Historians have found that the responsibility for the control of slaves often extended beyond the plantation owner and his designated overseers. While they maintained control on the plantation, often with brutal efficiency, the planter class nonetheless worried about the movements of slaves throughout the region, particularly potential runaways. Runaways not only meant a loss of resources (especially when considering slaves as private property) but also the potential that productivity might suffer because of the diminished availability of labor. To deter slaves from escaping the plantation, plantation owners established and frequently encouraged the activities of regional slave patrols.
These white males, often described by the former slaves as “pore white trash,” patrolled the areas between plantations and had the unofficial authority to question, and sometimes punish, any slave they encountered traveling between plantations. Their general objective was the control of the black community through physical intimidation.
Historians Kenneth Stampp and Sally Hadden found that slave patrols were closely associated with the local militia, which meant their activities, as a pseudo-police force, were sanctioned by local legislatures. As such, slave owners relied upon the slave patrols to act as a form of law enforcement to monitor the activities of slaves and keep a watchful eye on any potential rebellions. This allowed them to either prevent potential rebellions themselves or notify plantation owners, thus allowing plantation owners to inflict whatever punishments they deemed appropriate.
In Texas, local officials became extremely concerned about the numbers of runaways escaping to Mexico. By 1844, local newspapers encouraged anyone finding runaway slaves west of San Antonio to collect a reward of $50 when they returned the slaves to their rightful owner. Two years later, the state legislature directed local county courts to create a formal patrol designed to guard specific districts periodically with the power to search slaves and property.
It did not matter if the slaves were near San Antonio, Texas, or Lynchburg, Virginia, the slave patrols liberally punished any slave unable to present a pass that allowed them to be away from their respective plantations. This further illustrates the continuity of slavery in Texas with the remainder of the Confederacy. Nonetheless, the threats of punishments were not enough to prevent some slaves from slipping away without a pass. Tom Holland recalled how he was caught by the patrols, who he called “patterrollers.” Holland said,
“If we went off without a pass we allus went two at a time. We slipped off when we got a chance to see young folks on some other place. The patterrollers cotched me one night and, Lawd have mercy me, they stretches me over a log and hits thirty-nine licks with a rawhide loaded with rock, and every time they hit me the blood and hide done fly.”
Holland continued by saying he was unable to work for days after the beating. Still, he continued to fight against the rules by leaving without a pass. This indicates that no amount of lashings or other punishments would deter him from challenging the authority of the patrols.
While regional slave patrols enjoyed the blessings of plantation owners and were allowed to dispense any form(s) of punishments they deemed appropriate, slaves routinely defied their authority. Even when the punishments were severe, as they often were, slaves believed their defiance signified their continual fight against the unofficial authority of the slave patrols, and subsequently, the official authority of the plantation owners themselves.
Sources
Campbell, Randolph. 1989. An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Coleman, I. Winston. 1940. Slavery Times in Kentucky. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Fry, Gladys-Marie. 1991. Night Riders in Black Folk History. Athens and London: the University of Georgia Press.
Hadden, Sally E. 2001. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
Stampp, Kenneth. 1956. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Tom Holland, Julia Blanks and Charley Mitchell, TexasSlave Narratives. Box 4H359. The University of Texas, Center for American History.
