A Look at Crime and Punishment in the Antebellum North, South, and Athens

Crime has been around since the beginning of time. As time progresses the crimes that are being committed are slowly becoming worse and are more prevalent than before. The nineteenth century was no different than any other century before, it was filled with crime. The crimes that took place in Athens in the nineteenth century were pretty much on par for the rest of the country. There were however many differences between the north and the south. Criminal justice of the north and south contrasted each other in the overall severity and prevalence of crimes, but mirrored one another in regards to punishment and policing tactics.

Athens in the nineteenth- century was not as much a crime-laden community as it is today in the twenty-first-century. It did have its fair share of crimes, but the crimes that were reported and tried were miniscule by today’s definition of a crime. In the early 1800’s some of the acts that were seen as crimes in Athens were things such as, profanity, horse stealing, larceny, bastardry, assault, adultery, perjury, and murder.1 Offense such as profanity although not very serious offenses were still arrestable offenses. For example in September of 1803 a man was arrested and presented in front of the grand jury for “profane swearing."2 At this point in time of Athens history major crimes such as murder and rape were isolated cases. From the early to middle part of the century gambling, drinking, and fighting were the most frequent crimes.3 The consumption of alcohol was at the root of most criminal altercations. In 1839 the Grand Jury blamed most of the crimes cited at the time on visits to the tippling shops and on public lethargy.4 Some Jurors were vocal on the matter stating:

“All who feel interested in the cause of moral reform in the rising generation to shake off their criminal lethargy and at once commence the war long since declared but never started."5

After these rousing words by the Grand Jury the town seemed to take heed to their words because a few years later in middle of the 1840’s crime decreased.6 However, despite the decrease crime continued to be a frequent problem. Efforts were made to curb the use of spiritous liquors; those effects came in the form of taxation. The fee for selling liquor or operating billiards tables was set at five hundred dollars, but a short time after the increase; rates were lowered to thirty-two dollars for liquor and fifty dollars for billards.7 The town attempted to control liquor again in 1857. This time the fee for selling liquor was one thousand dollars and for billiards it was five hundred dollars. The fee hike again was short-lived lasting only a year before fees were dropped to one hundred dollars for liquor and fifty dollars for billiards.8 In the middle of the war for alcohol suppression Athens beefed up its law enforcement.

The total security and crime control of the city until the early part of 1850’s rested solely on the shoulders of the town marshal. In February of 1852 an ordinance was passed to provide for the employment of other law officers.9 It was in 1856 when the local officers were authorized to imprison persons up to five days for the violation of town ordinances.10 Town ordinances were different from harsher laws like felonies and were punished less severely. Some town ordinances included, but were not limited to, hitching horses on public sidewalks, using firearms within the town limits, engaging in prostitution, and various other offenses of this nature.11 It was during this time period that slavery was taking place in this area of the country. Although most of the crimes were committed by whites slave activity was prevalent at this time.

However little slave crimes looked compared to white crimes they were a frequent subject of the grand jury’s attention. In September of 1819 the grand jury asserted:

“That if strong laws were strictly enforced, negroes in large number would not be playing marbles and other games on the Sabbath."12

The South outside of Athens at this time saw a rise in deviant types of crimes. These crimes included but were not limited to crimes such as assault and battery, assault, murder, and rapes. The southern town of Whitfield in the early 1850’s saw ninety-one men accused of assault and battery, twenty-nine accused of assault, and twenty-two with assault with the intent to kill.14 There was also slave crimes that were reported. These crimes were different than in Athens due to the fact that most of the slave crimes throughout the south were crimes committed against the master. Although slave on master crime was rare it was not uncommon. In one example of a slave crime, a master was preparing to punish one of his slaves, when suddenly “the negro grasped him and taking a knife from hand stabbed him fifteen times."15 At this time rape was prevalent, but it was reported most when slaves raped white women, this was the cause for many lynchings at this time.16 The prime reason for the happenings of these crimes was, like in Athens attributed to alcohol.

Southern Grand Juries and newspapers blamed much of the regions violence on liquor.17 Alcohol, criminologists agreed that alcohol is:

“The one factor in crime that can be neither argued down or dismissed."18

This is a difference between the north and the south. Northerners drank great amounts of alcohol yet northern alcohol related violence was never as big a problem as it was in the south.19 The enforcing of the law in the rest of the south was more prevalent than in Athens. Some major cities in the south had police departments. The officers wore uniforms, carried guns and bayonets, trained, drilled, and walked the beat.20 In other areas of the south they relied on slaves patrols as a way of preventing slave insurrections and combating crimes.21 The men that made up the patrol teams were white men between the ages of 18 and 50.22 These were just a few in a myriad of differences between the north and the south as it relates to crime.

