Colonial courts punished suspected revolt organizers with lifelong bodily marks

Evidence

In colonial Virginia, trials of “Negro rebels” began to dot the counties’ records as early as the late seventeenth century. Seldom very expansive, the records of the period most often reflected official fastidiousness. In James City county on 30 May 1688, for example, the disposition of a case remanded from Westmoreland County earlier (26 April) was concluded by the General Court: “It apeard that Sam a Negro Servt to Richard Metcalfe hath several times endeavoured to promote a Negro Insurreccon in this Colony.” We shall never know what this man said to his accusers, his reasons or his achievements. We do know that Sam was ordered to be whipped around the town and fitted with an iron collar with four spriggs that he was to wear until his death. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 712

Categorization

• SHARE: The iron collar with four sprigs as a designed lifelong deterrent is a specific gruesome detail a legal-history friend would appreciate.