PIERRE MINARD, _President pro tem. of the Legislative Council.
Vincennes, Dec._ 20, 1806.
"Forwarded to the Speaker the United States' Senate, by WILLIAM HENRY
HARRISON, Governor"--_American State Papers_ vol 1. p. 467.
MONSIEUR C.C. ROBIN, who resided in Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, and
published a volume containing the results of his observations there,
thus speaks of the condition of the slaves:
"While they are at labor, the manager, the master, or the driver has
commonly the whip in hand to strike the idle. But those of the negroes
who are judged guilty of serious faults, are punished twenty,
twenty-five, forty, fifty, or one hundred lashes. The manner of this
cruel execution is as follows: four stakes are driven down, making a
long square; the culprit is extended naked between these stakes, face
downwards; his hands and his feet are bound separately, with strong
cords, to each of the stakes, so far apart that his arms and legs,
stretched in the form of St. Andrew's cross, give the poor wretch no
chance of stirring. Then the executioner, who is ordinarily a negro,
armed with the long whip of a coachman, strikes upon the reins and
thighs. The crack of his whip resounds afar, like that of an angry
cartman beating his horses. The blood flows, the long wounds cross
each other, strips of skin are raised without softening either the
hand of the executioner or the heart of the master, who cries 'sting
him harder.'
"The reader is moved; so am I: my agitated hand refuses to trace the
bloody picture, to recount how many times the piercing cry of pain has
interrupted my silent occupations; how many times I have shuddered at
the faces of those barbarous masters, where I saw inscribed the number
of victims sacrificed to their ferocity.
"The women are subjected to these punishments as rigorously as the
men--not even pregnancy exempts them; in that case, before binding
them to the stakes, a hole is made in the ground to accommodate the
enlarged form of the victim.
"It is remarkable that the white creole women are ordinarily more
inexorable than the men. Their slow and languid gait, and the trifling
services which they impose, betoken only apathetic indolence; but
should the slave not promptly obey, should he even fail to divine the
meaning of their gestures, or looks, in an instant they are armed with
a formidable whip; it is no longer the arm which cannot sustain the
weight of a shawl or a reticule--it is no longer the form which but
feebly sustains itself. They themselves order the punishment of one of
these poor creatures, and with a dry eye see their victim bound to
four stakes; they count the blows, and raise a voice of menace, if the
arm that strikes relaxes, or if the blood does not flow in sufficient
abundance. Their sensibility changed to fury must needs feed itself
for a while on the hideous spectacle; they must, as if to revive
themselves, hear the piercing shrieks, and see the flow of fresh
blood; there are some of them who, in their frantic rage, pinch and
bite their victims.
"It is by no means wonderful that the laws designed to protect the
slave, should be little respected by the generality of such masters. I
have seen some masters pay those unfortunate people the miserable
overcoat which is their due; but others give them nothing at all, and
do not even leave them the hours and Sundays granted to them by law. I
have seen some of those barbarous masters leave them, during the
winter, in a state of revolting nudity, even contrary to their own
true interests, for they thus weaken and shorten the lives upon which
repose the whole of their own fortunes. I have seen some of those
negroes obliged to conceal their nakedness with the long moss of the
country. The sad melancholy of these wretches, depicted upon their
countenances, the flight of some, and the death of others, do not
reclaim their masters; they wreak upon those who remain, the vengeance
which they can no longer exercise upon the others."
WHITMAN MEAD, Esq. of New York, in his journal, published nearly a
quarter of a century ago, under date of
"SAVANNAH, January 28, 1817.
"To one not accustomed to such scenes as slavery presents, the
condition of the slaves is _impressively shocking._ In the course of
my walks, I was every where witness to their wretchedness. Like the
brute creatures of the north, they are driven about at the pleasure of
all who meet them: _half naked and half starved_, they drag out a
pitiful existence, apparently almost unconscious of what they suffer.
A threat accompanies every command, and a bastinado is the usual
reward of disobedience."