The man with the whip in plantation society was the literal cutting edge of slave oppresion. And through generations, Martin Delany, his father, and grandfather refused even unto death to ever feel the lash of this whip, fully understanding that their integrity was much more at stake in succumbing to this ritual. Delany wrote himself: "The whipper in plantation society was supposed to render a black man as spiritless as a kitten as humble as a dog."
The following three accounts include an eyewitnessed account by Delany during his brave journey into Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas in 1839+40, which lays bare in all its horror the power of the whipper to destroy a mind and spirit. The second account taken from Rollin's biography of Delany, describing the "encounters with the whip" of both MRD's father, Samuel Delany, and his paternal grandfather.
"Dinner over, the gentlemen walked into the pleasure grounds, in the rear of the mansion.
'Nelse, where is Rube? Call him!'" said Grason to a slave lad, brother to the boy he sent for.
"Shortly there came forward, a small black boy about eleven years of age, thin visage, projecting upper teeth, rather ghastly consumptive look, and emaciated condition. The child trembled with fear as he approached the group.
'Now gentlemen,' said Grason, 'I'm going to show you a sight!' having in his hand a long whip, the cracking of which he commenced as a ringmaster in the circus.
"The child gave him a look never to be forgotten; a look beseeching mercy and compassion. But the decree was made, and though humanity quailed in dejected supplication before him, the command was imperative, with no living hand to stay the pending consequences. He must submit to his fate, and pass through the ordeal of training.
'Wat maus gwine do wid me now? I know wat maus gwine do,' said this miserable child, 'he gwine make me see sights!' when going down on his hands and feet, he commenced trotting around like an animal.
'Now gentlemen, look!' said Grason, 'He'll whistle, sing songs, hymns, pray, swear like a trooper, laugh, and cry, all under the same state of feelings.'
"With a peculiar swing of the whip, bringing the lash down upon a certain spot on the exposed skin, the whole person being prepared for the purpose, the boy commenced to whistle almost like a thrush; another cut changed it to a song, another to a hymn, then a pitiful prayer, when he gave utterance to oaths which would make a Christian shudder, after which he laughed outright; then from the fullness of his soul he cried:
'O maussa, I's sick! Please stop little!' casting up gobs of hemorrhage. (ED. NOTE: The above scene is the one MRD verified).
"Franks stood looking on with unmoved muscles. Armsted stood aside whittling a stick; but when Ballard saw, at every cut the flesh turned open in gashes streaming down with gore, till at last in agony he appealed for mercy, he involuntarily found his hand with a grasp on the whip arresting its further application.
'Not quite a Southerner, yet Judge, if you can't stand that!?' said Franks on seeing him wiping away the tears."
"In life he (Samuel Delany) was known as a man of great integrity of character, and acknowledged courage and was remarkable for his physical strength. He was a slave in Martinsburg, where for a stipulated sum he obtained his freedom. . . .He bore a scar of a wound which added another testimony to the "barbarism of slavery." It was inflicted by the sheriff of the county who with eight men went to arrest him one morning because he had nine times torn the clothes off the person of one Violett, as he was endeavoring to inflict bodily punishment on him. Each time, as he dashed the man Violett from him, he assured he had no wish to injure him.
"The sheriff and his men approached and were warned by him to keep off. He then fortified himself with a swingle tree, bade defiance to the authority attempting to surround him. (In order to have an escape route), he raised himself to the top of a fence, his face to his prosecutors. At the moment he was at the top of the wagon he was brought to the ground, senseless and bleeding by a skillfully directed stone.
"He was secured and taken to prison in Charles Town. . . .With the mark of brutality always before the eyes of his children, it is no matter of wonderment that Martin Delany should watch every enactment concerning his race with exactness."
"His father's father was a chieftain captured with his family in war, sold to the slavers, and brought to America. He fled at one time from Virginia where he was enslaved taking with him his wife and two sons, born to him on the continent, and after various wanderings, reached Little York, as Toronto, Canada was then called, unmolested.
"But once there, he was pursued and 'by some formality of law, international policy, old musty treaty, cozenly understood,' said Major Delany, he was brought back to the United States.
"The fallen old chief afterward is said to have lost his life in an encounter with some slaveholder who attempted to chastize him into submission."
