the first, when, being only co-proprietor of the slave, his co-proprietor demands
the sale, in order to make partition of the property; second, when the master
shall be CONVICTED of cruel treatment of his slave, AND THE JUDGE SHALL
DEEM IT PROPER TO PRONOUNCE, besides the penalty established for such cases,
that the slave shall be sold at public auction, in order to place him out of the
reach of the power which his master has abused.
-- The question for a jury to determine in this case is, What is
cruel treatment of a slave? Now, if all these barbarities which
have been sanctioned by the legislative Acts which we have
quoted are not held to be cruel treatment, the question is, What
is cruel treatment of a slave?
Everything that fiendish barbarity could desire can be effected
under the protection of the law of South Carolina, which, as we
have just shown, exists also in Louisiana. It is true the law
restrains from some particular forms of cruelty. If any person
has a mind to scald or burn his slave--and it seems, by the
statute, that there have been such people--these statutes merely
provide that he shall do it in decent privacy; for, as the very
keystone of Southern jurisprudence is the rejection of coloured,
testimony, such an outrage, if perpetrated most deliberately in
the presence of hundreds of slaves, could not be proved upon
the master.
It is to be supposed that the fiendish people whom such
statutes have in view will generally have enough of common
sense not to perform it in the presence of white witnesses, since
this simple act of prudence will render them entirely safe in
doing whatever they have a mind to. We are told, it is true,
as we have been reminded by our friend in the newspaper before
quoted, that in Louisiana the deficiency caused by the rejection
of negro testimony is supplied by the following most remarkable
provision of the Code Noir:--
If any slave be mutilated, beaten, or ill-treated, contrary to the true intent and
meaning of this section, when no one shall be present, in such case the owner or
other person having the charge or management of said slave thus mutilated, shall
be deemed responsible and guilty of the said offence, and shall be prosecuted
without further evidence, unless the said owner, or other person so as aforesaid,
can prove the contrary by means of good and sufficient evidence, or can clear
himself by his own oath, which said oath every Court under the cognizance of
which such offence shall have been examined and tried is by this Act authorised
to administer.
-- Would one have supposed that sensible people could ever pub-
lish as a law such a specimen of utter legislative nonsense--so
ridiculous on the very face of it!
The object is to bring to justice those fiendish people who
burn, scald, mutilate, &c. How is this done? Why, it is en-
acted that the fact of finding the slave in this condition shall be
held presumption against the owner or overseer, unless--unless
what? Why, unless he will prove to the contrary--or swear to
the contrary, it is no matter which--either will answer the pur-
pose. The question is, If a man is bad enough to do these things,
will he not be bad enough to swear falsely? As if men who are
the incarnation of cruelty, as supposed by the deeds in question,
would not have sufficient intrepidity of conscience to compass a
false oath!
What was this law ever made for? Can any one imagine?
Upon this whole subject we may quote the language of Judge
Stroud, who thus sums up the whole amount of the protective
laws for the slave in the United States of America:--
Upon a fair review of what has been written on the subject of this proposition,
the result is found to be--that the master's power to inflict corporal punishment
to any extent, short of life and limb, is fully sanctioned by law, in all the slave-
holding States; that the master, in at least two States, is expressly protected in
may with entire impunity, in the same States, load his slave with irons, or sub-
ject him to perpetual imprisonment, whenever he may so choose; that, for cruelly
scalding, wilfully cutting out the tongue, putting out an eye, and for any other
dismemberment, if proved, a fine of one hundred pounds currency only is incurred
in South Carolina; that, though in all the States the wilful, deliberate, and mali-
cious murder of the slave is now directed to be punished with death, yet, as in
the case of a white offender, none except whites can give evidence, a conviction
can seldom, if ever, take place.
-- One very singular antithesis of two laws of Louisiana will still
further show that deadness of public sentiment on cruelty to the
slave which is an inseparable attendant on the system. It will
be recollected that the remarkable protective law of South Caro-
lina, with respect to scalding, burning, cutting out the tongue,
and putting out the eye of the slave, has been substantially en-
acted in Louisiana; and that the penalty for a man's doing these
things there, if he has not sense enough to do it privately, is not
more than five hundred dollars.
Now, compare this other statute of Louisiana (Rev. Stat. 1852,
p. 552, § 151):--
If any person or persons, &c., shall cut or break any iron chain or collar,
Stroud, p. 41.
which any master of slaves shall have used, in order to prevent
the running away or escape of any such slave or slaves, such per-
son or persons so offending shall, on conviction, &c., be fined not less than two
hundred dollars, nor exceeding one thousand dollars; and suffer imprisonment
for a term not exceeding two years, nor less than six months.
