Were there similar laws in the US in the slave states? Of course, the whole institution is obnoxious but did slaves at least have some legal protection against bloodthirsty masters (and I do realize that having such legal protection and being able to avail oneself of it are two very different things)?
Certainly, if Hollywood is to be believed (and they’re always so accurate!) there were no laws forbidding the splitting up of families so in this respect at least the Romans under Claudius were a tad more enlightened than 19th century Southerners.
That said, whites could get away with murder in Missouri. From the preface: [INDENT] Chapter 8, “White Perpetrators, Black and Mulatto Victims,” examines white brutality against persons of color. Though whites terrorized slave men, the most frequent object of white male sadism was the black female. The batterers were not on the fringes of society; often they were prominent. One, a major in the US Army at the time he beat his slave woman to death because he believed that she had hidden misplaced keys, was subsequently promoted four times and achieved the rank of major general. [/INDENT] It’s an interesting claim: in modern days males are far more often the victim of murder than females are.
I got that via google: I don’t know much about the subject and have not read this book.
The Nazis under Hitler were a tad more enlightened than American slave owners. Before the slave trade was outlawed African slaves were so cheap it was considered economically efficient to work them to death, the average adult slave in the early days was lucky to survive 2-3 years. As prices rose it made better sense to keep them alive and breed them like livestock, like any stock you could kill them, sell them, or screw them, whatever you wanted. Robert E Lee, good ol marse Robert, didn’t whip his slaves, he paid a pro to do it for him.
This is part of Ben Simpsons story in a book called The Slave Narratives Of Texas, edited by Tyler and Murphy, from State House Press, 1997:
Massa had a great long whip platted out of rawhide…it took the hide everytime he hit a nigger. Mother, she gave out on the way, about the line of Texas. Her feet got raw and bleeding, and her legs swelled plumb out of shape. Then massa, he just took out his gun and shot her, and while she lay dying he kicked her two, three times, and said, “Damn nigger that can’t stand nothing.”
Eh? The Nazis starved their slaves to death and let them die of disease all the time, it was one of the main differences between the concentration camp systems and Stalin’s gulags.
Breeding your own slaves was also prompted by the banning of the slave trade, the import of slaves from Africa in 1808 - so the only way to acquire more was to breed them yourself, which rather discouraged casual murder.
On what would happen to a slaveholder if they did murder their slave; it was illegal even in the slave codes of the South (purposeless mistreatment was also a matter for the courts, they would confiscate and sell on);
Note that a slave trying to escape or resist his master’s orders could be killed without fear of punishment, at least in early Virginia’s slave code;
Louisiana’s history and legal system are different from all the other states so I don’t know if the following is relevant outside of Louisiana. There were some laws that protected the well-being of slaves from things like torture and straight up murdering them was illegal. Granted, not that many slaveowners had the laws enforced on them and prosecution was even more rare for abuse but it did happen.
One notorious case was that of Marie Delphine LaLaurie of New Orleans. She is notable for being an assumed serial killer and systematic torturer of her slaves. She was also quite prominent in society and wealthy but even she suffered serious consequences for pushing things way too far (although she escaped before ever being prosecuted). It is an interesting story in general but also helps highlight the fact that you couldn’t just do absolutely anything you wanted to slaves without legal and social repercussions at least in Louisiana.
This varies tremendously from time to time, from place to place, and between theory and practice. In general, AFAIK, it was never legal to just randomly shoot a slave dead without provocation. However, legal prohibitions on slaves serving as witnesses meant that slaves on isolated plantations were often effectively without legal protection at all. In other cases, slaves dying as a result of “correction” was acceptable–the fig leaf was you didn’t mean to beat him* to death*, these things just happen. Furthermore, in times where there was active fear of a slave rebellion, almost any act of brutality was acceptable as a necessary evil. And even when none of those “mitigating factors” applied, people were reluctant to serve as witnesses against a white person in favor of a slave–however repulsive they may have found the actual murderer (and in many times and places, there was meaningful social pressure not to murder slaves, nor be “excessively” brutal), there was still a pretty strong sense of racial loyalty that prevented white people from throwing each other the bus, however deserved it might have been.
On Louisiana, the Black Code of 1806 sets out more details in the slave-master relationship, including being obligated to feed slaves and provide some care for sick slaves, among other things.
That is very interesting. I am from Louisiana and from a very long line of slave-owners (over 250 years sustained) although none were in Louisiana at the time. It sounds like Louisiana was downright progressive in its protection of slave welfare based on that act although I have never read how often they were ever actually enforced. Some of those monetary fines for violations were fairly harsh for the time. Louisiana is an interesting case because it always had a unique legal system from the other states as well as a large free black population. It also had a small but significant subset of wealthy free blacks that owned slaves themselves.
I do know that my own Great-X grandfather was killed by his slave in Mississippi in the early 1860’s. He was hacked to pieces. His slave was obviously executed for the crime as well. That was always a threat and a reason to treat your slaves at least somewhat well. Regardless of your views on the institution or humanity in general, it is just common sense to know that you can’t torture and randomly kill members of a population that live right next to you without it causing a significant threat to your own life and that of your family. They were people that were very fit from doing manual labor all day with friends and family that made up the other slaves on a given plantation or household. After a certain point, they have nothing left to lose.
