[The following is an excerpt from Solomon Northup’s chilling memoir, 12 Years a Slave. Solomon Northup was a free man living in the Northern states, who was kidnapped by black-market slave traders and illegally sold in the deep south as a “runaway slave from Georgia,” named Platt. After 12 years in captivity, he was eventually freed after getting word out to friends and acquaintances in the North, about his whereabouts and condition. Here, Solomon had woken up in a slave pen in Washington DC and is just now realizing the nature of his imprisonment.]
The paddle, as it is termed in slave-beating parlance, or at least the one with which I first became acquainted, and of which I now speak, was a piece of hard-wood board, eighteen or twenty inches long, moulded to the shape of an old-fashioned pudding stick, or ordinary oar. The flattened portion, which was about the size in circumference of two open hands, was bored with a small auger in numerous places. The cat was a large rope of many strands – the strands unraveled, and a knot tied at the extremity of each.
As soon as these formidable whips appeared, I was seized by both of them, and roughly divested of my clothing. My feet, as has been stated, were fastened to the floor. Drawing me over the bench, face downwards, Radburn placed his heavy foot upon the fetters, between my wrists, holding them painfully to the floor. With the paddle, Burch commenced beating me. Blow after blow was inflicted upon my naked body. When his unrelenting arm grew tired, he stopped and asked if I still insisted I was a free man. I did insist upon it, and then the blows were renewed, faster and more energetically, if possible, than before.
When again tired, he would repeat the same question, and receiving the same answer, continue his cruel labor. All this time, the incarnate devil was uttering more fiendish oaths. At length the paddle broke, leaving the useless handle in his hand. Still I would not yield. All his brutal blows could not force from my lips the foul lie that I was a slave. Casting madly on the floor the handle of the broken paddle, he seized the rope. This was far more painful than the other. I struggled with all my power, but it was in vain. I prayed for mercy, but my prayer was only answered with imprecations and with stripes. I thought I must die beneath the lashes of the accursed brute. Even now the flesh crawls upon my body as I recall the sense. I was all on fire. My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell.
Source:
Northup, Solomon. “Chapter 3.” Twelve Years a Slave. Graymalkin Media, 2014. 21-2. Print.
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