1 E.g., David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1971); Michael B. Katz, Poverty and Policy in American History (New York: Academic Press, 1983); Raymond Mohl, Poverty in New York, 1783–1825 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Priscilla Ferguson Clement, Welfare and the Poor in the Nineteenth-Century City, Philadelphia, 1800–1854.(Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985); Gary B. Nash, Poverty and Poor Relief in Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia, 33 Wm. & Mary Q. (3d ser.) 3 (1976); Susan Grigg, The Dependent Poor of Newburyport, 1800–1830 (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1978).Google Scholar

2 There has been relatively little effort to analyze southern measures for poor relief between the Revolution and the Civil War. See Wisner, Elizabeth, Social Welfare in the South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970); Roy M. Brown, Public Poor Relief in North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1928); James W. Ely, Jr., Poor Laws of the Post-Revolutionary South, 21 Tulsa L. J. I (1985); Barbara L. Bellows, Tempering the Wind: The Southern Response to Urban Poverty, 1850–1865 (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1983); Ellen Barbour Wallace, History of Legal Provision for the Poor and of Public Welfare Administration in Tennessee (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1927).Google Scholar

3 Commissioners of the Poor of St. Paul's Parish v. Lynah, 13 S.C.L. (2 McCord) 170, 171 (1822).Google Scholar

4 As quoted in E. Merton Coulter, A Short History of Georgia 254 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933).Google Scholar

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6 Fitzhugh, George, Sociology for the South; or, The Failure of Free Society 253 (Richmond, 1854; reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1965); Daniel R. Hundley compared “Poor White Trash” in the South to northern paupers, but contended that “the Poor White Trash are about the only paupers in our Southern States, and they are very rarely supported by either the State or parish in which they reside.” Social Relations in Our Southern States 257–58 (New York, 1860; reprint, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1973).Google Scholar

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10 Nashville Daily Gazette, Apr. 23, 1856. See also editorial in Nashville Daily Gazette, April 27, 1856.Google Scholar

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13 These states are broadly representative of the southern experience with poor relief from 1800 to 1860. It was essential to include both eastern seaboard states with a long colonial history as well as jurisdictions in the trans-Appalachian South. Similarly, states from both the upper and lower South were selected. Certain jurisdictions were deliberately omitted. Louisiana, with its French-Spanish civil law background, did not utilize the English poor laws. Texas and Arkansas became states late in the antebellum era and consequently offer only a modest data base.Google Scholar

14 Yates, John, Report of the Secretary of State in 1824 on the Relief and Settlement of the Poor, app. B, pt. 2, § 1, Virginia, reprinted in The Almshouse Experience 1102 (New York: Arno Press & the New York Times, 1971) (hereinafter cited as the Yates Report).Google Scholar

15 An Act to protect the estates of orphans, and to make permanent provision for the poor, Dec. 18, 1792, 1792 Ga. Laws 23. 27.Google Scholar

16 An Act making provision for the poor, Oct. 20, 1797, in 1 Edward Scott, Laws of the State of Tennessee 593–95 (2 vols., Knoxville, Tenn.: Heiskell & Brown, 1821).Google Scholar

17 Edwards v. Branch, 52 N.C. (7 Jones) 90, 91 (1859).Google Scholar

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21 Brown, supra note 2, at 32.Google Scholar

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37 An Act to authorize the justices of the inferior courts of the counties of Jasper, Jones, and Monroe to provide and establish an asylum for the invalid poor of said counties, Dec. 22, 1829, 1829 Ga. Laws 110, 112; An Act to authorize the justices of the inferior courts of Upson and Houston counties, to establish an asylum for the invalid poor of said counties, Dec. 22, 1832, 1832 Ga. Laws 51, 53.Google Scholar

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44 Id., July 29, 1817.Google Scholar

45 Id., Oct. 29, 1816.Google Scholar

46 Id., Jan. 30, 1818.Google Scholar

47 Id., Oct. 18, 1830.Google Scholar

48 Id., Oct. 18, 1831.Google Scholar

49 Id., Apr. 23, 1832.Google Scholar

50 Id., Oct. 5, 1840.Google Scholar

51 Id., Apr. 1, 1851.Google Scholar

52 Id., Oct. 2, 1854.Google Scholar

53 Id., Oct. 5, 1856.Google Scholar

54 An 1830 Virginia report concluded that 59 counties and two towns maintained poorhouses, while 43 counties and one town had no such institutions. The Laws Now in Force Which Relate to the Duties of the Overseers of the Poor, app. 34 (Richmond, Va., 1832).Google Scholar

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56 Id., Apr. 17, 1843.Google Scholar

57 Id., Oct. 20, 1845.Google Scholar

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59 An act to empower the justices of the peace of New Hanover County to sell the poor house in said county, Jan 27, 1849, ch. 190, 1849 N.C. Sess. Laws 232; An Act to authorize the wardens of the poor in Pasquotank and Yancey counties to sell a portion of the land … on which the poor house is situate, Jan. 20, 1855, ch. 307, 1855 N.C. Sess. Laws 433. Moreover, several North Carolina counties continued outrelief despite periodic attempts to compel all paupers to live in the poorhouse. Benjamin J. Klebaner, Some Aspects of North Carolina Public Poor Relief, 1700–1860, 31 N.C. Hist. Rev. 479, 485–88 (1954).Google Scholar