BTW, you do not need to add ‘In the South’ to the thread title unless that is what you are specifically interested in. Slavery was a general American institution for about 150 - 200 years although people tend to forget that. Slavery was once legal in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and all of the other original colonies. Boston and Newport, RI were once among the major slave trading ports and auction markets. It is true that slavery died out in the North earlier than it did in the South but a comprehensive question of this type needs to include all states where slavery was once legal.
[INDENT]And if any slave resist his master, or owner, or any other person, by his or her order, correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony; but the master, owner, and every such other person so giving correction, shall be free and acquit of all punishment accusation for the same, as if such accident had never happened. [/INDENT]
The original 1669 statute provided the logic:
[INDENT]…but the master (or that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquit from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that propensed malice (which alone makes murther Felony) should induce any man to destroy his own estate. [/INDENT]
Cite: Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process Race and the American Legal Process, Volume II by
A. Leon Higginbotham , p. 50-51.
Not really. The quality of medical care is covered in The Gulag Archipelago, etc., and was less than one would get in Belsen — and as for starving to death what the hell do you think most zeks died from ? The difference between the twin systems was minimal. Except the soviets were more arbitrary.
Neither the Road of Bones nor the Belomor Canal were built with kindness.
[ However what most people forget when self-righteously excoriating the nazis and soviets was that previous work-gangs whether under 19th century laissez-faire capitalism ( the navvys in Britain notably ) or other systems such as Ancient Egypt, weren’t treated much much better. All ancestors were as brutal as any one anywhere.]
And with regard to the OP, those were Imperial Regulations: under the Republic one could kill a slave at will. One chap fed a slave to the fishes for a fault, presumably lampreys; whilst if a master were killed, all his slaves were executed for not preventing it.
I have read that it was socially unacceptable. At the very least, destroying your own property would mark you as a man of limited wisdom, self discipline, and intelligence.
I wonder how strong this was, I think most people anywhere would think that a person who brutalized a valuable animal they owned for fun or to take out frustrations is just fucking crazy and best avoided.
So even if society viewed slaves as animals, it would still mark such an owner as someone to be avoided.
That’s not what that says. That says that, if a master punishes a slave and the punishment happens to him, the master didn’t commit murder, but it doesn’t say anything about if the master intends to kill the slave.
Now, in practice, that might have meant impunity, because it lets any slaveholder say, “Oh, I didn’t mean to kill him, I was just punishing him and it happened”, but it seems like there’s a legal distinction.
Slavers had the right to punish/torture a slave forany and no reason at allto any degree at all (as the above law states upto and including death). By any definition, that’s killing with impunity.
The response to LaLaurie is interesting; first the law took interest then a mob drove her out of New Orleans.
Remember that the collective nightmare of southern slave owners was Toussaint Louverture, whose revolution in Saint-Domingue burnt plantations, killed the white slave masters and abolished slavery. Few things are as likely to incite rebellion as murder on a whim. Hence not only seen as best avoided, but legislated against and rouser of anger as someone who was stirring the pot and making life difficult for other slave owners.
The difference is most starkly emphasised in the treatment of enemy POWs; the Soviets used German POWs as forced labour. Out of about 3,300,000, at least 363,000 died though there are higher estimates. German treatment by contrast resulted in about 60% fatality rates in Soviet POWs. Don’t get me wrong, neither was a picnic, but the Soviets at least realised dead men don’t work - the Nazis didn’t care.
I hope nobody thinks that the navvys were slaves or some sort of bonded labour. Probably as independent-minded and stroppy a bunch of workers as you’d ever meet.
I wonder how strong it was as well. I don’t doubt that it existed. But I suspect such events could be and were explained away. I’ll repeat my citation from upthread and add emphasis: [INDENT]Though whites terrorized slave men, the most frequent object of white male sadism was the black female. The batterers were not on the fringes of society; often they were prominent. One, a major in the US Army at the time he beat his slave woman to death because he believed that she had hidden misplaced keys, was subsequently promoted four times and achieved the rank of major general. [/INDENT] So at least in Missouri, a state with above average treatment of slaves, murdering a slave wasn’t a substantial barrier to social advancement.
During the 1700s, there were at least 2 whites hung for killing slaves, though one of them was punished for killing the slave of another person. Wikipedia footnote: Records indicate at least two earlier incidents. On 23 November 1739, in Williamsburg, Virginia, two white men, Charles Quin and David White, were hanged for the murder of another white man’s black slave; and on 21 April 1775, the Fredericksburg newspaper, the Virginia Gazette reported that William Pitman had been hanged for the murder of his own black slave.Blacks in Colonial America, p101, Oscar Reiss, McFarland & Company, 1997; Virginia Gazette, 21 April 1775, University of Mary Washington Department of Historic Preservation archives