See quot. 1816.
1816. What is the most ludicrous, but horrid, the cat-haul; that is, to fasten a slave down flatwise upon the ground, with stakes and cords, and then to take a huge fierce tomcat by the tail backward, and haul him down along the screeching wretch’s bare back, with his claws clinging into the quick all the way.—Henry C. Knight (‘Arthur Singleton’), ‘Letters from the South and West,’ p. 79 (Boston, 1824).
1840. The Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1840 is filled up with pictures, such as white people of the South branding slaves,—hunting slaves with dogs and guns,—cat-hauling slaves, &c.—Mr. Benton in the U.S. Senate, Jan. 12: Cong. Globe, p. 99 (Appendix).
1844–7. I saw a slave punished by cat-hauling.—Chambers’s Misc., cxlix. 17. (N.E.D.)
