Slave patrol

Common card · No. 434760

Slave patrols—also known as patrollers, patterrollers, pattyrollers, or paddy rollers—were organized groups of armed men who monitored and disciplined enslaved people in slave states in the U.S. during the Antebellum South. The slave patrols' function was to police slaves, especially those who escaped or were viewed as defiant. They also formed river patrols to prevent escape by boat. Slave patrols were first established in South Carolina in 1704 and the idea spread throughout the Thirteen Colonies before the abolition of slavery following the Civil War.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Frederic B. Schell, Public domain