Vol. 9 No. 1 (January 1999) pp. 34-36.
ROOTS OF DISORDER: RACE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH,
1817-80 by Christopher Waldrep.
Reviewed by Richard Lowe, Department of History,
In an effort to understand popular attitudes toward law and legal
institutions, the author, associate professor of history at
Organized in seven chapters (with an introduction, a conclusion, and an
appendix), the book complements the usual examinations of elite attitudes at
the state and national levels by analyzing the behavior of men and women at the
grass-roots level of
A third chapter demonstrates that as
The authorās examination of law in
In his chapter on Reconstruction under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, Waldrep throws new and interesting light on the Black Codes, those postwar state laws designed to regulate and control the former slaves. Although historians have almost uniformly described these laws as an attempt to recover some of the power over freedmen that slavery had formerly provided, Waldrep detects an ironic twist. By bringing the former slaves under the control of formal law, white southerners had also extended to the former servants the protections of the law: habeas corpus, protections against forced confessions, the necessity to cross every T and dot every I in legal procedures, etc. The Black Codes "opened a world where whites had to follow due process when disciplining laborers" (p. 113). This was entirely unsatisfactory to men accustomed to handling black miscreants without outside interference.
Congressional or "radical" Reconstruction came to
As former slaves asserted their rights and won election to local and state offices under the congressional plan of Reconstruction, Vicksburgās white population completed the racial unification they had begun during the Civil War. Urban Irishmen and Jews joined hands with Confederate (and Yankee) veterans and rural dirt farmers ö and white Republicans linked arms with white Democrats ö to stand against the new order of black political power. Whether bitter whites blamed their troubles on corrupt black officeholders (and there were a few) or on the failure of law and courts to protect their property, they agreed that formal legal procedures were not up to the task of insuring a traditional, orderly society. Only the old ways, the informal and personal discipline of the antebellum plantation or the power of the mob, could return Vicksburg and Warren County to peace and order and rule by those more suited to leadership. Armed conflict between former slaves and Warren County whites in December 1874 resulted in several dozen deaths (mostly African Americans), the forced resignations of some leading black officeholders, the end of Reconstruction in the county, and the return of white rule. "Whites had learned something from their experiences in slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction: Law could never be made oppressive enough to effectively control African Americans" (p. 174).
Research sources for this study included case files for the county circuit
court, criminal court, and county court. These records sometimes included
transcripts of testimony, depositions, jural instructions, and maps. In
addition, the author gathered information from minute books, docket books, and
Given the bookās strengths, it may seem quibbling to point out a few rough
spots. Although the subtitle claims coverage of the years from 1817 through
1880, the book focuses mainly on the period from the 1830s to 1875. The
subtitle is problematic in another way as well: the book examines race and
criminal justice in one city and
The author occasionally makes sweeping statements that imply a universal
pattern, something historians are generally loath to do. For example, Waldrep
writes that "every white southerner understood what keeping African
Americans Īdownā meant and what it did not mean. It did not mean going to law;
it did not mean relying on a police state. It meant vigilante violence and
lynching" (p. 1). Although they were regrettably few and often overlooked,
some white southerners did speak out against mob law, whether in the antebellum
period or later. Similarly, the author contends that "the tension between
constitutionalism and extralegal violence is a central paradox of American
society" (p. 15). That tension, of course, has never been limited to the
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