Tortures....Perhaps [the slaves] would wish to spend the rest of their days on ship-board, could they know beforehand the nature of the servitude which awaits them on shore; and that the dreadful hardships and sufferings they have already endured [on the Middle Passage] would, for the most of them, only end in the excessive toil, hunger and the excruciating tortures of the cart-whip, inflicted at the whim of an unfeeling overseer, proud of the power allowed him to punish whom, and when, and how he pleases.

Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (1808)