"Don't let de paddle rollers catch you": punishment, control, and resistance in the slave South

This thesis explores the nature of white-slave relations in the U.S. South during the thirty-year period that preceded the Civil War. It asks one central question: How did slaveowners, overseers, patrollers, and nonslaveowners attempt to physically and psychologically punish slaves and control their behavior? An analysis of the Virginia ex-slave narratives serves as a case study of the ways white agents of authority treated slaves, and state slave codes and state supreme court cases provide information on the legal aspects of slave treatment and limits on white behavior. Additional sources that shed light on antebellum race relations include fugitive slave accounts, slave autobiographies, articles in Southern agricultural journals by owners and overseers, and white travelers’ accounts. An examination of these sources shows that slave treatment was fundamentally coercive; that the threat of violence by whites against slaves was an inseparable element of all white-slave interactions; that slave punishment and abuse was frequent and ritualized; that white and slave perceptions of slave punishment differed significantly; and that slaves influenced white behavior, refused to legitimize white authority, and actively resisted abuse.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Department dc:contributor.department

History

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

1997

Author dc:creator

• Viar, Kristin D.

• punishment
• slavery
• South

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

etd-08252008-162849

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/44449