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“There are few subjects in political economy of greater difficulty”: The Poor Laws of the Antebellum South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

James W. Ely Jr.
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Abstract

This article examines the administration of the poor laws in six southern states from 1800 to 1860. Although southerners were influenced to some degree by developments in northeastern communities, the unique features of antebellum southern life caused poor relief to assume a distinct character. Poverty was simply not perceived as a major concern in the South. Consequently, southerners were less inclined to stigmatize paupers, or to adopt a systematic policy of institutionalizing dependents. They relied heavily on such traditional practices as outrelief and apprenticeship. This approach harmonized with the southern preference for a legal system which encouraged informal solution of social problems at the local level.

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Articles
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American Bar Foundation Research Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , Fall 1985 , pp. 849 - 879
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Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1985 

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References

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145 Code of Tennessee of 1858, 519–20 (§ 2694). This provision may have served to reduce potential pauperism among free blacks. However, such laws were often disregarded in practice. Legislators frequently granted exceptions, and some courts upheld a master's right to emancipate slaves despite restrictive statutes. Arthur Howington, “A Property of Special and Peculiar Value”: The Tennessee Supreme Court and the Law of Manumission, 44 Tenn. Hist. Q. 302 (1985).Google Scholar

146 An Act empowering the county courts to emancipate slaves, Nov. 13, 1801, in 1 Scott, Laws of Tennessee 714. For an example of such a bond see Davidson County Court Minute Book, April 5, 1842. See also ch. III, § 60, Revised Statutes of the State of North Carolina, supra note 115.Google Scholar

147 E.g., An Act to emancipate Caroline Cook and her four children, Dec. 22, 1838, ch. 48,1838–39 N.C. Sess. Laws 157; An Act to emancipate Abel Payne and his wife Patsey, slaves, Jan. 2,1847, ch. 161, 1846–47 N.C. Sess. Laws 297.Google Scholar

148 Michael S. Hindus has maintained that the existence of slavery was the crucial factor in determining the administration of criminal justice in the antebellum South and in strengthening adherence to the status quo. Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1757–1878, at xxvi-xxviii, 218–19, 224–25, 233 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1980).Google Scholar

149 Ward, David, Cities and Immigrants: A Geography of Change in Nineteenth-Century America 62 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). see also Degler, Carl N., Place Over Time: The Continuity of Southern Distinctiveness 17–22 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

150 See generally James W. Ely, Jr., & David J. Bodenhamer, Regionalism and the Legal History of the South, in David J. Bodenhamer & James W. Ely, Jr., Ambivalent Legacy: The Legal History of the South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1984).Google Scholar

151 Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South 333 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

152 Ayers, Edward L., Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th Century American South 34–72 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Hindus, supra note 148, at 210–13.Google Scholar

153 Mathews, Donald G., Religion in the Old South 78–79 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Clement Eaton, The Mind of the Old South 158–61,165-67 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964); Anne C. Loveland, Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, 1800–1860, at 167–71 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

154 Rothman, supra note 1, at 156.Google Scholar

155 Yates Report, supra note 14, at 1106.Google Scholar

156 The Laws Now in Force, supra note 54, at 35.Google Scholar

157 Even as he decried an increase in public assistance, Governor Andrew Pickens of South Carolina declared: “That the poor should be liberally provided for by law will not be questioned by anyone.” Message no. 1, Nov. 28, 1817, Governor's Messages, 1814–1822, S.C. Archives.Google Scholar

158 An Act authorizing the county courts to appoint a committee… for the purpose of examining into the state and condition of persons applying as paupers, Nov. 15, 1819, ch. 30,1819Tenn. Pub. Acts 63.Google Scholar

159 Chatham County Inferior Court Minute Book, 1855–1860, Aug. 26, 1859, Georgia Historical Society.Google Scholar

160 For an argument that Charleston's city leaders used compulsory apprenticeships as a means of social control during the late colonial period, see Fraser, Walter J. Jr., The City Elite, “Disorder,” and the Poor Children of Pre-Revolutionary Charleston, 84 S.C. Hist. Mag. 167 (1983).Google Scholar

161 An Act to amend an act ofthe General Assembly…entitled “An Act to alter the mode of electing wardens of the poor,” Jan. 27, 1849, ch. 98, 1848–49 N.C. Sess. Laws 219. This statute overturned the decision in Smithwick v. Williams, 30 N.C. (8 Ired.) 268 (1848), which held that penalties established in earlier legislation did not cover wardens selected by the county court rather than popular election.Google Scholar

162 Starting in 1830 legislators enacted a series of statutes authorizing various county courts to compensate wardens for their services. An Act to make a reasonable compensation to the board of wardens … of the poor of the county of Hyde for their services, Jan. 7, 1830, ch. 149, 1830 N.C. Sess. Laws 88. See also, An Act to compensate the wardens of the poor of Mecklenburg County, Jan. 19, 1855, ch. 308, 1854–55 N.C. Sess. Laws 433.Google Scholar

163 York County Court Order Book, Apr. 21, 1834, Va. State Library.Google Scholar

164 Id., Apr. 17, 1837. Despite this frustrating experience the Virginia Constitution of 1850, art. VI, § 30, provided in part: “Constables and overseers of the poor shall be elected by the voters, as may be prescribed by law.” 7 Francis N. Thorpe, ed., The Federal and State Constitutions 3849 (7 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909).Google Scholar

165 An Act to continue in office the late commissioners of the poor for York District, Dec. 19, 1849, in 11 Statutes at Large of South Carolina, 1839–1866, at 599; An Act to provide for the appointment of commissioners of the poor for the District of Lancaster, Dec. 21, 1858, in id. at 631.Google Scholar

166 An Act to alter the mode of electing wardens of the poor, Jan. 6,1847, ch.64, 1846–47 N.C. Sess. Laws 133.Google Scholar

167 E.g., Degler, supra note 149; John Shelton Reed, The Enduring South: Subcultural Persistence in Mass Society (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1972); Pessen, Edward, How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South? 85 Am. Hist. Rev. 1119 (1980).Google Scholar

168 An important early treatment is Charles S. Sydnor, The Southerner and the Laws, 6 J.S. Hist. 3 (1940). For the current literature see Bodenhamer & Ely, supra note 150; Symposium: The Legal History of the South, 32 Vand. L. Rev. 1–453 (1979).Google Scholar