-- Some Englishmen may naturally ask, “What is this iron
collar which the Legislature have thought worthy of being pro-
tected by a special Act?” On this subject will be presented the
testimony of an unimpeachable witness, Miss Sarah M. Grimké,
a personal friend of the author. “Miss Grimké is a daughter
of the late Judge Grimké, of the Supreme Court of South Caro-
lina, and sister of the late Hon. Thomas S. Grimké.” She is
now a member of the Society of Friends, and resides in Bell-
ville, New Jersey. The statement given is of a kind that its
author did not mean to give, nor wish to give, and never would
have given, had it not been made necessary to illustrate this
passage in the slave-law. The account occurs in a statement
which Miss Grimké furnished to her brother-in-law, Mr. Weld,
and has been before the public ever since 1839, in his work
entitled Slavery as It is, p. 22.
A handsome mulatto woman, about eighteen or twenty years of age, whose in-
dependent spirit could not brook the degradation of slavery, was in the habit of
running away: for this offence she had been repeatedly sent by her master and
mistress to be whipped by the keeper of the Charleston workhouse. This had
been done with such inhuman severity as t
o lacerate her back in a most shocking
manner; a finger could not be laid between the cuts. But the love of liberty
was too strong to be annihilated by torture; and, as a last resort, she was whipped
at several different times, and kept a close prisoner. A heavy iron collar, with
three long prongs projecting from it, was placed round her neck, and a strong and
sound front tooth was extracted, to serve as a mark to describe her, in case of
escape. Her sufferings at this time were agonizing; she could lie in no position
but on her back, which was sore from scourgings, as I can testify from personal
inspection; and her only place of rest was the floor, on a blanket. These out-
rages were committed in a family where the mistress daily read the Scriptures, and
assembled her children for family worship. She was accounted, and was really, so
far as alms-giving was concerned, a charitable woman, and tender-hearted to the
poor; and yet this suffering slave, who was the seamstress of the family, was con-
tinually in her presence, sitting in her chamber to sew, or engaged in her other
household work, with her lacerated and bleeding back, her mutilated mouth, and
heavy iron collar, without, so far as appeared, exciting any feelings of compassion.
This iron collar the author has often heard of from sources
equally authentic.* That one will meet with it every day in
walking the streets, is not probable; but that it must have been
used with some great degree of frequency, is evident from the
fact of a law being thought necessary to protect it. But look at
the penalty of the two protective laws! The fiendish cruelties
described in the Act of South Carolina cost the perpetrator not
more than five hundred dollars, if he does them before white
people. The act of humanity costs from two hundred to one
thousand dollars, and imprisonment from six months to two
years, according to discretion of Court! What public sentiment
was it which made these laws?
* The iron collar was also in vogue in North Carolina, as the following ex-
tract from the statute-book will show. The wearers of this article of apparel
certainly have some reason to complain of the “tyranny of fashion.”
“When the keeper of the said public jail shall, by direction of such Court as
aforesaid, let out any negro or runaway to hire, to any person or persons whom-
soever, the said keeper shall, at the time of his delivery, cause an iron collar to
be put on the neck of such negro or runaway, with the letters P. G. stamped
thereon; and thereafter the said keeper shall not be answerable for any escape of
the said negro or runaway.”
--
CHAPTER VI.
PROTECTIVE ACTS WITH REGARD TO FOOD AND RAIMENT,
LABOUR, ETC.
Illustrative Drama of Tom v. Legree, under the Law of South Carolina.--
Separation of Parent and Child.
Having finished the consideration of the laws which protect
the life and limb of the slave, the reader may feel a curiosity to
know something of the provisions by which he is protected in
regard to food and clothing, and from the exactions of excessive
labour. It is true, there are multitudes of men in the Northern
States who would say, at once, that such enactments, on the
very face of them, must be superfluous and absurd. “What!”
they say, “are not the slaves property? and is it likely that any
man will impair the market value of his own property by not
giving them sufficient food or clothing, or by overworking
them?” This process of reasoning appears to have been less
convincing to the legislators of Southern States than to gen-
tlemen generally at the North; since, as Judge Taylor says,
Wheeler, p. 220. State v. Sue, Cameron & Norwood's C. Rep. 54.
