The above drawing depicts what a 19th century sugar plantation might look like. As can be seen, there are two overseers as well as multiple slave workers. If one's focus is brought to the background of the drawing, it can be seen that a slave is cowering as though the overseer is about to strike him. As mentioned many times in Fredrick Douglass' narrative, whippings dealt by overseers onto the slaves whom they were in charge was a highly common occurrence. For an overseer, this terrible action provided to uses. One was the punishment of a slave for disobedience and the other was a deterrent for slaves who might contemplate objecting to their overseer's orders. For slaves, this did little more than serve to their detriment. In many cases, as stipulated by Douglass, punishment by lashings was the result of some frivolous offense by theslave. Additionally, many slaves were worked into such complete exhaustion that is would result in an inability to continue laboring. In such occurrences, slaves would be whipped, struck with hard objects, and kicked by their overseers in an attempt to "motivate" them to continue working. In many cases, these beatings could become so vicious that it would result in the slave's death. Recalling from Douglass' narrative. at one point he was beaten so badly that his entire head became one large blood clot. This was a beating which nearly cost Douglas his life. In Lind Brent's narrative, she also depicts a similar beating. In Brent's account, a slave was whipped so badly that his entire back turned into a blood clot which later had to be removed with the assistance of cooking lard. Tobe Sure, these beatings forced slaves to make no other decision than to submit to the will of their overseers. Until the rise of the abolitionist movement, the only other decisions that a slave would had was attempting escape, or their death. N doubt, the slavery brought about in the United States is one of the worst occurrences of discrimination, oppression and dehumanization of a race in history.
We have not talked about sugar plantations in any of our readings so thank you for posting this image. It is astonishing to me that overseers would whip the slaves in order to "motivate" them. It seems like the complete opposite to me. To me beating a slave would just break down their spirit more and make them want to just disobey their masters because they are taught they will be beaten anyway. Another detail I find strange is that slave owners would whip slaves to their death. You would think the slave owners kept slaves as a "high priority" considering they are tending to their crops and making them (the slave owners) money. It is sad to see how inhumane our country was back then, and how people treated others in 1700s-1800s.
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