Our Enemies in Blue. Kristian Williams
Beginning in 1804, Charleston established a nightly curfew for the Black population—free and slave alike.120 A few years later a statewide nine o’clock curfew was established. Free Black people were required to carry a pass from their employers, and patrols beat those who didn’t have their “free papers.”121 A stricter law was passed in Pendleton in 1835, instructing the patrol to “apprehend and correct all slaves and free persons of color” on the streets after nine at night, “whether such slave or free person of color have a pass or not.”122
In Charleston the law requiring passes gradually gave way to a system of badges for slaves being hired out. This procedure allowed the state the opportunity to regulate the practice, and entitled it to a share of the master’s fee (that is, really, of the slave’s wages).123 Slowly, Charleston began to prefigure the segregated South of the twentieth century: in 1848, the city limited the right of Black people to use the public parks; in 1850, Black people were banned from bars.124
Meanwhile, throughout South Carolina, town after town asked the state legislature to transfer control of the slave patrols from the county courts or state militia to the local government. Camden won that power in 1818. Columbia followed in 1823.125 Georgetown requested it in 1810, but was not allowed it until 1829.126 Ten years later, the legislature granted all incorporated South Carolina towns the power to regulate patrol duty.127
Patrols in Perspective
The patrols’ work was not always popular. Soon after his appointment as the head of the Georgetown Guards, Peter Cutting found his house burned to the ground.128 Around the same time “A Citizen” wrote in to the Charleston paper: “I think it is dangerous for a person to send out his slave even with a pass.…”129 But the most common complaint was that the guards did not do their jobs. Grand juries frequently cited them for “shameful neglect of patrol duty,” a term covering absenteeism, drinking on the job, and patrolling in a slipshod fashion.130
Whatever the faults of these patrols, the White citizens of the American South relied on them to alleviate their anxieties about slave rebellions. These anxieties changed with the growth of the urban population, and the patrols changed with them, eventually approaching the model of a modern police force.
Still, though they provided a transition between the militia and the police, and despite their resemblance to other functionaries responsible for slave control, the patrols represented a distinct mode of policing. While originally bound up with the militia system, the patrols served in a specialized capacity distinguishing them from the rest of the militia. Furthermore, the authority over the patrols came more and more to shift from the militia to the courts, and then to the city government, implying that patrolling was regarded as a civil rather than military activity.131
The patrols also, in certain respects, resembled the watch. The watch, even in Northern cities, was issued specific instructions concerning the policing of the Black population. Boston, for example, instituted a curfew for Black people and Native Americans, beginning in 1703;132 in 1736 the watch was specifically ordered to “take up all Negro and Molatto [sic] servants, that shall be unseasonably Absent from their Masters [sic] Families, without giving sufficient reason therefore.”133 But while the watch was told to keep an eye on Black people along with numerous other potential sources for trouble, the slave patrols (and later, the City Guards) were more specialized, focusing almost exclusively on the Black population. In fact, it is this racist specialization that—more than anything else—distinguished the slave patrols from other police types and accelerated their rate of development. Hadden writes:
The reliance upon race as a defining feature of this new colonial creation reveals the singular difference that set slave patrols apart from their European antecedents. Although slave patrols also supervised the activities of free African Americans and suspicious whites who associated with slaves, the main focus of their attention fell upon slaves. Bondsmen could easily be distinguished by their race and thus became easy and immediate targets of racial brutality. As a result, the new American innovation in law enforcement during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the creation of racially focused law enforcement groups in the American south.134
With this specialization came expanded powers—to search the homes of Black people, to mete out summary punishment, and to confiscate a broad range of valuables without need to demonstrate further suspicion. Moreover, their relationship to the militia meant that patrols generally carried firearms, whereas the watch did not.135
While the slave patrols did anticipate the creation of modern police, it must still be remembered that they were not themselves modern police. Of the two sets of criteria listed earlier, the slave patrols satisfy those of a police endeavor: they were public, authorized (indeed, instructed) to use force, and had general enforcement powers (if only over certain segments of the population). They do not, however, seem very modern, by the second set of criteria. They were certainly not the main law enforcement body, and they usually only operated at night. Arrangements for pay and continuity of service varied by location, but they were generally no more advanced than was typical of the watch. The patrols did have citywide (and sometimes broader) jurisdiction, and they were accountable to either the militias or the courts (or later, to special committees).136 And perhaps more than any police force before them, the patrols had a preventive orientation. Rather than respond to slave revolts (as the militia had done), or take off after runaways (like the professional slave catchers), the patrol aimed to prevent rebellions and sometimes endeavored to keep the slaves from even leaving the plantation.
The slave patrol, which began as an offshoot of the militia, and came to resemble modern police, thus provides a transitional model in the development of policing. As the militia adapted to the needs of a rural, agrarian, slave society, it evolved into a new form that surpassed the original. The slave patrols, when confronted with the conditions of a proto-industrialized city (where slavery itself was facing obsolescence) underwent a similar metamorphosis.
Charleston: “Keeping Down the Niggers”137
In 1671, South Carolina’s Grand Council created a watch for Charles Town, consisting of the regular constables and a rotation of six citizens. They guarded the city against fire, Indians, slave gatherings, and other signs of trouble, and detained lawbreakers until the next day.138 The law creating the watch was renewed in 1698, with an addendum citing the increase in the Black population:
And whereas, negroes frequently absent themselves from their masters or owners [sic] houses, caballing, pilfering, stealing, and playing the rogue, at unseasonable hours of the night Bee it therefore enacted, That any Constable or his deputy, meeting with any negro or negros, belonging to Charles Town, at such unseasonable times as aforesaid, and cannot give good and satisfactory account of his business, the said constable or his deputy, is required to keep the said negro or negros in safe custody till next morning.139
For this work, the constable was to receive a fee from the owner of the detained slaves. In 1701, the exact language of this law was repeated, though the fee was increased and the constable was further instructed to administer a severe beating.140
In 1703, as a wartime measure, the governor established a paid watch, and added special duties related to sailors and bars. This experiment was short-lived, however, and seventeen months after its creation it was replaced with a volunteer patrol organized by the militia.141 This organization was essentially the slave patrol. In 1721, it again merged with the militia. Its function was broadened, giving patrollers authority over a large part of the working class besides the slaves. The new law instructed patrollers
to use their utmost endeavor to prevent all caballings amongst negroes, by dispersing of them when drumming or playing, and to search all negro houses for arms or other offensive weapons; and farther, are hereby empowered to examine all White servants they shall meet with, out of their master’s business, and the same (if they suspect to be runaway, or upon any ill design) to carry such servant immediately to be whipped, or punished as he shall think fit, and then send him home to his master; and also, if they meet with any idle, loose or vagrant fellow that cannot give good account of his business, shall also be hereby empowered to carry such vagrant fellow to a magistrate.142
By 1734, this body was again removed from the militia, and was explicitly referred to as a slave police. By this time the