While few of the people interviewed in the WPA slave narratives recollected being subjected to beatings or other forms of violent cruelty, a great many of them recorded *witnessing* other slaves being subjected to violence.  A lot of them fit the pattern "my own Master was OK, but wow!  You should have seen what happened to the slaves on the next plantation over."  Some of the accounts are quite chilling to read.  So, contrary to Mr. South, the WPA narratives do in fact demonstrate that to be a slave was to live in an environment in which you knew you could be whipped or beaten, and that pretty much everyone who experienced slavery over any length of time did in fact witness or experience violence.

Which raises the interesting question, how much violence was there?

We know that slavery *had* to entail some systemic violence, because under slavery, the primary incentive for slaves to work was negative.  In other economic ways of organizing labor, positive incentives are the primary way to motivate workers.  Work hard and good things happen for you.  Under slavery, the primary incentives are negative--fail to work hard, and bad things will happen to you.

So how many slaves have to get beaten in any given year, to drive the point home to the rest of the slaves?  Fogel and Engerman, in their book TIME ON THE CROSS, consulted plantation records to answer that question.  I no longer remember their precise findings, but very roughly, what they found was that on large plantations (more than 50 slaves, if I recall correctly), it was one or two beatings a year.  Is that a few, or a lot?  They had anticipated finding that there were more beatings.  But as Herbert Gutman pointed out, in response, that is in fact a large number.  Any given slave faced a quite real chance that, at some point in his or her life, he or she would be brutally beaten.  A sizable number of slaves did in fact experience violence, over the course of their lives.  And pretty much *every* slave witnessed it.

All best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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