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78 In 1784 the legislature appropriated £ 800 for “the transient poor, subject to the order of the City Council of Charleston.” An Act for raising and paying into the public treasury of this state, the tax therein mentioned, for the use and service thereof, Mar. 26, 1784, in 4 Cooper & McCord, supra note 27, at 627, 638.Google Scholar

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82 An Act to provide for the establishment of a state hospital for the insane in Tennessee, Feb. 5, 1848, ch. 205, 1847–48 Tenn. Pub. Acts 350. This hospital replaced a smaller asylum authorized in 1832 and opened in 1840. An Act to establish a lunatic hospital in this state, Oct. 19, 1832, ch. 31,1832 Tenn. Pub. Acts 45. For the drive to establish an insane asylum in Tennessee see Edwin Bruce Thompson, Humanitarian Reforms in Tennessee, 1820–1850, at 54–86 (M.A. thesis, Vanderbilt University, 1935).Google Scholar

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84 An Act to provide for the establishment and location of an asylum for the deaf and dumb, Dec. 16, 1847, 1847 Ga. Laws 94, 95.Google Scholar

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91 Id., July 22, 1833. Durwood Dunn asserts that the number of white apprenticeships gradually declined in pre-Civil War Tennessee and that the state supreme court persistently sought to protect apprentices. Apprenticeships and Indentured Servitude in Tennessee Before the Civil War, 36 West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 25 (1982).Google Scholar

92 York County Court Order Book, Sept. 21, 1835, Va. State Library.Google Scholar

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94 Id., Feb. 27, 1843.Google Scholar

95 Owens v. Chaplain, 48 N.C. (3 Jones) 323, 324 (1856).Google Scholar

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100 An Act to incorporate the Female Orphan Asylum Society of Fayetteville, ch. 44, 1813 N.C. Sess. Laws 26.Google Scholar

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106 An Act to amend an act entitled “an act to incorporate the Richmond male orphan society,” Jan. 24, 1848, ch. 245, 1848 Va. Acts 271.Google Scholar

107 An Act to amend an act entitled an act to incorporate the Savannah Female Asylum, Jan. 22, 1852, no. 237, 1851–52 Ga. Laws 357.Google Scholar

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109 The work of Suzanne Lebsock provides further evidence of the limited extent to which orphans remained in asylums. “The asylum itself,” she observed, “was intended to harbor and instruct only the younger girls, while those old enough to be apprenticed were placed with selected families or with women in the skilled needle trades.” Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860, at 201 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984). During the late antebellum era the commissioners of the Charleston Orphan House regularly apprenticed boys to various trades. Bellows, supra note 2, at 113–19.Google Scholar

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111 Davidson County Court Minute Book, July 19, 1824; July 25, 1825; July 6, 1846; July 5, 1847; July I, 1850, Tenn. State Library and Archives. Knox County Court Minute Book, 1st Monday, Jan. 1825; 1st Monday, July 1834; Nov. 7, 1836; July 1, 1839, Tenn. State Library and Archives.Google Scholar

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116 An Act to amend an act, entitled “an act reducing into one act the several acts providing for the poor, and declaring who shall be deemed vagrants,” Feb. 19, 1820, ch. 26, 1820 Va. Acts 22.Google Scholar

117 For example, in Midgett v. McBryde, 48 N.C. (3 Jones) 21 (1855) the court affirmed an order binding out the illegitimate children of a black father and a white mother despite evidence that the father was employed and provided for his children.Google Scholar

118 An Act to prevent free persons of colour from migrating into this state, for the good government of such persons resident in the state, ch. 21, 1826 N.C. Sess. Laws 13.Google Scholar

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123 Ch. 5, § 6, of the Revised Statutes of the State of North Carolina, supra note 115, provided that “it shall not be incumbent upon the master of a colored apprentice to teach him or her to read and write.” This was a change from the previous requirement that the master of “every such apprentice” should teach reading and writing. An Act for the better care of orphans, and security and management of their estates, ch. 5, 1762, in Iredell, supra note 64, at 202,206. The distinction between the education of white and black apprentices was expressly noted by the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Owens v. Chaplain, 48 N.C. (3 Jones) 323 (1856). See also ch. 239, § 15, Revised Code of Virginia, supra note 89. This change was part of a general movement to restrict educational opportunities for free blacks. Georgia early made teaching a slave or free black to read or write a criminal offense. An Act… to prevent said people from being taught to read or write, Dec. 22, 1829, 1829 Cia. Laws 168. Virginia law proscribed meetings of free blacks for the purpose of instruction. An Act to amend the act concerning slaves, free negroes and mulattoes, Apr. 7, 1831, ch. 39, 1830–31 Va. Acts 107. See generally Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South 286 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975).Google Scholar

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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