What was the reason for the harsh punishment of slaves for minor offenses? Blog post assignment

What was the reason for the harsh punishment of slaves for minor offenses

By Francesco Argentina

In the narrative of Frederick Douglass, it is mostly about life during slavery and what hardships and experiences they went through during this time. In the book, Frederick accurately describes everyday life of the average slave and how they were treated. One important question about slavery is why they were arguably unnecessarily, treated so harshly for minor offences? Given this example from the book, the answer is quite simple.

Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of the slaves by the name of Dumby, he gave him a few stripes, when, to get rid of the scourging he ran and plunged himself into a lake. Mr. Gore said that he would count to three and once he finished he would have to get out of the lake or he would be shot. Mr. Gore then shouted the number one, with no sign of acknowledgement from Dumby. Two and three were the same, and Gore proceeded to shoot Dumby leaving the bloody mess to be devoured by the lake.  Mr. Gore’s response to the Colonel who had asked about why Dumby was shot, was that Dumby was becoming unmanageable. He was setting a bad example for the other slaves, He argued that if one slave refused to be corrected and got away with his life, the others would soon copy.

So to put it into other terms, the reason slave masters were so harsh was that they were afraid of rebellion, and they believed it was the only way to keep the slaves in line.