What Punishments Did African Slaves Endure?

Slaves in the nineteenth century we treated as property. They were given the same amount of rights as livestock. This basically meant they had no rights at all. Plantation owners cared very little about the well-being of their slaves. They were strictly interested in increasing productivity in order to gain a higher profit. The plantation owners hired overseers to make sure the slaves were working at their maximum capabilities. Whenever a slave would fail to complete a task exactly how he or she was told, the slave would be punished (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASpunishments.htm). 

A slave would be punished for many things. Any form of resist or attempting to run away would result in some kind of punishment to break the slave's will. A slave who did not work hard enough would have to endure some kind of torture just as an animal would that refused to obey its master. Slaves who talked too much, especially in their native language, would be beat. Stealing from or attacking a white man would also bring about severe punishment (http://www.historyonthenet.com/Slave_Trade/punishments.htm).

Punishments included a variety of techniques that overseers saw as effective. If the whip did not suffice, overseers commonly would smoke their slaves. This meant the slaves were placed in a smokehouse where conditions would be very hot and uncomfortable. The smoke would make it hard for the slave to breathe and would be tied up in the smokehouse for a long period of time. Slaves were branded just like cattle. This was done as punishment as well as to mark the slave as the property of a particular plantation. Slaves were also placed into barrels that had nails pounded into it and then pushed down a steep hill causing the nails to stab the slave with every rotation of the barrel (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASpunishments.htm).

Slaves were often bound by chains to the ground. They would be put in shackles to preventing escape. Sometimes slaves were forced to walk on nineteenth century treadmills and whipped to increase their pace.  Many kinds of contraptions were placed on slaves as punishment. A collar with iron rods sticking out from it was placed around a slave's neck. At the end of the rods were bells. This contraption caused a huge amount of discomfort to work due to its weight and made it impossible for a person to lay down to sleep (http://cghs.dadeschools.net/slavery/antebellum_slavery/punishment.htm). 

Slaves were often forced to work for multiple days without food or rest as punishment. After their long periods of working, they were stripped naked and their family members were forced to whip them at least fifty times. The embarrassment and shame a slave had to go through was a form of torture all on its own. 

With every beating or form of punishment, an overseer saw it as re-enforcing his dominance over the slave and breaking the slave's will to resist. Slave's took every punishment as even more reason to resist the orders of their masters and gave them courage to escape. If slaves were treated more humanely, productivity would probably have increased without the use of a whip and the threat of escapes would have lessened (http://cghs.dadeschools.net/slavery/antebellum_slavery/punishment.htm). Obviously the act of slavery is horrible and the punishments were completely unjustified, but without the extremely cruel punishments, there may not have been as much attention drawn to the issue. Slaves might have stayed loyal to their masters and the abolishment of slavery could have been delayed much later.