slave patrol
Antebellum enforcement squads
Slave patrols were organized groups of armed white men in the antebellum American South who monitored enslaved people's movements, hunted runaways, and enforced discipline through violence.
Patrollers had legal authority to stop, search, and whip any Black person found without a pass.
The patrol caught him three miles from the plantation.
Historians identify slave patrols as precursors to both the Ku Klux Klan and modern American policing.
- antebellumBefore a war's start
- overseerOne who monitors work
- fugitiveOne fleeing authorities
- runawayOne who flees
- plantationLarge-scale farming operation
cotton field · shackles · hounds · bloodhound · pursuit · manhunt · hunting party · bounty · capture · night watch · whip · iron collar · chains · tracker · nightrider · vigilante · militia · enforcement
- slaverybondage, chattel, thrall, Middle Passage, slaveholders
- slave lawsCode Noir, pass laws, curfew laws, inheritance laws, inheritance rules
slave patrolUnderground Railroad
Covert abolitionist escape network
safe house · conductors · sanctuary movement · refugee assistance
slave patrolUnderground Railroad
Covert abolitionist escape network
abolitionist movement · freedom fighters · liberators · Union Army · conductors
slave, patrol, slaves, slaved, slaving, slavery, enslaved, enslave, enslaves