CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

The period 1750 to 1820 was a period of transition in methods of corporal punishment in the United States. In the colonial period individuals attributed bad behavior to poor character or criminal propensities and could not conceive of possible reformation. They consequently used public shame, pain, and even death as forms of punishment. During the antebellum period Americans began to view inappropriate actions as a consequence of poor environments and thus believed that residence in such institutions as prisons, orphan asylums, and reformatories could provide correction. These changes began in the early national period as Enlightenment thought emphasized man's rationality. Authorities began to make distinctions between abusive and moderate punishment, but corporal punishment remained dominant.

Most Americans experienced corporal punishment within the family. The Revolution, with its metaphor of the king as tyrannical father figure and the colonists as his helpless children, should have given rise to questioning absolute patriarchal power, but in fact only the Quakers pursued that line of thinking. Indeed, for most children and wives punishment was more severe in this period than it had been in the colonial period.

In an extensive study of reminiscences of individuals born between 1750 and 1800, Elizabeth Pleck noted that their parents employed corporal punishment on each one. Instruments used ranged from hickory sticks to whips. The philosophy of Robert E. Lee's aunt, who raised him, was "whip and pray and pray and whip." One significant change was the introduction of "spanking," which gradually replaced whipping in most households by about 1830.

Husbands often subjected their wives to unrestrained corporal punishment. Courts rarely intervened in cases of domestic violence unless someone was killed. The extent of domestic violence differed from region to region. In New England, with a homogeneous population and a stable social structure, cases were rare. On the frontier and in the South, many more cases existed. Many slave narratives express shock at the cruelty of masters who whipped their wives and children as viciously as they punished their slaves.

Almost all schoolmasters used corporal punishment. At a time when most of continental Europe was turning away from physical punishment in education, the slogan of American schools was "no larnin' without lickin'." One infamous South Carolina schoolmaster whipped all the boys on their first day of school until they wet their pants. In another school one could be flogged for lateness, talking, giving wrong answers, and even not reciting the catechism correctly.

Another hierarchical institution was the American Navy and merchant marine. Following traditional procedure, officers maintained absolute obedience through severe and often excessive discipline. One could be flogged up to one hundred times for such widely varying crimes as desertion, stealing food or liquor, fighting, omission of duty, "insolent" looks, and answering an order in a voice louder than usual. The situation became so repressive that the Navy was unable to fulfill its duties because of the reluctance of qualified sailors to serve.

Slavery was undoubtedly the institution with the most severe corporal punishment. Although most states had laws regulating the treatment of slaves, such laws were almost never enforced. Advertisements for escaped slaves reflected the brutality of slavery by consistently noting brandings, whipping scars, and mutilations. Masters and overseers whipped recalcitrant slaves up to 150 times and then poured salt into the wounds. Other mutilations, designed to make escaped slaves easy to recognize, included cutting off ears, tips of fingers, and toes and branding the face and arms.

Corporal punishment of criminals underwent the most marked change. In the colonial period punishment consisted of three types: shaming, such as putting the accused in the stocks; corporal punishment, such as whippings; and capital punishment. South Carolina, for example, listed 165 capital crimes. After the Revolution concerns over the cruelty of capital and corporal punishments gave rise to prisons. Influenced by Enlightenment thought, Americans came to believe that an institution that confined criminals and imposed order could theoretically transform them into worthwhile citizens. Although prisons were instituted to abolish corporal punishment, paradoxically the practice continued within prison walls, especially when prisons became overcrowded. One could be punished for complaining about inadequate food, talking, smiling, or winking. In one documented case, a warden of Sing Sing, a prison in lower New York State, whipped an insane convict one hundred times for screaming in the night. Besides the whip, punishment included the straitjacket and the gag, an iron mouthpiece. Women convicts, especially African Americans and immigrants, were disciplined similarly.

Beginning in the 1830s, reformers influenced social institutions and even families to forgo corporal punishment. A new approach to discipline would emphasize psychological manipulation.

See alsoChildhood and Adolescence; Crime and Punishment; European Influences: Enlightenment Thought; Flogging; Law: Women and the Law; Marriage; Penitentiaries; Slavery: Slave Life .

bibliography

Glenn, Myra C. Campaigns against Corporal Punishment: Prisoners, Sailors, Women, and Children in Antebellum America. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.

Masur, Louis P. Rites of Execution: Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776–1865. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Pleck, Elizabeth. Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Mark C. Smith