The social condition of the slaves cannot be fully understood without
some reference to the revolting facts connected with plantation
management. It is well to know what base and ingenious cruelties could
be tolerated by public opinion, and endured by the slaves without
exciting continual insurrections. Wonder at this sustained patience of
the blacks passes into rage and indignation long before the student of
this epoch reaches the eventual outbreaks of 1791: it seems as if a just
instinct of manhood should have more promptly doomed these houses of
iniquity, and handed them over to a midnight vengeance. And there
results a kind of disappointment from the discovery, that, when the
blacks finally began to burn and slaughter, they were not impelled by
the desire of liberty or the recollection of great crimes, but were
blind agents of a complicated situation. It is only in the remote
historical sense that Slavery provoked Insurrection. The first great
night of horror in San Domingo rose from circumstances that were not
explicitly chargeable to the absence of freedom or to the outrages of
the slaveholder. But if these things had not fuelled the lighted torches
and whetted the blades when grasped, it would have been strange and
monstrous indeed. Stranger still would it have been, if the flames of
that first night had not kindled in the nobler breasts among that
unchained multitude a determination never to endure plantation ferocity
again. The legitimate cause for rebelling then took the helm and guided
the rest of the story into dignity.
The frequency of enfranchisement might mislead us into expecting that
the colonial system of slavery was tempered with humanity. It was rather
like that monarchy which the wit described as being "tempered by
assassination." The mulatto was by no means a proof that mercy and
justice regulated the plantation life. His enfranchisement reacted
cruelly upon the negro. It seemed as if the recognition of one domestic
sentiment hurt the master's feelings; the damage to his organization
broke out against the lower race in anger. The connections between black
and white offered no protection to the former, nor amelioration of her
lot. Indeed, the overseer, who desired always to be on good terms with
the agent or the proprietor of a plantation, was more severe towards the
unhappy object of his passion than to the other women, for fear of
incurring reproach or suspicion. When he became the owner of slaves, his
emancipating humor was no guaranty that they would receive a salutary
and benignant treatment.
When a Frenchman undertakes to be cruel, he acts with great _esprit_.
There is spectacular ingenuity in the atrocities which he invents, and
even his ungovernable bursts of rage instinctively aim a _coup de
théâtre_ at his victim. The negro is sometimes bloodthirsty, and when he
is excited he will quaff at the opened vein; but he never saves up a man
for deliberate enjoyment of his sufferings. When the wild orgy becomes
sated, and the cause of it has been once liquidated, there is no further
danger from this disposition. But a French colonist, whether smiling or
sombre, was always disposed to be tormenting. The ownership of slaves
unmasked this tendency of a race which at home, in the streets of Paris
and the court-yard of the Abbaye and La Force, proved its ferocity and
simple thirst for blood. The story of the Princess Lamballe's death and
disfiguration shows the broad Gallic fancy which the sight of blood can
pique into action. But the every-day life of many plantations surpassed,
in minuteness and striking refinement of tormenting, all that the
_sans-culotte_ ever dared or the savage ever dreamed.
Let a few cases be found sufficient to enlighten the reader upon this
point. They are specimens from a list of horrors which eye-witnesses,
inhabitants of the island, have preserved; and many of them, being found
in more than one authority, French as well as colored, are to be
regarded as current and unquestionable facts.
The ordinary brutalities of slaveholding were rendered more acute by
this Creole temper. Whippings were carried to the point of death, for
the slave-vessel was always at the wharf to furnish short lives upon
long credit; starving was a common cure for obstinacy, brine and
red-pepper were liberally sprinkled upon quivering backs. Economy was
never a virtue of this profuse island. Lives were _sauce piquante_ to
luxury.
The incarceration of slaves who had marooned, stolen vegetables, or
refused to work, had some features novel to the Bastille and the
Inquisition. A man would be let down into a stone case or cylinder just
large enough to receive his body: potted in this way, he remained till
the overseer considered that he had improved. Sometimes he was left too
long, and was found spoiled; for this mode of punishment soon ended a
man, because he could not move a limb or change his attitude. Dungeons
were constructed with iron rings so disposed along the wall that a man
was held in a sitting posture with nothing to sit upon but sharpened
stick: he was soon obliged to try it, and so oscillated between the two
tortures. Other cells were furnished with cases, of the size of a man,
that could be hermetically sealed: these were for suffocation. The
floors of some were kept submerged with a foot or two of water: the
negroes who came out of them were frequently crippled for life by the
dampness and cold. Iron cages, collars, and iron masks, clogs, fetters,
and thumb-screws were found upon numerous plantations, among the ruins
of the dungeons.
The _quatre piquet_ was a favorite style of flogging. Each limb of the
victim was stretched to the stake of a frame which was capable of more
or less distention; around the middle went an iron circle which
prevented every motion. In this position he received his modicum of
lashes, every muscle swollen and distended, till the blood dripped from
the machine. After he was untied, the overseer dressed the wounds,
according to fancy, with pickled pimento, pepper, hot coals, boiling oil
or lard, sealing-wax, or gunpowder. Sometimes hot irons stanched the
flow of blood.
M. Frossard[26] is authority for the story of a planter who administered
a hundred lashes to a negro who had broken a hoe-handle, then strewing
gunpowder in the furrows of the flesh, amused himself with setting the
trains on fire.
M. de Crévecoeur put a negro who had killed an inhuman overseer into
an iron cage, so confined that the birds could have free access to him.
They fed daily upon the unfortunate man; his eyes were carried off, his
jaws laid bare, his arms torn to pieces, clouds of insects covered the
lacerated body and regaled upon his blood.
Another planter, attests M. Frossard, after having lived several years
with a negress, deserted her for another, and wished to force her to
become the slave of her rival. Not being able to endure this
humiliation, she besought him to sell her. But the irritated Frenchman,
after inflicting various preparatory punishments, buried her alive, with
her head above ground, which he kept wet with _eau sucrée_ till the
insects had destroyed her.
How piteous is the reflection that the slaves made a point of honor of
preserving their backs free from scars,--so that the lash inflicted a
double wound at every stroke!
There was a planter who kept an iron box pierced with holes, into which
the slaves were put for trivial offences, and moved towards a hot fire,
till the torment threatened to destroy life. He considered this
punishment preferable to whipping, because it did not suspend the
slave's labors for so long a time.
"What rascally sugar!" said Caradeux to his foreman; "the next time you
turn out the like, I will have you buried alive;--you know me." The
occasion came soon after, and the black was thrown into a dungeon.
Caradeux, says Malenfant, did not really wish to lose his black, yet
wished to preserve his character for severity. He invited a dozen ladies
to dinner, and during the repast informed them that he meant to execute
his foreman, and they should see the thing done. This was not an unusual
sight for ladies to witness: the Roman women never were more eager for
the agonies of the Coliseum. But on this occasion they demurred, and
asked pardon for the black. "Very well," said Caradeux; "remain at
table, and when you see me take out my handkerchief; run and solicit his
life." After the dessert, Caradeux repaired to the court, where the
negro had been obliged to dig his own grave and to get into it, which he
did with singing. The earth was thrown around him till the head only
appeared. Caradeux pulls out his handkerchief; the ladies run, throw
themselves at his feet; after much feigned reluctance, he exclaims,--
"I pardon you at the solicitation of these ladies."