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Introduction

In 1830s, slavery primarily dominated the South, where it took place in various forms. African Americans became enslaved on large plantations, small farms, cities, inside homes, towns, fields, and transportation and industry. Slavery is the one issue that scarred America and had long-term effects. Before the start of the Civil War, almost 4 million black slaves were enslaved in the American South. Modern scholars collected evidence that indicates that few slaves enjoyed their lives and accepted their fate of lack of freedom. The treatment of slaves in the South was characterized by rape and sexual abuse, denied education, and punishments such as whippings. Slave families tended to be split up when one or more members of the family were sold off and they would usually never hear from or see each other again. Prior to the American civil war, proponents of slavery maintained that slavery was a necessary good for both enslaved and enslavers. They defended enslavement based on its social and economic benefits. Some proponents insisted that majority of the slaves were content with their fate. However, J. Sella Martin, an African American abolitionist, countered the notion noting that content was a psychological defense mechanism to the dehumanizing inhumanness of having to watch spouses and daughters being sold off and raped. This essay discusses the extent to which southern slavery was maintained by violence and emotional, sexual, and physical abuse.

Punishment and Abuse

Slave owners administered punishment to their slaves by shackling, whipping, beating, hanging, burning, branding, mutilation, rape, and even imprisonment. Punishment was administered as a response to perceived infractions or disobedience. At times, slaves were subjected to abuse to re-assert their owners/masters’ dominance over them. Pregnancy was not a deterrence to punishment and there were methods used to administer the punishment without harming the unborn child (Livesey, 374). Slave owners often dug a huge hole for the woman to lie down and continue with the lashings. Slave overseers were tasked with punishing and whipping slaves. Some slaves were determined never to allow a white man to beat them, and if they resisted, that would be enough ground to whip them. A former slave that witnessed women getting whipped said that they would pray and scream, but some did not make a single sound. The slaves back seemed to have gotten used to the whip.

Slaves used to have a metal collar around their necks. The collars were heavy and thick with protruding spikes that made it difficult for them to work or rest. Slaves were also branded for identification purposes during the colonial era, but by the 19th century, it was used as means of punishment. Other common means of punishment included removal of teeth or front teeth, castration, and ear amputation. The strategies were used until the 1830s. These strategies were used to identify them in case they ran away. Additionally, most of them bore wounds from dog bites and shotguns that were inflicted by their captors. Slaves were often punished for various reasons, including breaking laws such as running away, working slowly, insubordination, impudence, leaving the farm without permission, or absolutely no reason to assert the master’s masculinity or dominance. Slave punishment was based on plantations, decentralized, and crafted in such a way so as not to diminish their worth as laborers. White masters punished slaves in public to set an example. At times men and women were punished separately. The Virginia Committee report of 1789 of the Privy Council notes that men would be shackled while women and girls would be left free.

Sexual Abuse and Rape

It was within the law for slave owners to use their slaves as sexual objects. As a result, slavery in the Southern states and across the states included a wide range of sexual abuse and rape. Forced pregnancies were common for the purpose of the sale of children. Most slaves fought against sexual attacks and some lost their life resisting them; others were left with physical and psychological scars. In the South, rape laws reflected a clear case of race-double standard. In the colonial period, black men found guilty of rape would be punished through castration and the punishment was changed to death in the Antebellum Period (Shuster, Hasan, and David, 46). On the other hand, white men were permitted by law to rape their female slaves. Boys and men also got sexually abused by their masters. Although historians started covering sexual abuse during slavery, few focused on the sexual assault of men as they assumed that only female slaves were victimized. Boys and men were forced into sexual activities that they did not have an interest in. The main problem with documenting men’s abuse was that they could not get pregnant and bear mixed-race children.

Slave mistreatment included sexual abuse and rape of women. Sexual abuse of slave had deep roots in the slave culture and the way it viewed women as enslaved property. Racial purity was behind the culture of sexual relations between black women and white women in the South, the same culture that protected sexual relations between black women and white men. What resulted were mixed-race children. A lot of women were subjected to rape and had less power over their families. Free women, children, men, and indentured servants were not immune of sexual abuse from their owners and masters. Children, particularly young girls, were raped by their masters, relatives and their master’s children. Similarly, slave women and indentured servants were abused. Because they did not have control over what they did or where they wanted, masters would manipulate them into risky situations such as making them sleep in the master’s bedroom for service availability or pushing them into dark fields. White and free women were permitted to legally charge their offenders for rape, but enslaved women did not have a legal recourse since their owners owned their bodies.

The Reaction of Slaves to Violence and Abuse

Enslaved people reacted differently to the violence and abuse meted to them by their masters. While some resisted abuse, others would not flinch or make a sound while being flogged. Physical punishments were extremely violent at times, which resulted in the refusal of sexual advances from masters by the women slaves. The responses of enslaved women to sexual advances of white masters varied. Some resisted sexual advances and fought back irrespective of the penalty they would get for their actions. Other women acquiesced as an attempt of self-preservation. In general, the sheer volume of survival testimony about personal, private, and stressful phenomena was a testament to the notion of abuse by white men in various positions being rife. A WPA respondent named Feaster that was enslaved in South Caroline described his slave overseer as a wicked man that took advantage of all slaves (Reece, 20). Enslaved women that were sexually abused were left pregnant and assaulted by their overseers and enslavers. The trauma they went through only worsened as they knew they had little capacity to keep themselves from harm’s way in the future.

The enslaved people saw long, strenuous, and monotonous days engulfed with a threat of violence. Slaves regularly tried to resist enslavement. On rare occasions, some slaves went to extreme levels of attempting permanent escape, suicide, or even killing their masters. However, most slaves resulted in more less dangerous and subtle strategies of resistance. Because only dangerous and extreme measures could render laves free, women slaves in antebellum frequently took part in numerous resistance forms which operated efficiently in the system on a day-to-day basis. The resistance of enslaved women took place on a spectrum that ranged from outright resistance to reproductive resistance to subtle resistance like cultural defiance (West and Erin, 1007). The participation of women in various resistance forms were linked with immediate environments through field and housework. Men and not women were the main organizers of revolts, although they had strong ripple effects on the women. The revolts were rife during colonial times prior to the establishment of infrastructure and state laws designed to increase the control of white people over enslaved people.

Conclusion

In closing, the experiences of the enslaved population, including men, women, and children in the Southern States of America, was a demonizing and horrifying experience. Slavery robbed men slaves of wives, children, a home, hard-earned earning, friends, knowledge, a society, and everything else that makes life more desirable. Slaves suffered various forms of punishment, including rape, hanging, shackling, whipping, burning, rape, forced pregnancies, and imprisonment. To make the matter worse, being pregnant was not an excuse for escaping punishments as masters had devised a way of administering punishment without causing the baby harm. While some slaves could take the torture, some of them caved in and resulted to suicide or ran away. Some slaves resisted violence and sexual abuse although doing so was considered insubordinate and would attract more punishment.

Works Cited

Livesey, Andrea. “Conceived in violence: enslaved mothers and children born of rape in nineteenth-century Louisiana.” Slavery & Abolition 38.2 (2017): 373-391.

Reece, Robert L. “Genesis of US colorism and skin tone stratification: Slavery, freedom, and mulatto-Black occupational inequality in the late 19th century.” The Review of Black Political Economy 45.1 (2018): 3-21.

Shuster, Kate, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and David W. Blight. “Teaching hard history: American slavery.” (2018).

West, Emily, and Erin Shearer. “Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: the lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States.” Women’s History Review 27.6 (2018): 1006-1020.