How Did Southerners Maintain Control over African Americans-Both Slave and Free- in the Decades Before the Civil War?

How did Southerners control the African Americans? They did many of things. They would torture, verbally abuse, and sexually abuse the African Americans. What kind of torture did they have to go through? One woman stated that her aunt’s hands and feet were tied to a tree. They would be hit with rawhide on their buttocks. Sometimes they would rub turpentine and salt over the raw places on the buttocks. If a slave had to go to another plantation they needed a pass. If they didn’t have a pass and they got caught patrollers would beat the slave. If a free slave was caught children would be taken to places to work and a slave holder may use the children as bad. They were not only beaten they were abused verbally. The slaves were called names. The masters would threaten them if they did not do what the master wanted. They would say things like if you don’t do this you will not get anything to eat for a certain amount of days. Free slaves were abused even though they were free. They were told to go to the other side of the street because the whites didn’t want to be seen on the same side of the street as the blacks. There was a woman and a man whom were locked up every night together. The man was paid to get the woman pregnant. By the end of the year the woman had twins.
If the master did not lock up the man and woman, he would not have other workers for further years on. Both slave and free African Americans were controlled by the Southerners before the Civil War. They were tortured, abused physically and