Our Enemies in Blue. Kristian Williams
homes of all Black people, pursue and capture escaped slaves, and kill any slave who used a weapon against them. Until the end of the colonial period, the Parish of Saint Philip (which includes Charleston) had two separate patrols—the two largest in the state.143
By 1785, these patrols were incorporated into the Charleston Guard and Watch. This body was responsible for arresting vagrants and other suspicious persons, preventing felonies and disturbances, and warning of fires.144 But one guard described his job succinctly as “keeping down the niggers.”145 Indeed, slave control was the aspect of their work most emphasized by the public officials, and given highest priority by the guard itself. As Selden Bacon put it: “With very minor differences, their orders here were a summation of those given the rural patrols in the preceding hundred years, with the major and natural exception that they did not inspect plantations.”146
The organization of the Charleston Guard and Watch represented a significant advance in the development of policing.147 The force contained a developed hierarchy and chain of command, consisting of a captain, a lieutenant, three corporals, fifty-eight privates, and a drummer. Each was given a gun, bayonet, rattle (for use as a signal), and uniform coat. Some acted as a standing guard; the rest were divided into two patrols—one for St. Philip’s Parish, and the other for St. Michael’s. The captain issued daily reports, and all the men were paid.148 The same group patrolled every night, and discipline and morale received a level of attention unique at the time.149
By our earlier criteria, there can be no question that the Charleston Guard and Watch were involved in policing. They were authorized to use force, had general enforcement responsibilities, and were publicly controlled. They were also exceptionally modern. The guard was the principal law enforcement agency in Charleston, enjoyed a jurisdiction covering the entire city (and some of the surrounding countryside), served a specialized police function, and had a preventive orientation. It also established organizational continuity and paid its personnel by salary. In fact, lacking only twenty-four-hour service, the Charleston Guard and Watch may count as the first modern police department, predating the London Metropolitan Police by more than thirty years.
Charleston, being subject to the pressures of maintaining a slave system in an urban area with an industrializing economy, underwent an intense period of innovation, just around the time of the American Revolution. Its efforts to control the Black population put it in the lead in the development of modern policing. But once policing mechanisms were in place, the authorities felt little need to tamper with them. When change again appeared on the agenda—following the discovery of a plan for insurrection in 1822—the authorities instituted reforms that had been developed previously in other cities.150 During the intervening years, Charleston’s advances were surpassed by those of another Southern city, facing similar but distinct social pressures.
New Orleans: “Barbarism,” “Despotism,” and “A System of Violence”
Occupying a strategic position for both economic and military uses, the city of New Orleans has changed hands numerous times. But, until the Civil War, each subsequent regime agreed on one basic principle: the utter suppression of the Black race. In succession, the French, Spanish, and American governments enacted very nearly the same set of laws for this purpose, controlling the social, economic, and political life of the Black community and regulating the work, travel, education, and living arrangements of Black people in the city. Louis XIV instituted a “Code Noir” in 1685, which Sieur de Bienville, the founder of the French colony of Louisiana, copied; the Spanish retained it as their own while they controlled the city; and the Americans re-enacted it as the “Black Code.”151
In 1804, as the Black population nearly equaled that of the White,152 New Orleans sought out special mechanisms for enforcing these laws. At the time, two separate night patrols were in effect—a militia guard to protect against outside attack, and a watch, called the “seranos,” whose primary duty was lighting the street lamps. But in 1804 the militia organized a mounted patrol specifically to enforce the Black Codes.153 This unit only survived a few months, however. After repeated conflicts between the English-speaking militia guard and the French-speaking army, the patrol was disbanded in 1805, replaced with the Gendarmerie.
The Gendarmerie, while nominally a military unit, functioned more as a slave patrol than anything else. The law establishing it made this purpose clear:
They will make rounds in suspected places where slaves can congregate, particularly on Sundays. They will break up these assemblies, foresee and prevent uproars and gambling, and declare confiscated all moneys found for their own profit.… The officers accompanied by all or part of their troop, and equipped with orders from the mayor, shall search negro huts on plantations, but only after looking for and then notifying the overseer or owner of their actions, as well as inviting them to be present at the search. And all fire-arms, lances, swords, etc. that shall be found in the said cabins will be confiscated and deposited in the City arsenal.154
The Gendarmerie also arrested slaves traveling without passes and maintained a reserve of officers for daytime emergencies.155
While drawn from the military, this group was directed by the mayor, magistrates, and other civil officials, and was paid through a combination of salaries, fees, and rewards. Half mounted, half on foot, and all wearing blue uniforms, the same men patrolled every night.156 In many respects, then, the New Orleans patrol closely resembled the Charleston Guard of the same period, but it survived only briefly. In February 1806 the city council abolished the Gendarmerie, citing the cost of horses and the poor quality of the men.157 That same year, the council created a City Guard, modeled after and performing the same functions as the Gendarmerie, though less militaristic in demeanor and lacking the horses.158 Aside from two years when there was no patrol, this body survived until 1836.159
In the 1830s the City Guard came under attack in the newspapers, courtrooms, and among politicians. In 1834, the Louisiana Advertiser accused them of “barbarism” and “despotism.” It urged the city council to
dispense with the sword and pistol, the musket and bayonet, in our civil administration of republican laws, and adopt or create a system more congenial to our feelings, to the opinions and interests of a free and prosperous people, and more in accordance with the spirit of the age we live in.160
That same year a committee of the city council decried the Guard’s violent treatment of suspects, saying that “the moment they lay hands on a prisoner they at once commence a system of violence towards him.”161 It was the violence of the authorities, the committee argued, that caused the forceful resistance of both prisoners and passers-by acting from “just indignation.”162
In 1830, the death of the first person killed by a New Orleans cop prompted much of this criticism,163 but an underlying xenophobia was at work, and the native-born population openly expressed distaste for the immigrant-dominated Guard. Another important demographic shift may help explain this backlash: during the 1830s and 1840s the White population increased by 180 percent, while the Black population increased at a much slower rate (41 percent).164 Hence, with White people in the overwhelming majority, fears of a slave revolt were less present, while ethnic tensions among White groups were increasingly pronounced.165 In short, both the initial militarization, and eventual de-militarization of New Orleans’ police were the product of the ethnic fears of the city’s ruling class.
In 1836, the city council did away with the military model of policing. In its place they put a system of twenty-four-hour patrolling along distinct beats. The blue uniforms were replaced with numbered leather caps like those worn by watchmen in other cities. A Committee of Vigilance was elected to supervise them. This revision brought New Orleans into line with the watch system as it existed in Northern cities, and represented a substantial break from the Charleston model.166 Still, the new organization retained the most modern features of the City Guard, and added to them twenty-four-hour service. Hence, in 1836, the New Orleans city government approved the adoption of a public body, accountable to a central authority, authorized to use force, and assigned general law enforcement duties. This body would be the main agency of law enforcement, with citywide jurisdiction, organizational continuity, a specialized policing function, and twenty-four-hour operations. And, as its inheritance from the slave patrol, it would be oriented toward the prevention of various disorders. In short,