The Penalty of a Tyrant's Law: Landscapes of Incarceration during the Second Slavery
2012; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0144039x.2012.709047
ISSN1743-9523
AutoresKelly Birch, Thomas C. Buchanan,
Tópico(s)Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics
ResumoAbstract This article explores the southern prison system during the expansion of slavery in the nineteenth-century USA, to reveal struggles over landscape and geography. It suggests connections between diverse institutions such as plantation jails, county and city jails, workhouses, state penitentiaries and slave pens that have not been conceptualized as part of a carceral system supporting slavery. Slaveholders' various means of using these institutions are outlined as are their perceptions of these prisons. The article concludes by discussing the perspective of enslaved peoples, arguing that prisons were the site of considerable resistance as slave geographies were unable to be completely confined by the expanding carceral system. Notes Henry Bibb, ‘Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb’, in Puttin’ On Ole Massa: The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northrup, ed. Gilbert Osofsky (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), see chaps 7–8, quotes on 105, 107–9. For general works on the law of slavery, see Philip J. Schwartz, Twice Condemned: Slaves and the Criminal Laws of Virginia, 1705–1865 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). For works that use court records to explore slavery, see Ariela J. Gross, Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Christopher Waldrep, Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817–1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Glenn McNair, Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in Georgia's Criminal Justice System (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009); James M. Campbell, Slavery on Trial: Race, Class, and Criminal Justice in Antebellum Richmond, Virginia (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007); Judith K. Schafer, Slavery, The Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1994); Judith K. Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846–1862 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2003); Laura F. Edwards, ‘Law, Domestic Violence, and the Limits of Patriarchal Authority in the Antebellum South’, Journal of Southern History 65 (1999): 733–70. This article draws upon Michael Foucault's account of modern prison development, but considers how this development was flexible to different labour forms. See Michael Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979). We are also broadly influenced by historians who have shown the compatibility of slavery with modernity. See Mark M. Smith, Mastered by the Clock: Time, Freedom, and Slavery in the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Henry Andrew (Tip) Williams quoted in George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, vol. 11: 7, Arkansas Narratives (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972), 166–7. Mrs M.S. Fayman quoted in Rawick, ed., The American Slave, vol. 16: 8, Maryland Narratives (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972), 11–3. Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance to Slavery in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Ryan Quintana, ‘Black Carolinians’ Spatial Practices and the Construction of the Lowcountry Landscape, 1739–1828’ (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2010). Anthony E. Kaye, Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Thomas C. Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Michael Stephen Hindus, Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767–1878 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). Bennett H. Barrow, ‘Entry for 1 May 1838: Rules for Highland Plantation’, Bennett H. Barrow diary, 1833–1846, W: 24, Reel 1, LLMVC, LSU Special Collections, Baton Rouge, LA; Varina J. Davis, Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America, a Memoir by his Wife, vol. 1 (New York: Belford Company: 1890), 175–6; Frank Edgar Everett Jr., Brierfield: Plantation Home of Jefferson Davis (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1971), 158; See also, A Small Farmer, ‘Management of Negroes’, Debow's Southern and Western Review, vol. 11: 4, New Series (October 1851), 369–72; William B. Trotter, A History and Defense of African Slavery (Quitman, Mississippi, Published for the author, 1861), 161, 164–7. ‘Petition of Benajah Randle to the Legislative counsel [sic] & House of Representatives of the General assembly in the Mississippi Territory,’ Wilkinson County, Mississippi, 1815 (PAR 11081501): this and all subsequent abstracts of legal petitions, unless otherwise identified, have been accessed through the Digital Library on American Slavery, University of North Carolina, Greensbro, NC., http://library.uncg.edu/slavery/index.aspx?s=1 (accessed April, 2011). A Petition