“the Act of 1786 (Iredell's Revisal, p. 588) does,
in the preamble, recognise the fact, that many persons, by cruel treatment of their slaves, cause
them to commit crimes for which they are exe-
cuted; and the judge further explains this
language, by saying, “The cruel treatment here alluded to must
consist in withholding from them the necessaries of life; and
the crimes thus resulting are such as are necessary to furnish
them with food and raiment.”
The State of South Carolina, in the Act of 1740 (see Stroud's
Sketch, p. 28), had a section with the following language in its
preamble:--
Whereas many owners of slaves, and others who have the care, management,
Stroud, p. 29.
and overseeing of slaves, do confine them so closely to hard labour
that they have not sufficient time for natural rest;--
and the law goes on to enact that the slave shall not work more
than fifteen hours a day in summer, and fourteen in winter.
Judge Stroud makes it appear that in three of the slave States
the time allotted for work to convicts in prison, whose punish-
ment is to consist in hard labour, cannot exceed ten hours, even
in the summer months. This was the protective Act of South Carolina, designed to
reform the abusive practices of masters who confined their slaves
so closely that they had not time for natural rest! What sort
of habits of thought do these humane provisions show, in the
makers of them? In order to protect the slave from what they
consider undue exaction, they humanely provide that he shall be
obliged to work only four or five hours longer than the convicts
in the prison of the neighbouring State! In the Island of
Jamaica, besides many holidays which were accorded by law to
the slave, ten hours a day was the extent to which he was
compelled by law ordinarily to work.--See Stroud, p. 29.
With regard to protective Acts concerning food and clothing,
Judge Stroud gives the following example from the legislation of
South Carolina. The author gives it as quoted by Stroud,
p. 32.
In case any person, &c., who shall be the owner or who shall have the care,
government, or charge of any slave or slaves, shall deny, neglect, or refuse to allow
such slave or slaves, &c., sufficient clothing, covering, or food, it shall and may be
lawful for any person or persons, on behalf of such slave or slaves, to make
complaint to the next neighbouring justice in the parish where such slave or slaves
live, or are usually employed, * * * and the said justice shall summon the
party against whom such complaint shall be made, and shall inquire of, hear, and
determine the same; and if the said justice shall find the said complaint to be
true, or that such person will not exculpate or clear himself from the charge, by
his or her own oath, which such person shall be at liberty to do in all cases where
positive proof is not given of the offence, such justice shall and may make such
orders upon the same, for the relief of such slave or slaves, as he in his dis-
cretion shall think fit; and shall and may set and impose a fine or penalty on
any person who shall offend in the premises, in any sum not exceeding twenty
pounds current money, for each offence.
-- A similar law obtains in Louisiana.--(Rev. Stat. 1852,
p. 557, § 166.)
; Now, would not anybody think, from the virtuous solemnity
and gravity of this Act, that it was intended in some way to
amount to something? Let us give a little sketch, to show how
much it does amount to. Angelina Grimké Weld, sister to
Sarah Grimké, before quoted, gives the following account of the
situation of slaves on plantations:*
And here let me say, that the treatment of plantation slaves cannot be fully
known, except by the poor sufferers themselves, and their drivers and overseers.
In a multitude of instances, even the master can know very little of the actual
condition of his own field-slaves, and his wife and daughters far less. A few facts
concerning my own family will show this. Our permanent residence was in
Charleston; our country seat (Bellemont) was two hundred miles distant, in the
north-western part of the State, where, for some years, our family spent a few
months annually. Our plantation was three miles from this family mansion.
There all the field-slaves lived and worked. Occasionally--once a month, perhaps
--some of the family would ride over to the plantation; but I never visited the
fields where the slaves were at work, and knew almost nothing of their condition;
but this I do know, that the overseers who had charge of them were generally
unprincipled and intemperate men. But I rejoice to know that the general treat-
ment of slaves in that region of country was far milder than on the plantations in
the lower country.
Throughout all the eastern and middle portions of the State, the planters very
rarely reside permanently on their plantations. They have almost invariably two residences, and spend less than half the year on their estates. Even while spending
a few months on them, politics, field-sports, races, speculations, journeys, visits,
company, literary pursuits, &c., absorb so much of their time, that they must, to a
considerable extent, take the condition of their slaves on trust, from the reports
of their overseers. I make this statement, because these slaveholders (the
wealthier class) are, I believe, almost the only ones who visit the North with
their families; and Northern opinions of slavery are based chiefly on their