The crimes that took place in Athens and the south seemed somewhat similar to that of northern areas, however they differed in the nature and frequency at which they occurred. The northern areas of the country dealt with harsher crimes than those dealt with in the south. In the 1820’s and 1830’s lynching, duels, mob uprisings, gang warfare, and convent burnings seemed endemic.23 The fact that northern cities were growing at an exponential rate would lead you to believe that crimes would be on the rise. In data taken between 1814 and 1834 in New York, it showed that the population doubled and the crime rate quadrupled.24 One of the major sources of violent crimes in northern cities, especially New York, was the rise in gang activity.

Many gangs frequented the area, but the most note worthy gangs of the times were the Plug Uglies, Dead Rabbits, and the Bowery B’hoys.25 Their actions were vile, despicable, and extremely violent. These gangs prowled the streets stealing from warehouses, junk shops, and private residences.26 Gangs were not the only forms of group violence; there was also an outbreak of mob violence. Mobs conducted their business in the same manners as gangs, but were more organized. Between the years of 1834 and 1844 there were over two hundred reported incidents of mob violence.27

Crimes were not limited just to men, but involved women as well. In 1850 there was said to be some six thousand prostitutes walking the streets.28 Cities were not the only areas of the north that had problems with crime. It seemed that crime also extended to the backwoods areas as well. The crimes that were committed into the backwoods were in the form of duels, gouging matches, and lynchings.29 With this many problems going on in society someone or something had to be at fault.

In the case of the north the blame could not be put on alcohol as had been done in the south. There was not one reason for the crime, but a few. The first reason was the literature. The literature was filled with lurid images of frontier violence, urban savagery and sexual vice, of cheats, cutthroats, tricksters, and con artists.30 It was this literature that seemed to give these criminals the ideas and motives for committing the crimes that they did. However the majority of the blame for the down fall of society was placed on the lack of paternalistic roles. The collapse of the older paternalistic pattern of social relationships had momentous consequences. It contributed to a pervasive sense that had traditional social mechanisms controlling individual behavior had lost their grip; that families, local churches, and public authorities were losing their ability to dictate conduct.31 With society in such a downward chaotic spiral it was time for a change in law enforcement.

During a majority of this time period law enforcement was sparse. Public authorities were a means of social control. However the idea of public officials did not work very well. The cities were policed by a handful of unpaid, untrained, and ununiformed sheriffs, constables, and night watchmem.32 When a crime was committed victims reported it to these officials, but victims of crimes had to offer a reward if they wanted an unpaid law officer to investigate the case.33 In 1845 the north, especially in New York, changed its system of policing the streets. They switched from the constable and night watchmen style to the London style of policing.34 Much like the officers of the south they were uniformed, carried guns, and walked a beat. In the prior policing system the officers abstained from community closeness, however in this system they promised community closeness and portrayed an image of an old friend rather than an objective official.35 With crimes rising and becoming fiercer the ways of policing changed, as did the ways and means of punishment.

Punishment at this period of time was fairly universal throughout the country. Both the north and the south utilized similar means in their punishment for criminals. Punishment generally ranged from hanging (for capital crimes) to public whipping and confinement in stock or branding for lesser offenses.36 Public punishments were generally designed to express the collective disapproval of the community, elicit shame in the offender, and reinforce community norms.37 A reassessment of punishment took place in society. They took it upon themselves to come up with a solution to lower crime and punish criminals. Their solution was more self-control. By the 1840’s a growing number of Americans believed that expanded education and improved correctional institutions offered the best solutions to crime.38 These ideas were short lived due to the fact that crime was not decreasing. Local governments designed city and county jails to house those accused of crimes, offenders serving non-felony crimes, witnesses who might bolt, persons lacking sufficient self control to be put in the poor house, and occasional tramps.39 Jails were a start when it came to punishing criminals however there was a greater need to punish criminals that committed crimes of greater brutality.

It was around this time that two models of penitentiaries were developed. The two models were the Auburn system, which was located in Auburn New York, and the Walnut Street jail, which was also known as the Philadelphia system.40 Both systems were created like the other, but had different forms of reforming its inmates. The Walnut Street Jail provided no visual and little aural communication between cells.41 This allowed the prison to maintain its main rule of silence. The prisoners of this jail were expected to work at crafts, produce furniture, textiles, clothing, and other products for sale, all of these tasks were preformed in their individual cells.42 Religion was seen as an intricate part in the reforming process, each cell had a Bible and various spiritual tracts.43 At the Walnut Street Jail solitary confinement was to serve as punishment, and to emphasize meditation and repentance.44

