To understand the modern American state, you have to look at what it learned to do at night.

@Deglassco That image description seems off, Dr. Glassco.

Slave patrols weren’t marginal or reactive. They were the state’s most regular point of contact with white men. Patrol duty crossed class lines. Men without office or wealth exercised sovereign, bodily power—backed by statute. This wasn’t vigilantism. It was the state stripped to essentials.

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Image: Mississippi slave patrol illustration. 1863. Author unknown. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol#/media/File%3ASlave_Patrol.jpg

@tadbithuman which one?

Final Sources

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975.

Woodard, Colin. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. New York: Viking, 2011.

Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Honor and Violence in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

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@tadbithuman which one?

@Deglassco @tadbithuman " illustration of a Black man on horseback, hands bound, punishment collar visible" that one, for me.

@Deixis9 @tadbithuman Thank you. I amended it. Just simplified it. The character limit prevents me from explaining its relevance. In addition to being a striking image, it shows that slave policing was a transatlantic practice rather than a uniquely American one. This scene shows a Brazilian capitão do mato, a slave catcher who is Black, and really reminds us how systems of coercion could enlist non-white actors in enforcing slavery.

@Deglassco

Great thread. ️

“Violence wasn’t meant to be precise—it was meant to be ambient.”

“…whiteness conferred privilege conditionally. Participation in coercion was one condition.”

And Black women aren’t even mentioned yet.

To understand the modern American state, you have to look at what it learned to do at night. In the slave South, violence didn’t arrive as spectacle. It arrived on schedule. Names checked. Horses assigned. Lanterns lit. By law, patrols could stop, search, whip, detain—without warrant or cause. Suspicion was enough. This wasn’t chaos. It was governance.

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Image: 1823 illustration by Johann Moritz Rugendas. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capitao-mato.jpg

@nellie_m You’re absolutely right. Black women were living under the same violence as Black men with the added component of sexual coercion and constant surveillance that the law barely named but fully enabled. White women, meanwhile, were cast as people to be “protected,” something that helped justify patrol violence. Gender wasn’t separate from the system. It shaped how control worked and who it claimed to defend.

To understand the modern American state, you have to look at what it learned to do at night. In the slave South, violence didn’t arrive as spectacle. It arrived on schedule. Names checked. Horses assigned. Lanterns lit. By law, patrols could stop, search, whip, detain—without warrant or cause. Suspicion was enough. This wasn’t chaos. It was governance.

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Image: 1823 illustration by Johann Moritz Rugendas. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capitao-mato.jpg

To understand the modern American state, you have to look at what it learned to do at night. In the slave South, violence didn’t arrive as spectacle. It arrived on schedule. Names checked. Horses assigned. Lanterns lit. By law, patrols could stop, search, whip, detain—without warrant or cause. Suspicion was enough. This wasn’t chaos. It was governance.

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Image: 1823 illustration by Johann Moritz Rugendas. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capitao-mato.jpg