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Chapter 4: A Yearning for Freedom
- University of Illinois Press
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4. A Yearning for Freedom Dey would beat him tel de blood run outen him. —Margrett Nickerson in George P. Rawick, Florida Slave Narratives Florida’s enslaved men and women might take advantage of perceived weaknesses in masters and overseers in order to force a degree of flexibility into the institution of slavery sufficient to permit opportunities for lurking or even for more permanent escape; still, the enduring brutal reality of the institution could not be denied.The fact was that bondpersons constituted valuable property that most owners intended to preserve and exploit.In that endeavor, many, if not most, individuals who possessed human property were prepared to take whatever measures they found necessary. The resulting collision of wills sparked further resistance that, in turn, begat reprisal. In the end, the measures taken to undergird slavery proved unable to extinguish the greater desire embodied in the yearning for freedom. Surviving evidence illustrates that enslaved workers often ran because of brutaltreatmentreceivedfrommasters,overseers,anddrivers,althoughitisless clear whether that brutal treatment arose as a cause or as a response to flight. In any event,bondmen and bondwomen were beaten,whipped,incarcerated, branded,collared,mutilated,and placed in stocks.More frequently,they were punished by whipping. Severe floggings, some slaveholders felt, would make the slaves stand in fear. The marks of whippings were suggestive of terrorism and brutality inflicted on the bondservants and a reason, no doubt, for many of them absconding. Individuals naturally ran away after barbaric whippings and to avoid floggings,although they ultimately faced submission to savage and inhumane punishment—or at least the possibility of such submission—upon their return to the farm or plantation.1 Margrett Nickerson recalled that some bondservants were mistreated for no apparentreason,afactthatofferedfurtherincentiveforflight.UncleGeorgewas Rivers_Text.indd 51 3/22/12 10:11 AM 52 Running Away one of them. According to Nickerson, “Dey useter jes take uncle George Bull and beat him fur nothing; dey would beat him and take him to the lake and put him on a log and shev him in de lake, but he always swimmed out. When dey didn’do dat dey would beat him tel de blood run outen him and den trow him in de ditch in de field.” Nickerson related the result of this type of treatment: Some uv de slaves [would] run away, lots uv um. Some would be cot and when day ketched em dey put bells on em; fust dey would put a iron ban’ round dey neck and anuder one ’round de waist and rivet um tegether down de back; de bell would hang on de ban’ round de neck so dat it would ring when de slave walked and den dey wouln’git ’way.Some uv dem wore dese bells three and four mont’n and when dey time wuz up dey would take em off ’em.2 Sources clearly indicate that complaints of mistreatment by whites toward bondservants continued to increase from 1821 to 1865,with the 1850s constituting the worst decade of cruelty to bondservants in the territory or state,at least in Middle Florida.Of the 1,009 runaways detailed in newspaper accounts and the 1,403 probate records, diaries, and letters surviving from 1821 to 1860, 121 indicated scars,floggings,and other marks as a result of severe punishment inflicted upon the bodies of enslaved blacks by authority figures.Of that number, 61 (or 50 percent) were men and 31 (or 26 percent) were women from Middle Florida. In West and East Florida, 29 enslaved blacks wore scars of brutality during the same period; 12 percent of all rebels and runaways wore scars of mistreatment. By way of comparison, Freddie L. Parker’s study of North Carolina runaways established that Florida’s experience roughly coincided with that of the Tar Heel State (11.6 percent) during 1775–1840 and ran two times higher on the average than had been the case in Virginia,North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Louisiana during what some historians have called the “late period,” from 1838 to 1840. Seemingly, Florida slaveholders morefrequentlyusedinhumanemethodstopushandcontroltheirbondpeople than did masters in these nearby states.3 After Virginia’s Nat Turner insurrection of 1831,change touched the nature of slavery in Florida as slaveholders began to view the institution increasingly as a necessary good instead of as a necessary evil.As this occurred,many began to change their attitudes about treatment of those whom they owned. Some manifested this dynamic by adopting a more paternalistic approach.For these individual...