Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a severe flogging.

1859		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (2nd edn).
1876		Amer. Newspaper n.p.: If a negro is invited to join it [a society called ‘The Stop’], and refuses, he is taken to the woods and whipped. This whipping is called a ‘bull-doze’, or doze fit for a bull [OED].
1881		Harper’s Mag. Feb. 479/2: The old man secured the subsidy remarking, ‘Ef you is comin’ de bulldose on dis ole niggah, he weakens’ [DA].