South Carolina Slave Patrols

Historian Sally Hayden's book slave patrols is probably the most comprehensive history yet written about these the organizations, whatever you want to call them. She argues that in most cases slave patrols consisted of members of all social classes. White people were more or less unified in their obligation to suppress the black population and thus guarantee white supremacy. In 1845 letter from a former South Carolina governor to a visiting English abolitionist quote: "With us every citizen is concerned in the maintenance of order"