Slave Patrols

Slave patrols were organized groups that regularly patrolled both rural and urban areas of the Southern United States to enforce restrictions that White colonists placed upon enslaved African Americans during the 18th and 19th centuries. Comprising four to six men, patrollers, or “patty rollers” as enslaved African Americans dubbed them, were responsible for apprehending runaways, breaking up unsanctioned gatherings and celebrations of enslaved people, searching slave dwellings for weapons and contraband, preventing enslaved African Americans from engaging in individual economic activity (“huckstering”), and, at times, suppressing slave rebellions. In fact, the history of police work in the Southern states grew out of Whites' early fascination with what African Americans, both enslaved and free, were doing. By definition, the majority of Southern law enforcement was White patrollers, watching, catching, or beating enslaved African Americans. The slave patrol was among the first community-organized, race-based methods of social control in the United States.

Patrols existed in nearly every slave-holding county, but the implementation of a formal patrol system depended on several variables: the date of the colony's settlement, the size of the enslaved population, the overall population of the colony, the threat of insurrection, and the geographic location and density of the area. In the early colonial period, British colonists were fearful of outside invasions by competing colonial powers; consequently, they drew upon their knowledge of posses and militias in England to form state militias, but the dual task of protecting colonists from invasions and enforcing emergent slave laws proved to be too burdensome for the militia. Hence, slave patrols were created as a kind of supplementary force to reinforce slave owners' authority as well as to protect the larger White community from supposed licentious and devious African Americans, who were thought to be regularly engaged in criminal activity.

Insurrection, conspiracy, and striking a White person were the slave crimes, each punishable by death, that Whites most feared, especially those White people who lived in counties where the enslaved population outnumbered the free White population. Many Whites lived in constant fear of insurrection, so Southern states adopted a series of laws to restrict the activities and behavior of enslaved people to prevent potential slave revolts. These so-called slave codes included a pass system, which forbade slaves from traveling without a pass, or ticket, which was written permission for an enslaved person to be off of the plantation. Enslaved African Americans were prohibited from carrying weapons, and in many cases, they were denied the right to assemble without the presence of a White person.

Initially the entire White community was responsible for the enforcement of the slave codes. For [Page 749]example, an early Virginia law stated that landowners could question and whip any enslaved person traveling on their land. As the colonies began to depend more heavily on bondsmen's labor and their numbers increased, the White community developed the slave patrol to monitor the activities of African Americans. Some states required patrols by law, whereas others gave authorization to local communities to organize patrols. Many patrols were derived from the compulsory state militia. Called “musters,” these groups of four to six militia men would serve on a patrol for a week's time. Some patrollers performed their duties voluntarily; others were paid wages or given tax exemptions for their service. Some professions were exempt from the patrols, but harsh fines were levied upon those who shirked their responsibility or failed to provide a substitute. Contrary to long-held assumptions that patrols were staffed primarily by poor Whites, patrol duty was shared across class lines, and patrol captains were often slave holders.

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