Torture of slaves in the United States

In one famous such case, retold in a reconsideration of the WPA Slave Narratives by historian Rebecca Onion, "In Virginia, Eudora Ramsay Richardson, the state director, refused to believe a story that Roscoe Lewis, the director of that state's Negro Writers Unit (and a professor at the Hampton Institute), recorded during an interview with ex-slave Henrietta King.

King told Lewis that she had taken some candy at age eight or nine, and that her slaveholder had punished her by holding her head under a rocking chair while she whipped her.

(King said the violence gave her 'a false face...What chilluns laugh at an' babies gits to cryin' at when dey sees me.')

"[3] A slave owner named B. T. E. Mabry of Beatie's Bluff, Madison County, Mississippi placed a runaway slave ad in 1848 that described the missing man as "has been severely whipped, which has left large raised scars or whelks in the small of his back and on his abdomen nearly as large as a persons finger".

[7][8] An interview with Andrew Boone for the WPA's Slave Narrative Collection in the 1930 matter-of-factly described the practice: "By dis time de blood sometimes would be runnin' down dere heels.

"[11] Historian Charles S. Sydnor reported that "Paul, the headwaiter of the hotel" in Grenada, Mississippi was accused of helping slaves escape north (most likely by the town's two railroad connections); after whipping him with rawhide failed to elicit a confession, his accusers escalated to something called "the hot paddle," which was "a thin piece of wood with holes bored through it, and it was applied to the naked flesh."

"[15] One account of a journey made down the Mississippi River in 1822 stated, "...a little below the red Church, at the house of a planter, whose negroes and some from the neighbouring plantations, were forgetting their sorrows in the festivity of a dance—among the merriest of them was one who had an iron collar round his neck, with two small bars projecting as high as the top of his head, one on each side, and a chain passing from the collar down each side to his knees by which he was secured to staples in the floor at night—He had attempted to run away—Some of the negroes showed me several irons of different forms, in which delinquents are confined—.

"[16]: 391 A fugitive slave named John or Jack was put in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi jail in 1850; when he was captured he had an iron collar with bell attached.

"[20] In 1820 a 21-year-old man named William was picked up by the Wilkinson County jailor "with a large iron on his right leg, and a trace chain around his neck, locked on with a padlock.

"[21] In 1834, a runaway slave, named Henry (Hal for short) was picked up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, at which time he "had on his wrists a pair of negro traders' hand cuffs broken.

[23] A runaway slave ad placed in a New Orleans newspaper in 1839 mentioned that the missing man, "WILLIAM, or BILL, a cook by trade...had a chain to his leg when he left the City Hotel, Common Street.

"[32][33] A man named Willis who had recently been transported by slave traders from Tennessee to Natchez "was branded in the hand for theft" on May 2 or 3, 1820 "and on the 6th made his escape.

[36] News reports of 1847 had it that an Englishman living at Cape Girardeau had branded a man named Reuben on the face with the words "A slave for life".

[41] A runaway slave ad published in Huntsville, Alabama in 1849 described 30-year-old Ben of Martin County, North Carolina as having "no particular marks perceptible, only the little toe of each foot is off.

[44] In June 1863, New York Times correspondent "De Soto" (William George)[45] reported witness statements describing genital burning and breast mutilation on a Black River plantation in Catahoula Parish, concluding his account "If any one, upon reading this...says he does not believe it, I have only to reply, I do.

"[46] James Robinson, a Protestant minister and a veteran of both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, described a capital punishment on the Mississippi River plantation of Calvin Smith.

One day master sent me to his plantation on an errand, and I saw a man rolling another all over the yard in a barrel, something like a rice cask, through which he had driven shingle nails.