Analysis Record (PAR) number is provided for each petition obtained from this collection. Many slave narratives include accounts of citizenry involvement in slave incarceration. Henry Bibb, ‘Narrative’ in Puttin' on Ole Massa, Osofsky, ed., 105, 107; Frederick Douglass similarly recounted being marched through the streets to the local jail in Easton, Maryland. See Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History, Reprint of 1881 edition (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2003), 119. News reports comment on the crowds drawn to slave executions. See, for example, ‘The Execution of Pauline’, New Orleans Daily Picayune, March 29, 1846 and ‘Execution of a Slave’, New York Times, August 27, 1856. See, for example, ‘B16: Goochland County Jail’, in Civil War Sites in Virginia: A Tour Guide, ed. James I. Robertson and Brian Steel Wills, rev. ed. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 32–3. Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 268. James Redpath, The Roving Editor or Talks with Slaves in the Southern States (New York: A.B. Burdick, 1859), 296–7. Angie Boyce quoted in Rawick, ed., The American Slave, vol. 6: 5, Indiana Narratives (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972), 21. Louisiana State Legislature, Official Journal of the Senate During the Second Session of the Fifth Legislature of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans: 1822), 29; Prison Discipline Society, Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society, June 1, 1827 (Boston: T.R. Martin, 1828), 89, and May 27, 1834 (Boston: Marvin & Co., 1834), 46–7. Sam T. Stewart quoted in Rawick, ed., The American Slave, vol. 15: 2, North Carolina Narratives (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972), 320. Campbell, Slavery on Trial, 20–40. Whether sanctioned by the courts or commissioned independently by masters, whippings were often conducted on jail grounds, thereby mixing the association between different forms of coercion. In his narrative, Moses Grandy makes reference to both the local jail and the whipping post, writing ‘I could see the jail full of coloured people, and even the whipping post, at which they were constantly enduring the lash’. Moses Grandy, ‘Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America’, in North Carolina Slave Narratives: The Lives of Moses Roper, Lunsford Lane, Moses Grandy & Thomas H. Jones, ed. William Andrews (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press: 2003), 172–3. For other instances of whippings in jails, see: ‘Mistreatment of slaves’, Cornelia Andrews, and Philip Evans quoted in Rawick, ed., The American Slave, vol. 13: 3, Georgia Narratives (1972), 290; vol. 14: 1, North Carolina Narratives (1972), 28–30; vol. 14: 2, South Carolina Narratives (1972), 36. Betty Wood, ‘Prisons, Workhouses, and the Control of Slave Labour in Low Country Georgia, 1763–1815’, Slavery & Abolition 8, no. 3 (1987): 262. John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life of John Brown (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 104–5. Isaac D. Williams and William Ferguson Goldie, Sunshine and Shadow of Slave Life: Reminiscences as Told by Isaac D. Williams to ‘Tege’ (East Saginaw: Evening News Printing and Binding House, 1885), 14. Aaron Ford quoted in Rawick, ed., The American Slave, vol. 14: 2, South Carolina Narratives (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972), 77. ‘Baltimore County and City Jail (Runaway Docket), 1831–1864’. A database of this docket can be found on the website database Beneath the Underground Railroad: The Flight to Freedom compiled by the Maryland State Archives, http://www.mdslavery.net (accessed June 2011). A search for ‘jail’ revealed 3520 results, though it is possible that the total number of runaways was larger than this. Lewis S. Shank, F.P.N. Stanto, and John Trigg, The Board of the Mayor and Aldermen, Letter to the Honorable Members of the Legislature of Tennessee, November 29, 1841, Memphis, Tennessee (PAR 11484205). Charleston Mercury, February 21, 1839, 3; The Abingdon Virginian, March 11, 1864, 5; Courier de la Louisiane, October 21, 1843: 4; Similar advertisements appeared in the Memphis Daily Appeal, January 1, 1857, 4; The Abingdon Virginian, November 6, 1863, 3. ‘Diary entries for October 13 &17, January 29, February 2 and July 21, 1856; September 18, 19 and 25, 1858,’ Typed Ms., vol. 4, folders 10 and 11, Francis Terry Leak Papers, #1095, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 158, 161, 251–2, 464, 474–6. ‘Johnson v Municipality No. One,’ No. 5, LA An. 100, January 1850, in Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, ed., Helen Catterall, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1932), 602–3. Receipts from jailers can be found scattered throughout plantation records. For instance, slave owner Daniel Turnbull received a bill from the Deputy Sheriff and Jailer of St Francisville after his slave had spent 53 days locked in the parish jail. Daniel Turnbull, Bill