Slave Whipped #1045

_Caption from poster:_      " The victim usually forgives,   but the perpetrator rarely repents."     Slave Punishments The law provided slaves with virtually no protection from their masters. On large plantations this power was delegated to overseers. These men were under considerable pressure from the plantation owners to maximize profits. They did this by bullying the slaves into increasing productivity. The punishments used against slaves judged to be under-performing included the use of the whip. Sometimes slave-owners resorted to mutilating and branding their slaves. Some punishments were associated with certain areas. According to William Wells Brown, slaveowners in Virginia smoked slaves. This involved whipping slaves and putting them in a tobacco smoke-house." Moses Roper claimed that in South Carolina they used to "drive nails into a hogshead so as to leave the point of the nail just protruding in the inside of the cask. Into this he used to put his slaves for punishment, a