bellion and defiance,
but yet, visibly, an _ever-opposing will_. He sees it in the
dissatisfied look, and reluctant air and unwilling movement; the
constrained strokes of labor, the drawling tones, the slow hearing,
the feigned stupidity, the sham pains and sickness, the short memory;
and he _feels_ it every hour, in innumerable forms, frustrating his
designs by a ceaseless though perhaps invisible countermining. This
unceasing opposition to the will of its 'owner,' on the part of his
rational 'property,' is to the slaveholder as the hot iron to the
nerve. He raves under it, and storms, and gnashes, and smites; but the
more he smites, the hotter it gets, and the more it burns him.
Further, this opposition of the slave's will to his owner's, not only
excites him to severity, that he may gratify his rage, but makes it
necessary for him to use violence in breaking down this
resistance--thus subjecting the slave to additional tortures. There is
another inducement to cruel inflictions upon the slave, and a
necessity for it, which does not exist in the case of brutes.
Offenders must be made an example to others, to strike them with
terror. If a slave runs away and is caught, his master flogs him with
terrible severity, not merely to gratify his resentment, and to keep
him from running away again, but as a warning to others. So in every
case of disobedience, neglect, stubbornness, unfaithfulness,
indolence, insolence, theft, feigned sickness, when his directions are
forgotten, or slighted, or supposed to be, or his wishes crossed, or
his property injured, or left exposed, or his work ill-executed, the
master is tempted to inflict cruelties, not merely to wreak his own
vengeance upon him, and to make the slave more circumspect in future,
but to sustain his authority over the other slaves, to restrain them
from like practices, and to preserve his own property.
A multitude of facts, illustrating the position that slaveholders
treat their slaves _worse_ than they do their cattle, will occur to
all who are familiar with slavery. When cattle break through their
owners' inclosures and escape, if found, they are driven back and
fastened in again; and even slaveholders would execrate as a wretch,
the man who should tie them up, and bruise and lacerate them for
straying away; but when _slaves_ that have escaped are caught, they
are flogged with the most terrible severity. When herds of cattle are
driven to market, they are suffered to
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