Slave Patrols – Law & Violence in Virginia & the Carolinas: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas: v. 138 (Harvard Historical Studies) - Hardcover

Hadden, Sally E

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674004701 ISBN 13: 9780674004702

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Obscured from our view of slaves and masters in America is a critical third party: the state, with its coercive power. This book completes the grim picture of slavery by showing us the origins, the nature, and the extent of slave patrols in Virginia and the Carolinas from the late 17th century through the end of the Civil War. Mining a variety of sources, Sally Hadden presents the views of both patrollers and slaves as she depicts the patrols, composed of "respectable" members of society as well as poor whites, often mounted and armed with whips and guns, exerting a brutal and archaic brand of racial control inextricably linked to post-Civil War vigilantism and the Ku Klux Klan. City councils also used patrollers before the war, and police forces afterward, to impose their version of race relations across the South, making the entire region, not just plantations, an armed camp where slave workers were controlled through terror and brutality.

About this title

Review

Hadden offers insights into a part of U.S. history that has been little studied, despite the fact that it is an integral fact of that history...[Slave] patrols became part of the violent force used to react to slave revolts, the threat of such revolts, and runaways. Despite the bravado attached to their image, slave patrols were "an unequivocal manifestation of white fear."--Vanessa Bush"Booklist" (02/01/2001)

About the Author

Sally E. Hadden is Associate Professor of History and Assisant Professor of Law at Florida State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674004701
• ISBN 13: 9780674004702
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352