[Footnote 45:  Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America, I, 97.]

[Footnote 46:  J.S.  Buckingham, Slave States, II, 427.]

[Footnote 47:  Seaboard Slave States, pp. 101, 103.  Cf. also DeBow’s Review, XII, 692, and XXVIII, 194-199.]

Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to occasional complaint.  Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans recited in 1813, among matters needing correction, that loitering slaves were thronging the grog shops every evening and that negro dances were lasting far into the night, in spite of the prohibitions of the law.[48] A citizen of Charleston protested in 1835 against another and more characteristic form of dissipation.  “There are,” said he, “sometimes every evening in the week, funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes ... who disturb all the inhabitants in the neighborhood of burying grounds in Pitt street near Boundary street.  It appears to be a jubilee for every slave in the city.  They are seen eagerly pressing to the place from all quarters, and such is frequently the crowd and noise made by them that carriages cannot safely be driven that way."[49]

[Footnote 48:  Plantation and Frontier, II, 153.]

[Footnote 49:  Letter of a citizen in the Southern Patriot, quoted in H.M.  Henry, Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina (Emory, Va., 1914), p. 144.]

The operations of urban constables and police courts are exemplified in some official statistics of Charleston.  In the year ending September 1, 1837, the slave arrests, numbering 768 in all, were followed in 138 cases by prompt magisterial discharge, by fines in 309 cases, and by punishment in the workhouse or by remandment for trial on criminal charges in 264 of the remainder.  The mayor said in summary:  “Of the 573 slaves fined or committed to the workhouse nearly the whole were arrested for being out at night without tickets or being found in the dram shops or other unlawful places.  The fines imposed did not in general exceed $1, and where corporal punishment was inflicted it was always moderate.  It is worthy to remark that of the 460 cases reported by the marshals for prosecution but 22 were prosecuted, the penalties having been voluntarily paid in 303 cases, and in 118 cases having been remitted, thus preventing by a previous examination 421 suits.”  Arrests of colored freemen in the same period numbered 78, of which 27 were followed by discharge, 36 by fine or whipping, 5 by sentence to the workhouse, and 10 by remandment.

In the second year following, the slave and free negro arrests for being “out after the beating of the tattoo without tickets, fighting and rioting in the streets, following military companies, walking on the battery contrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden places, theft, or other violation of the city and state laws” advanced for some unexplained reason to an aggregate of 1424.  Of those taken into custody 274 were discharged after examination, 330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecuted or delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the fines were paid, for 398 the penalties were paid by their owners or guardians, 115 were runaways who were duly returned to their masters or otherwise disposed of according to law, and the remaining 252 were delivered on their owners’ orders.[50]