from Jailor, Mss. #1372, 1860, Misc: T, LLMVC, LSU Special Collections, Baton Rouge, LA. James L. Evans, ‘Petition to the Hon. Thomas G. Rainer, Judge of the Probate Court of Dallas County,’ Dallas County, Alabama, 30 December 1856 (PAR 20185630). Henry and Louisa C. King, ‘Petition to the Honorable William J. Kincey Judge of Probate of Jackson County State of Florida’, Jackson County, Florida, January 15, 1863 (PAR 20586302); Samuel Thomas, et al., ‘Petition to the Circuit Court’, Scott County, Kentucky, November 2, 1854 (PAR 20785423); Lemuel G. Taylor, ‘Petition to the Honorable Judges of Anne Arundel County Court’, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, November 1, 1839 (PAR 20983901); Elizabeth W. Wade, et al., ‘Petition to the Worshipful County Court of Henrico’, Henrico County, Virgina, May 17, 1855 (PAR 21685537); Archibald W. Dunn, ‘Petition to the worshipful Justices of Henrico County Court,’ Henrico County, Virginia, March 7, 1864 (PAR 21686404). Campbell, Slavery on Trial, 79; For a broader perspective on criminal procedure, see Daniel J. Flanigan, ‘Criminal Procedure in Slave Trials in the Antebellum South’, Journal of Southern History 40, no. 4 (1974): 539–64. Gideon G. Norman, ‘Petition to the Honorable John W. Heard one of the Justices of the Inferior Court of Wilkes County’, Wilkes County, Georgia, March 25, 1862 (PAR 20686243). John H. Hilliary, ‘Petition to the Hon. Madison Nelson Judge of the Circuit Court for Frederick County’, Frederick County, Maryland, December 13, 1855 (PAR 20985518). Henry Bibb, ‘Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb,’ 108. See also ‘Mr Barrett's Journal’ in Nineteenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society (Boston: Published at 63 Atkinson Street, 1844), 108–9. Ibid. ‘Slemaker v Marriott’, no. 5: 406, December 1833 in Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery & the Negro, ed., Helen T. Catterall, vol. 4 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington 1936), 79. Steven Deyle, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 63, 67. For more on slave trading and private pens, see Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999). It must be noted that criminologist, Marianne Fisher-Giorlando has published significant works on female convicts in Louisiana's state penitentiary, which include data on enslaved women. Her works have paved the way for more extensive research into incarceration practices within the field of slavery studies. See, for example, Marianne Fisher-Giorlando, ‘Women in the Walls: The Imprisonment of Women at the Baton Rouge Penitentiary, 1835–1862’, in The Wall is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana, ed., Burk Foster, Wilbert Rideau & Douglas A. Dennis (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1995), 16–25. J.D.B. De Bow, Statistical View of the United States : Being a Compendium of the Seventh Census to Which are Added the Results of Every Previous Census, Beginning with 1790, Demographic Monographs, vol. 5 (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1970). Edward Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century American South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1885), 61. Data on penitentiary inmates collected from Annual Reports from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, [1839 – library of Congress], reports from 1843, 1845, 1848, 1850, 1852, 1854–1857, 1859–1861. Full citations available on request. The sale of children from prisons is an under explored area of research amongst scholars of slavery history. Louisiana passed a law in 1848 allowing the sale of enslaved children from the penitentiary, suggesting another mechanism of state involvement with the slave trade. See ‘An Act Providing for the disposal of such slaves as are or may be born in the Penitentiary, the issue of convicts, December 11, 1848’; in Acts passed at the Extra Session of the Second Legislature of the State of Louisiana, held and begun in the City of New Orleans, on December 4, 1848 (New Orleans: printed at the office of the Louisiana Courier, 1848); the sales of several children were documented by the Board of Directors and the State Auditor. See: Louisiana State Auditor, State Auditor's Office Account Book no. 4 (1857–1859), Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge, LA, 213. Official records additionally reveal the presence of enslaved children in the Virginia State Penitentiary. In 1863, Governor John Letcher called the attention of the General Assembly to four slave children residing with their mothers in the penitentiary, recommending that they be removed from the institution by sale. ‘Message of the Governor of Virginia and Accompanying Documents’, Journal of the House of Delegates of the State of Virginia for the Session of 1863–1864 (Richmond: William F. Ritchie, Public Printer, 1863), xviii. All people on these dockets were either labelled as slaves or were listed next to their owners. See Auditor of Public Accounts (1776–1928) ‘Slaves