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Punishments were a matter of public or royal law, where the disciplinary power over slaves could be considered more severe than that for domestic servants yet less severe than that for soldiers. Masters could only chain and whip slaves "when they believe that their slaves deserved it" and cannot, at will, torture their slaves, or put them to death.
His essay entitled, "The Method of Procuring Slaves on the Coast of Africa; with an account of their sufferings on the voyage, and cruel treatment in the West Indies", describes the iron bit as having "a flat iron which goes into the mouth, and so effectually keeps down the tongue, that nothing can be swallowed, not even the saliva, a passage ...
The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of enslaved Africans [1] were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods (first side of the triangle), which were then traded for slaves with rulers of African states ...
[19] The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan holds a hooked collar used on slaves; "Slaves known for running away might have had to wear an iron collar like this, for punishment or to prevent them from running away again. The hooks caught on bushes or tree limbs, causing a violent jerking to the individual's head and neck."
Punishment and killing of slaves: Slave codes regulated how slaves could be punished, usually going so far as to apply no penalty for accidentally killing a slave while punishing them. [9] Later laws began to apply restrictions on this, but slave-owners were still rarely punished for killing their slaves. [ 10 ]
Punishment was often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was performed to re-assert the dominance of the enslaver (or overseer) over the enslaved person. [14] Pregnancy was not a barrier to punishment; methods were devised to administer lashings without harming the baby.
Use of the term "cruel and unusual punishments", derived from the English Bill of Rights might have also been influenced by its inclusion in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution some ten years previously, whose text was well known to English-speaking jurists.
Between one-half and two-thirds of European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies between the 1630s and the American Revolution came under indentures. [6] The practice was sufficiently common that the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, in part, prevented imprisonments overseas; it also made provisions for those with existing transportation contracts and those "praying to be transported" in lieu of ...