The Joshua Letter

Since Wilkins and Wilson rely so heavily on Time on the Cross¹ as evidence that whippings were not as bad as we might think² it is important to examine this work more closely. It should be noted that the authors of Time on the Cross, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, admit that "[r]eliable data on the frequency of whipping is extremely sparse."³ It is significant that they base their conclusions on "[t]he only systematic record of whipping now available for an extended period…from the diary of Bennet Barrow, a Louisiana planter who believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the slave."⁴ Presumably this diary holds evidence of someone more "representative of the whole," of slave owners, meting out punishment not unlike the way one might discipline misbehaving children. An examination of Bennet Barrow's diary, however, gives no support to such an impression.

According to the editor of Barrow's diary, Edwin A. Davis, Bennet Barrow was a well-to-to Louisiana planter who "bought and sold land, raised cotton, experimented with sugar cane, and grew or produced most the supplies required on a large plantation."⁵ He was, in fact, "typical of his time and section."⁶ Barrow's whipping is considered by Davis to be "of the mild variety."⁷

The "mild variety" of Barrow's kind needs further explanation. Davis notes that Barrow's punishment was "only severe enough to be conducive to good discipline,"⁸ but "[b]rutal whippings, followed by duckings [dunkings] were administered on occasion,"⁹ and "[s]ome runaways were severely beaten upon being caught."¹⁰ How the term "severe" should be understood is made clear by an episode in Barrow's diary. Runaways in Louisiana and other slave states were hunted with trained dogs. Davis cites the diary's account of the pursuit of such a slave. Barrow "ran and trailed [him] about a mile, treed him, made the dogs pull him out of the tree, [b]it him badly, think he will stay home a while."¹¹ An even more brutal example comes later. When a runaway is chased and caught, Barrow writes, the "dogs soon tore him naked…" Apparently, Barrow wanted to make an example of this same individual for the other slaves, so he arranged a horrifying instant replay: "…took him home before the negro[es] at dark [and] made the dogs give him another over hauling."¹² Examples like this leave no doubt that Bennet Barrow, presented as being representative of plantation owners in general by Fogel and Engermann in Time on the Cross, committed acts of extreme brutality and carefully recorded them.

Fogel and Engerman's statistics are as questionable as their impression of Barrow. Regarding the actual number of whippings on Barrow's plantation they write,

His plantation numbered about 200 slaves, of whom about 120 were in the labor force. The record shows that over the course of two years a total of 160 whippings were administered, and average of 0.7 whippings per hand per year. About half the hands were not whipped at all during the period.¹³

Fogel and Engerman's average is actually off by 69 percent.¹⁴ A close examination of Barrow's diary reveals that "two years" is really a period of 23 months.¹⁵ The number of whippings is not 160 but 175.¹⁶ The number of slaves is not 200 but 129.¹⁷ The labor force of 120 is really somewhere between 59 and 71.¹⁸ Utilizing all available records, including manuscript returns contained in the National Archives from the 1840 Census,¹⁹ Herbert Gutman and Richard Sutch conclude,

Using their inaccurate count of the number of whippings, their greatly exaggerated estimate of the number of hands, and their erroneous measurement of the length of time covered, Fogel and Engerman estimated that Barrow's slaves received "an average of 0.7 whippings per hand per year." This statistic is also wrong. Each of their errors contributed to the substantial underestimate of the correct average of 1.19 whippings per hand per year, a figure 69 percent larger than that reported by Fogel and Engerman.²⁰

It should be kept in mind that 1.19 whippings per hand per year does not include other forms of punishment employed by Barrow besides the whip. Edwin Davis, the editor of Barrow's diary, writes that he was "constantly devising ingenious punishments, for he realized the uncertainty was an important aid in keeping his gangs well in hand."²¹ Examining Barrow's diary, Gutman and Sutch note that "[d]uring the two year period under consideration, Barrow jailed, chained, beat with a stick, threatened with death, shot with a gun, raked the heads of, and humiliated his slaves."²²

Wilkins and Wilson maintain against evidence to the contrary that whipping was not excessive because "it was far more in the master's interest to motivate his slaves by positive means."²³ For a master to have "devoted, hard-working, responsible men who identified their fortunes with the fortunes of their masters"²⁴ he didn't utilize the whip, but "a wide-ranging system of rewards."²⁵ The record kept by Barrow, however, shows his slaves never quite "identified" with him in this way. If the list of whippings recorded by Barrow is accurate, the 66 slaves listed as cotton pickers in Davis' edition of his diary ²⁶ were whipped regularly. Gutman and Sutch have observed that 50 of these men and women experienced the whip a total of 130 times in a 23-month period.²⁷ It is further determined, by comparing the list of cotton pickers in Davis' appendix with the list of those female slaves who gave birth, that seven of the women whipped by Barrow during this period were mothers, one of them no fewer than four times.²⁸

Reading about plantation owners such as Barrow can be perplexing. According to Davis Barrow's slaves "were well-fed and housed [and] they received gifts of money at Christmas time"²⁹ and Barrow "provided medical attention on every necessary occasion."³⁰ Surely this was due, in large part, to running a successful plantation with a reasonably contented work force. There was also a form of friendship existing between some slaves and masters as shown in the admiration expressed in Barrow's comment on the death of one of his slaves as "a very great loss, one of the best negroes I ever saw or [k]new, [and] to his family as [good as] a white person."³¹ Yet, as seen above, he would brutally punish or hunt them with savage dogs, and diligently record it on the same pages without reflection. If Wilkins and Wilson want to prove that punishment on the typical plantation was different than what is demonstrated above in Barrow's diary, they will need to look for the proof elsewhere. It is certainly not found in the work of Fogel and Engerman.


ENDNOTES

¹Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Lantham, MD: University P of America, Inc., 1974).
²Steve Wilkins, Douglas Wilson Southern Slavery As It Was (Moscow: Canon P, 1996) 28-29.
³Fogel et al. 145. (emphasis mine).
⁴Fogel et al. 145.
⁵Edwin Adams Davis, ed., Plantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana 1836-1844, as Reflected in the Diary of Bennet H. Barrow (19431; New York: Columbia University P., 1967) 11.
⁶Davis, 38.
⁷Davis, 50.
⁸Davis, 49.
⁹Davis, 50.
¹⁰Davis, 50.
¹¹Davis, 48.
¹²Davis, 49.
¹³Fogel, et al., 145.
¹⁴Paul David, Herbert Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright, Reckoning With Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery (New York: Oxford University P. 1976) 63.
¹⁵ David, et al., 60.
¹⁶ David, et al., 61.
¹⁷ David, et al., 62.
¹⁸ David, et al., 61.
¹⁹ David, et al., 62.
²⁰ David, et al., 62.
²¹ David, et al., 49.
²² David, et al., 63.
²³Wilkins, et al., 29.
²⁴Wilkins, et al., 29.
²⁵Wilkins, et al., 29.
²⁶Davis Appendix, 419-421.
²⁷David, et al., 65.
²⁸David, et al., 65.
²⁹Davis, 41.
³⁰Davis, 42.
³¹Davis, 38.

© 2000 Jack Davidson