and Free Persons for Sale and Transportation at the Penitentiary, 1816–1842’, in Series: Condemned Blacks Executed or Transported, 1783–1865, Microfilm APA 756, Reel 2555, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VI. William C. Sneed, A Report on the History and Mode of Management of the Kentucky Penitentiary from its Origins in 1798, to March 1, 1860 (Frankfort: State Printer, 1860), 342. Courts, sheriffs and jail keepers in Maryland, Virginia and Louisiana advertised slaves who were to be auctioned off from the penitentiary. See, for example, the sale of ‘Negro Jacob, a slave for life’, American & Commercial Daily Advertiser, March 1, 1825, 1. Inmate records #4053, William alias Bill (slave) & #4094, John Simms (slave), Maryland Penitentiary Prisoner Records (1811, 1826–1850), MSA SE65–4, S275 1811–1978, Maryland State Archives, Baltimore, MD, 44 and 46. Octavia Victoria Rogers, The House of Bondage, or, Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves, Original and Life Like, as they Appeared in their Old Plantation and City Slave Life (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1890), 16–7, 24. Henry Bibb, ‘Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb’, 106. Ibid. 109–10. Ibid. 110–11; For another example of a ‘rebellious plot’ devised amongst a group of jailed slaves see M.W. de Bree, Letter to John B. De Bree, Norfolk, January 29, 1820, Ms# 10930, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. ‘Entries for August 20 and November 6, 1842’, Bennett H. Barrow Diary, 1833–1846. Lindsay Coleman, ‘Letter to the Honorable the Speakers and members of the Senate and House of Delegates of the Virginia Assembly’, Virginia, December 8, 1834(PAR 11683415); John R. Bumpers, ‘Letter from To the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Alabama’, Alabama, December 3, 1857 (PAR 10185702); ‘Alston v. Durant’, 2 Strobhart 257, January 1848, in Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, ed., Helen Catterall, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1932), 46. ‘Mercer v. State, 17’ Ga. 146, January 1855, in Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, ed., Helen Catterall, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1932), 40. Archer Payne, ‘Letter to the Honourable Mr. Speaker & Gen't of the House Delegates now Seting [sic]’, Goochland County, Virginia, May 13, 1778 (PAR11677805). ‘Baker v State’, 15 Ga. 498, July 1854, in Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, ed., Helen Catterall, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1932), 35. George Elliot, ‘Bill of Expenses to Woodville, Miss, February 9,1859’, McHatton, Pike and Company, Company Record Book, vol. 2, Mf. reel 2, LLMVC, LSU Special Collections, Baton Rouge, LA. ‘Bill from P.R. Braud’, in McHatton, Pike and Company, Company Record Book, vol. 3, Mf. reel 3, LLMVC, LSU Special Collections, Baton Rouge, LA; Rapport Annuel du Bureau de Controle du Penitencier de la Louisiane a L'assemblee Generale, January 1861, French ed. (Baton Rouge, LA: J.M. Taylor, imprinter d'etat, 1861). See: ‘Document L: Report and Accompanying Documentation of the House Committee, Appointed to Examine the Affairs of the Maryland Penitentiary’, Senate Extra Session, No. 25, August 1, 1861 (Frederick, B.H. Richardson, printer, 1861), 3–4; 10–1; Baltimore Sun, December 24, 1860, 1; ‘Confession of Arson’, Baltimore Sun, January 8, 1861, 2; ‘Proceedings of Court: Criminal Cases. ‘State v. Madison alias John Butler, Joseph Wheatley, Edward Perry & Samuel Green’, Baltimore Sun, February 7, 1861, 4. While Senate reports and newspapers do not identify Madison, alias John Butler as a slave, penitentiary records do identify his slave status. See: ‘Inmate record #5220, Madison Butler (slave)’ Maryland Penitentiary Prisoner Records (1850–1862), MSA, SE65–5, S275 1811–1978, Maryland State Archives, Baltimore, MD, 43. Baton Rouge Gazette, August 26, 1848, 2; ‘Document No. 7, List of Convicts who died in the Louisiana Penitentiary during the year ending 30th September 1848’ in Report of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Penitentiary (New Orleans: printed by the Louisiana Courier, 1848). Isaac D. Williams and William Ferguson Goldie, Sunshine and Shadow of Slave Life, 19. Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Christina Sharpe, Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Reenslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008); Alex Lichtenstein's ‘Good Roads and Chain Gangs in the Progressive South: “The Negro Convict is a Slave”’, The Journal of Southern History 59: 1 (February 1993), 85–110; David M. Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York: Free Press, 1996). Additional informationNotes on contributorsThomas C. Buchanan Kelly Birch and Thomas C. Buchanan are in the School of History and Politics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia. Emails: kelly.birch@adelaide.edu.au and thomas.buchanan@adelaide.edu.au
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