The Auburn system mirrored that of the Walnut Street Jail in that the main rule was silence. At the Auburn prison prisoners worked together during the day fulfilling convict labor contracts.45 The prisoners had to adhere to the rule of silence even while working side by side with other inmates.46 At the Auburn jail the purpose was to reform the prisoner by breaking his spirit. This was easily achieved given the dimensions of the jail cell. The cells were seven feet long, seven feet high, and three and a half feet wide.47 The Auburn system was clearly based on cruelty and repression, with the rationale that such treatment would reform prisoners.48 The overall reasoning behind the penitentiary system was to reform the prisoner and return them back to society better than when the came. The Auburn jail and the Walnut Street Prison were both prisons in the north, however a jail in the south, named the Georgia State Penitentiary, which was located in Milledgeville, Georgia, mirrored that of the other two systems. The prison in Milledgeville was not as large a prison as the other two, but it did not lack severity. The cells of the prison housed four to five inmates at a time and inmates were forced to sleep on straw mattresses placed indiscriminately on the floor of the cell.49 Also as in the Walnut Street Jail the prisoners of the Georgia State Penitentiary were forced to do work. They worked in prison shops for making wagons saddles and shoes.50 The prisons that were discussed above housed major criminals, but the were also white prisons. Slaves were dealt with differently than whites were.

One might figure that since slaves were looked down upon by the white race that their punishments would be harsher than those of white criminals, however this in most cases was not true. Slaves were convicted by Supreme and Superior courts no more than whites were.51 Although violent crimes against whites by slaves were committed fairly infrequently when they were committed punishment could be harsh and swift.52 This was short lived because the written law of slavery became less harsh as the antebellum era progressed.53 A common punishment for slaves who committed a crime was whipping. They were whipped rather than imprisoned because slaves who were in jail could not work for their owners.54 An example of this is shown through a slave convicted of manslaughter. A slave was convicted of manslaughter, which brought a penalty of three hundred stripes on the bare back. The stripes were administered at fifty stripes a day everyday or every other day.55 Another form of punishment was hanging, however slaves found guilty of such crimes as arson, murder, or rapes were hanged as often as not being hung.56

Crime is one of those things that no matter where you go it will follow you like a deadly plague. There was no acceptation for the people in the north or the south during the antebellum period. Everywhere one looked- in the growing cities of the north, in the slave south, or on the frontier- lawlessness and violence appeared to be spreading.57 The differences in the north and south were great, but crime shows no mercy for the weak or the strong. The country during the antebellum time was in complete turmoil without having to worry about war; it was in a rapid state of decline. George Fisher an upper class Philadelphian stated:

“The country was destined to be destroyed by the eruption of the dark masses ignorance and brutality which lie beneath it, like the fires of a volcano."58

In conclusion, the north and the south were divided by politics and were also divided by the types of crimes and criminals that they had living among them. It was these differences however that shaped the present criminal justice administration that we live under today. They showed us what works and what does not. We were shown that idleness is not the key to a successful criminal justice system. We were also shown that harsher and more strict penalties are adequate and definite steps in the right direction to a working system. It all boils down to what works. These rights and wrongs taken throughout history help us to create a safer and more livable society.

1Ernest C Hynds, Antebellum Athens and Clarke County Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press 1974), 10.

2Hynds 10.

3Hynds 49

4Hynds 38

5Hynds 38

6Hynds 38

7Hynds 49

8Hynds 49

9Hynds 50

10Hynds 49

11Hynds 49

12Hynds 17

13Hynds 60

14Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th-Century American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 132.

15Ayers 132

16Ayers 240

17Ayers 14

18Ayers 14

19Ayers 14

20Ayers 83

21Herbert A. Johnson and Nancy Travis Wolfe, History of Criminal Justice (Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing Co., 1996), 165.

22Johnson 165

23Stven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 3

24Mintz 4

25Mintz 4

26Mintz 4

27Mintz 4

28Mintz 4

29Mintz 4

30Mintz 3

31Mintz 10

32Mintz 9

33Mintz 9

34Johnson 162

35Johnson 164

36Mintz 86

37Mintz 86

38Mintz 86

39Eric H. Monkkonen, Crime, Justice, History (Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 2002), 219-220

40Monkkonen 35

41Johnson 134

42Johnson 134

43Johnson 134

44Johnson 134

45Johnson 124

46Johnson 125

47Johnson 125

48Johnson 125

49James C. Bonner, Milledgeville: Georgia’s Antebellum Capital (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978), 55

50Booner 55

51Ayer 134

52Bryne 356

53Ayers 134

54Hynds 18

55William A Bryne, “Slave Crime in Savannah, Georgia,” Journal of Negro History 79, no. 4 (1994): 356

56Bryne 356

57Mintz 3

58Mintz 3 If you would like additional information, please visit these sites: