While I was in New Orleans, I picked up Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Northup was a free black who was kidnapped in Washington D. C. in 1841. Northup was drugged and kidnapped by Burch and Radburn. When Northup comes to his senses, he confronts his captors.
"Again and again I asserted I was no man's slave, and insisted upon [Burch's] taking the chains off at once. . . Finding he could not quiet me, he flew into a towering passion. With blasphemous oaths, he called me a black liar, a runaway from Georgia, and every vulgar epithet that the most indecent fancy could conceive.
During this time Radburn was standing silently by. His business was to oversee this human, or rather inhuman, stable, receiving slave, feeding and whipping them, at the rate of two shillings per head per day. Turning to him, Burch ordered the paddle and cat o nine tails to be brought to him. He disappeared and in a few moments returned with these instruments of torture. 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 the size in circumference of about 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, Rayburn 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. [Ass? Back?]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 the time the incarnate devil was uttering the most fiendish oaths. At length the paddle broke, leaving the useless handle in his hand. Still I would not yield. All his blows could not force from my lips the 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. [Though a whip is far less of a turn on for this pervish reader than a paddle.] I struggled with all my power but it was in vain. I prayed for mercy but my prayer was only answered with imprecations and stripes. I thought I must die beneath the lashes of the accursed brute. Even now the flesh crawls upon my bones, as I recall the scene. I was all on fire. My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!
At last I became silent, to his repeated questions I would make no reply. In fact, I was becoming almost unable to speak. Still he plied the lash without stint upon my poor body, until it seemed that the lacerated flesh was stripped from my bones at every stroke. A man with a particle of mercy in his soul would not have beaten even a dog so cruelly. At length, Rayburn said that it was useless to whip me any more - - that I would be sore enough. Thereupon Birch desisted, saying with an admonitory shake of his fist in my face and uttering the words through firm set teeth that if I ever dared to utter again that I was entitled to my freedom, that I had been kidnapped, or any thing whatever of the kind, the castigation I had just received was nothing in comparison with what would follow.
I like the word "castigation." I must use it next time I see my cutie Jacko. Get him to spell "castigation" first and whup him mercilessly if he doesn't get it right, nomesain?
I hope no one gets in a pc lather about my transcribing slave narratives. I take it as self evident that I find the institution of slavery abhorrent and that in terms of my political and ethical commitments, I am deeply repelled by its history. This does not mean that at a fantasy level, I cannot be pornographically aroused at the image of a beautiful black man being mercilessly paddled and whipped. Stay tuned for more details from Northup's memoir.