Slave punishment functioned as public spectacle aimed at other slaves

Evidence

The most common punishment was whipping, which according to the Code Noir was the only punishment allowed on plantations. Masters or drivers tied the hands and legs of the enslaved to posts stuck in the ground, or else tied them to a ladder or hung them by their hands from a post. Whippings were used as torture and as spectacle. “Slow punishments make a greater impression than quick or violent ones,” wrote one wealthy plantation owner to his managers. Rather than fifty lashes “administered in five minutes,” he recommended “twenty-five lashes of the whip administered in a quarter of an hour, interrupted at intervals to hear the cause which the unfortunates always plead in their defense, and resumed again, continuing in this fashion for two or three times,” as being “far more likely to make an impression.” The message was aimed as much at the other slaves, who were forced to watch, as at the victim. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 181

Categorization

• DEFINE: Whipping was the one officially permitted punishment, establishing the baseline of the violence that structured the whole system.