Prior to Wilson County’s formation in 1855, much of its present-day territory lay in Edgecombe, including everything east of a line running a couple of miles inside present-day Interstate 95 and north of Contentnea Creek. In 1844, the Tarboro’ Press published “Rules and Regulations to be Observed by the Patrollers of the several Districts in the County of Edgecombe.” Slave patrols, known as patrollers or patty rollers, were government-sanctioned groups of armed men charged with monitoring and enforcing discipline upon enslaved people.
Edgecombe County patrollers operated under a set of comprehensive and precise rules. Tasked with visiting ever house inhabited by enslaved people at least once a month, they rode at night. They searched for firearms and “seditious publications” and kept a sharp lookout for any enslaved person out and about more than a mile from home. They could beat people — up to 15 lashes — for having too much fun. On Sundays, their job was to make sure enslaved people were not “strolling about” enjoying their one day off or selling trinkets for pocket change. Patrollers ran down runaways and, if met with “insolence,” could drop a whip 39 times across a black back. They were compensated for their services.
Tarboro’ Press, 9 March 1844.
Oh , my Lord. Just to think that this was the law of the land !!
No wonder there is still a propensity among the descendants of the originators of these laws to want to still carry out such violence. Lord, just have your way.
Oh , my Lord. Just to think that this was the law of the land !!
No wonder there is still a propensity among the descendants of the originators of these laws to want to still carry out such violence. Lord, just have your way.
Somewhere in the distance past I found an article which explains that municipalities in the new Louisiana and Mississippi territories were established with the idea that a slave patrol could ride the circuit of the territory of the town or county in a single night, ensuring “social peace” but fating them to a picayune size which would ensure unsustainable tax regimes or – alternately – miserable municipal services; part of the reason that funds from policing still make up an outsize portion of municipal revenue.
In Guyana – richest of the Crown colonies – a phantom Dutchman on his horse still is the most fearsome of jumbies met on the high road. There are remedies to meeting a moon-gazer or a cow-foot woman; but nothing to help you if you meet the Dutch patrol-rider.