This image shows an enslaved person laying face down and tied to a ladder, while other slaves watch as a black slavedriver whips the victim. The Harper's article discusses Cuba's economic importance as a Spanish colony because of revenue produced by slave labor on sugar, coffee, and tobacco plantations; however, the scene illustrated refers to a major slave conspiracy, called La Escaler (The Ladder), in 1844. Robert Paquette identifies this illustration as the ladder to which slave suspects were bound before interrogation by the lash. See Sugar Is made with Blood (Wesleyan University Press, 1988), p. 207. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization was an American political magazine based in New York City and published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916. It featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects and humor, alongside illustrations. It covered the American Civil War extensively, including many illustrations of events from the war.

Harper's Weekly (Nov. 28, 1868) vol.12, p. 753 (front page).

English

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

HW0047

Caribbean--Cuba

"Punishing Slaves in Cuba", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed September 25, 2023, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1303