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Updated: June 8, 2025
But since you are so keen to reason it out, I will remind you that until comparatively recently the torture was one of our own methods of punishment, or coercion, tending to the disclosure of secret conspiracies or any other little matter that the government might want to know and could not otherwise find out, and was practiced, thumb-screws, iron-boot, and all, in the worshipful presence of men of high estate councils, commissions, and what not!
They have described the Middle Passage, with its gags, fetters, and thumb-screws, as "the happiest period of a negro's life;" they say they do the slaves a great charity in bringing them from barbarous Africa to a civilized and Christian country; and on the plantation, under the whip of the driver, the negroes are so happy, that a West India planter publicly declared he could not look upon them, without wishing to be himself a slave.
And next second he had ducked under the bench, and thrust his head through the round hole, so that his skull was brought into contact with some of those padded thumb-screws. "Get the idea?" he finished. "It's a cranium-meter!" It did not take Smith long to reach the next conclusion. "Then," said he, "our friend Estra is connected with their school system.
But since we have done with those tools, we had better give up those words. I should like to see a Yankee advertisement like this! Patent thumb-screws, will crush the bone in three turns. The cast-iron boot, with wedge and mallet, only five dollars! The celebrated extension-rack, warranted to stretch a man six inches in twenty minutes, money returned, if it proves unsatisfactory.
Cadillac looked me over, and now his glance went, not to my doublet, but to the man within. "A trader!" he said curtly. "A trader carrying contraband brandy. A good commandant would send you back where you belong. No, no, monsieur, wait! I am not threatening you. Though you know as well as I that the thumb-screws are rather convenient to my hand should I care to use them.
The following is from Niles' Weekly Register, published at Baltimore, Md. vol. 35, p. 4. "Dealing in slaves has become a large business; establishments are made in several places in Maryland and Virginia, at which they are sold like cattle; these places of deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with thumb-screws and gags, and ornamented with cow-skins and other whips oftentimes bloody."
To fix the false keel all that was necessary was to unscrew the caps from the top of the "bushes," apply the false to the true keel, pushing the bolts up through their respective holes, and set them up tight by means of thumb-screws. The whole operation could be performed in a couple of minutes, and the boats were then fit to beat to windward to any extent.
Resolved, That in the acquiescence of many at the North in the entire justice of a universal massacre, by the slaves, of their masters, including women and children, we recognize a state of preparedness for the proscription and banishment of all who do not come up to the high abolition standard; but that in carrying out that project, we ought first to seek the reclamation of the victims, and therefore that due inquiry ought to be made concerning the most effective modes of persuasion, as, for example, thumb-screws, racks, wheels, scorpions, water-dropping for the head, bags of snakes, tweezers, and steel-pointed beds, it being apparent that our agony for the slave cannot be satisfied except by his liberation, or by the forcible subjection to us of all who oppose it.
I should like to see such an advertisement, I say, Sir! Now, what's the use of using the words that belonged with the thumb-screws, and the Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petticoats and sleeves and bodice, and the dry pan and gradual fire, if we can't have the things themselves, Sir?
The history of the world warned them that the liberty of man was not safe in the clutch and grasp of any church. They had read of and seen the thumb-screws, the racks and the dungeons of the inquisition. They knew all about the hypocrisy of the olden time. They knew that the church had stood side by side with the throne; that the high priests were hypocrites, and that the kings were robbers.
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