Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Harvard Historical Studies)

Slave PatrolsFrom slave Patrols: “Knowing how slave Patrols interacted with both masters and slaves will also improve our understanding their role in the Southern culture of violence. Modern historians readily admit that force and threat underpinned the slave system: slavery studies typically focus on the dominant role of masters, mistresses, or overseers and, to a lesser extent, the domination of blacks by whites throughout the South. Into this equation we must add another factor — the routine use of violence against the slave community-sponsored groups such as the white slave Patrols.Dr. Sally Hadden an associate professor in the Department of History at Western Michigan University, has written an important and revealing work in her Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. Her 340 page book contains 220 pages of text, 100 pages of notes, a ten page bibliography, and a comprehensive ten page index. Therefore, if the reader wants to cross reference her work, the information is readily available.Hadden presents a view that slaves, as important a source of labor for the developing colonies and the southern states as they became to be, also provoked fear upon the whites who lived in Virginia and the Carolinas as blacks out numbered whites, and the impulse for salves to flee represented financial loss as well as loss of labor for slaveholders, thus the origination of Slave Patrols. She documents the rise of the Patrols, who, and how their members were chosen and paid, from the colonial period through the Civil War, and their eventual evolution into the KKK.Dry at times, and in some places in need of editing, Slave Patrols immerses the reader as to how blacks were controlled during and after slavery. She covers periods of war such as our revolution, and the British enticement of freedom to slaves, slave insurrections, the Civil War, and what the post war period was like for the now freed men. Hadden informs the reader that few escaped slaves were killed by Patrols, but the whip was a constant deterrent. Slaves were discouraged from large congregations, secret meetings, or simply being where they were not supposed to be - which lead to a pass and badge system. She also relates that patrol whippings and beatings were more often than not discouraged by slave owners as slaves incapable of working represented damaged investment.With the development of the KKK post Civil War, slaves no longer had the protection of their masters, and beatings and whippings turned into shootings and lynchings to punish freedmen for political convictions and to prevent enforcement of the 14th Amendment, and “became more menacing than patrollers had ever been.” The South feared insurrections that never came, and wanted all freedmen disarmed so they would be helpless. “Restraints upon upward mobility, socialization, and property ownership that slave Patrols had legally imposed continued almost without interruption under the extralegal enforcement of the Klan.” Hadden reinforces that though slavery may have ended with the Civil War, the South relied on the Klan and police for the continuation of white dominance over blacks.Sally Hadden’s Slave Patrol is not a pleasant book to read. It lays the ground work for the control of slaves during the slave period and what was to follow after the Civil War for African Americans that stands on end the argument that slavery ended over 150 years ago, and its time for the African American community to get over it. At the same time she exposes the hypocrisy of the Christian nation, in particular the South, that used force and fear in the control and servitude of fellow humans as history has borne witness.

Very brave enslaved Africans fought back and found ways to outwit the patrollers and escape enslavement. Hadden identifies the case necessary for de-funding and for re-structuring police and law enforcement agencies across the US of America. Racism is entrenched in the structure of law enforcement. In fact, as Hadden describes how the slave patrols morphed into violent vigilantes cowering behind mask, and then later into the police departments today. with the same Haddon's notes that most patrollers we draft dodgers avoiding serving in regular military requiring hand to hand combat. The cowardly patrollers' victims were often unarmed and alone and attacked by mobs. Haddon's book establishes that racism went unpunished. Its brutal policies was to control the stolen African labor. After the Civil War the patroller, klan, white leagues were disbanded. Then the time came to pay reparations. Now the patrollers were back hiding in the policedepartment. They were later reestablished to terrorize Enslaved African who wanted a fair wage and voting for the freed people, american descendants of slaves (ADOS). This books establish excellent research that can be used in the fight through the court system to establish systemic racism and the policies that support racism.

I used this book to contrast people of that day and age asking for papers from slaves venturing away from their master plantation. To today when a white person asks to see photo identification of black men and women in this country. In certain neighborhoods, I see nothing has changed in that Amerikkkan experience.

"Slave Patrols" is an outstandingly researched, and well written book, rarely dry.American soil was certainly neither a gift nor a land grant from the original inhabitants. America was seized by extreme violence.Slaves were not puppets. Their labor was extracted by ultra, up close and personal violence.Such violence has to be a 24 hour/day occupation. Therefore, night-patrols are not optional.Ms Hadden does every American a great service by documenting this propensity, this need for never-ending vigilance as a required adjunct to land theft, as well as theft of the fruits of slaves' labor. The latter theft being enabled by a willingness to employ both murder and torture, i.e.: whipping & rape.Unfortunately the line from colonial militias and antebellum slave patrols ends at today's police forces.And so it (violence) goes.5 stars. Should be read by all.

All facts. It's important that those living in these states know the history. Everyone should read this to get a true understanding of the systematic racial issues.Deuteronomy 28:65"And among these nations shall you find no ease, neither shall the sole of your foot have rest: but the LORD shall give you there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind:"Deuteronomy 28:66"And your life shall hang in doubt before you; and you shall fear day and night, and shall have none assurance of your life"

Sally Hadden's book is one of the very few that deal with this under reported aspect of slavery. Her research makes heavy use of original sources, including local government and court records, the WPA slave narratives, and personal diaries from the antebellum period. This book is an important piece of scholarship, originally written as a doctoral dissertation at Harvard. It provides insight into one of the formative issues in American history, without romanticizing or sentimentality, but with a clear-headed look at her subject. Slavery had to be constantly enforced, and the slaves kept under control to prevent escape or revolt. This is an important book and deserves to be widely read.

Gives you an insight about how the mind set of law enforcement was established that still exists today. Very informative.

Produto excelente!