Depicted in this lithograph is one of the few surviving representations of the Sugar House in Charleston. After failed cultivation of sugar cane on the peninsula shifted towards the much more lucrative rice crop by the early eighteenth century, the building was modified to instead serve as a house of corporal punishment for enslaved persons. When sending their slaves to be tormented there, masters would sometimes make the wry, insensitive joke that they had sent their slaves off to “get a bit of sugar.” Courtesy of Library of Congress.Download Original File
