flogging contains its most shocking features when it gives the history of slavery and the slave trade. This is especially true of slavery in America, where it was held to be an indisputable maxim that the slave system could only be maintained by physical power; and the maxim gained strength from the fact that owners had a legal right to inflict corporal punishment on their slaves. An Act of Legislature, passed in 1740, for the protection of slave-owners, says: “In case any person shall wilfully cut out the tongue, put out the eye, or cruelly scald, burn, or deprive any slave of any limb or member, or shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than by whipping, or beating with a horsewhip, cow-skin, switch, or small-stick, or by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave, every such person shall for every such offence, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds current money.” The civil code of Louisiana contains the following:—“The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, nor so as to maim or mutilate him, or to expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death.” In fact, the master’s power “to wollop his own nigger,” to inflict corporal punishment to any extent short of life and limb, was fully sanctioned by law in all slave-holding States; and in at least two States the master was expressly protected in using the horsewhip and cowskin as instruments for beating his slave.
