Slave Treatment Quotes

The punishments were whipping, putting you in the stocks and making you wear irons and a chain at work. Then they had a collar to put round your neck with two horns, like cows' horns, so that you could not lie down on your back or belly. This also kept you from running away for the horns would catch in the bushes. Sometimes they dug a hole like a well with a door on top. This they called a dungeon keeping you in it two or three weeks or a month, and sometimes till you died in there. This hole was just big enough to receive the body; the hands down by the sides.

To his slaves [he was] a just and benevolent master.

The smack of the whip is all day long in the ears of those who are on the plantation, or in the vicinity; and it is used with such dexterity and severity as not only to lacerate the skin, but to tear out small portions of the flesh at almost every stroke. This is THE GENERAL TREATMENT of the Slaves. But many individuals suffer still more severely. Many are knocked down; some have their eyes beaten out; some have an arm or a leg broken, OR CHOPPED OFF; and many, for a very small or for no crime at all, have been BEATEN TO DEATH.

I wouldn't call him a slave. I don't whip him when he does something wrong. Just when he does something good.

For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

Every one must understand that, whatever be the evil of slavery, it is not increased by its diffusion. Every one familiar with it knows that it is in proportion to its sparseness that it becomes less objectionable. Wherever there is an immediate connexion between the master and slave, whatever there is of harshness in the system is diminished.

Congress has no authority to interfere in the internal regulations of particular States, relative to the instruction of slaves in the principles of morality and religion; to their comfortable clothing and accommodations, and subsistence; to the regulation of their marriages, and the prevention of the violation of their rights thereof.

Mr. Madison, I think, was one of the best men that ever lived. I never saw him in a passion, and never knew him to strike a slave, although he had over one hundred; neither would he allow an overseer to do it. Whenever any slaves were reported to him as stealing or "cutting up" badly, he would send for them and admonish them privately, and never mortify them by doing it before others. They generally served him very faithfully. He was temperate in his habits. I don't think he drank a quart of brandy in his whole life.

[In early Colonial America] ironically black slaves, selling for roughly 3 times as much [as indentured servants], often got better treatment because they were a lifetime investment. With indentured servants, an employer’s optimal return lay in obtaining as much sweat and output as possible over 4, 5 or 7 years. ]

The Romans treat their servants better than the king of the Scythians treats his subjects. They deal with them as fathers or teachers, admonishing them to abstain from evil and follow the lines of conduct whey they have esteemed honorable; they reprove them for their errors like their own children. They are not allowed, like the Scythians, to inflict death on them.

The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not care for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns

…cold and rude slaves would hardly consider privation of life as a punishment, unless accompanied by such cruel circumstances as greatly aggravate their bodily suffering.

The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty, race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is of course the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has the power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice... Good natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other.

The severe household has no fierce slaves, but it is the affectionate mother.

Barjawan was my slave and I employed him. He acted in good faith, and I treated him favourably. Then he misbehaved, so I killed him.

In the old patrician world there was a custom once a week you had to eat a meal with your slaves and get to know them as people.

Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not liked, either by masters or overseers.