Police Evolution in the South
In the same manner that its lifestyle and economy evolved differently, policing in the American South took shape following a pattern dictated by its laws. Although the cities that grew in the South, such as Charleston, Savannah, and Richmond, developed systems of night watches and eventually expanded them to day police, they added another component unique to the region – slave patrols. Slave patrols roamed the South in search of runaway slaves.
The Carolina colony around Charles Town, today’s Charleston, established its first slave patrol in 1704. As part of their formal mission, they were responsible for the incitement of fear among the slaves to prevent them from attempting to escape, as well as capturing those that did and returning them to their owners. The slave patrols were paid by colony authorities in Carolina, from fees assessed on slaveowners.
Following the Civil War, many of the former slave patrols became vigilante groups which opposed the efforts of the politicians during Reconstruction, continuing to terrorize the former slaves to prevent them from exercising their new rights as citizens. The vigilantes gradually evolved into the sheriff departments and small-town police departments of the Deep South, which enforced the Jim Crow and segregation laws well into the twentieth century.
It was the enforcement of the Jim Crow laws and the lack of work other than in an agricultural labor force that stimulated the great migration to the Northern cities and towns in search of manufacturing and mining jobs. During the years following the Civil War, many northerners resented the influx of new labor, as the competition for jobs became even greater with the immigration boom and the widespread expansion of industrialization.
Southern police forces did not develop the organized systems designed by Robert Peel in England and imitated by the northern cities until well after the civil war, and in many cases, it was initiated by the forces of Reconstruction. By the end of the nineteenth century, all American police forces were on the verge of being forced to adapt to two major societal changes. These were an increase in crime and the emergence of the automobile.