Has the Idea of Law Enforcement in America changed much since 1850?
How much progress has been made in 174 years
The 1850 Slave Catchers
They are called, “The Slave Catchers of the Americas”. European colonies established this in the sixteenth century, in the West Indies, later to be adapted in American colonies in the eighteenth century, colonial Virginia and Carolina.
The colonial era of the United States saw the emergence of a law enforcement system modeled on those present in Europe. In the Northern Colonies, these consisted of watchmen, employed by private citizens to police the streets and maintain order. In the Southern Colonies, law enforcement was primarily centered around policing the large population of enslaved African Americans who worked on plantations. These groups consisted of both planters and colonists who owned no slaves and were paid by planters to search for escaped slaves.
These Southern law enforcement groups, which continued to be active after the American Revolution and the establishment of the United States, were created out of a need to maintain order among the enslaved and enslaved owners as opposed to protecting the interests of the colonists who owned no slaves. Many Southern planters were considered irresponsible if their enslaved chattel property were allowed to escape. It was a fear that more escapes would upend the system if not met with an immediate response. It was believed to be in the general interest of all planters to maintain discipline to ensure the enslaved did not have the chance to start a rebellion. Many states allowed local law enforcement to enlist the help of federal marshals, U.S. commissioners, and other local citizens. This spread to more states with the ratification of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required all citizens and local law enforcement to aid in the capture of runaway slaves. This was less than two generations ago; 174 years.
Amhaud Albery, Feb. 23, 2020
To nullify this practice, local government began offering law enforcement agents a greater reward for returning a slave to the South than that of abolitionists who were willing to pay police to look the other way. During the Civil War, these law enforcement groups were met with great difficulty, primarily because most of the White men were off fighting in the war. With the men gone, the duty to keep the enslaved in line fell on the women, who also had households to run. The lack of punishment and a greater likelihood of successful escape caused more and more of the enslaved to run away. With slave patrols stretched so thin, many of the enslaved were able to escape and were often aided by enemy invaders. Many of the enslaved joined Union ranks, the United States Colored Troops, taking up arms against their former owners.
Revisiting American history does not seem like a distant endeavor. This feels current in some instances, with religion and politics staying on code. Did you know that Evangelical Christians would go to church on Sunday, and leave church in the thousands to go to a public lynching, passing out body parts as souvenirs?
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want equality because both come from families that owned plantations with slaves. They don’t want to give up that false sense of royalty, or privilege or face their guilt. They are sitting on the books that show who we are and where our family derives from. Most of us have taken on the last names of slave masters. They know what would happen if things were equal. Most of them would end up bankrupt and behind bars, this includes White women. We would take over like we do with everything we are involved in, and the ugly side of America would be history.
This is the nature of politics. Reagan flooded our communities with drugs. This shows how they all work together. Then the Democrats, Bill Clinton at the time, got in office and locked up everybody that sold drugs, leaving crackheads to raise our community and women to become single mothers. Then Sleepy Joe, as a Senator, wrote the bill himself that locked us up. So, the same guy that Black people, specifically Black women, gathered together to get in office, is the same person that wrote the bill for mass incarceration. And if you notice, he has not done anything for black people. Yet many of us will come together to ensure he has a second term. Keep in mind, that the George Floyd bill has not been passed. Mainstream media floods the airways! Headline after headline. Must defeat Covid. Get the jab or lose your livelihood. Unvaccinated people are the problem. Now it is, must support Ukraine. We now have more voting restrictions since he has been in office. We fell for it yet again.
Do you believe any of this could be the cause of broken homes, drug addiction, or mental illness? We don’t need therapy, we need the truth. The effects of slavery do not just have consequences and repercussions for Black people.
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