Race and Pardons in Post-Reconstruction South Carolina

• In Event: Southern Politics and American Political Development

Abstract

The labor of Black prisoners was instrumental in rebuilding the post-Civil War South. Yet, puzzlingly, during the post-Reconstruction Era, when these authoritarian, racist legal systems had assumed firm hold, Governors repeatedly pardoned or commuted the sentences of Black prisoners. Drawing on over three decades of state penitentiary records (1867-1900) and a collection of pardon petitions from 1876-1880, which span the short terms of three Democratic governors in South Carolina, this paper explores the responsiveness of white supremacist officials to such appeals. I argue that although the buildup of the criminal legal system was integral to an authoritarian legal order in South Carolina, that order was not unitary, but rather reflected the instability of law and race in the post-Reconstruction South. It was defined by a patchwork of overlapping and diverging commitments to adapting racial hierarchy, preserving patriarchy, modernizing racial capitalism, and reinforcing state legitimacy. Black citizens strategically appealed to this authoritarian legal order by blending the language of law and rights with paternalist ideas of reform and respectability. Their appeals resonated with white citizens, state officials, and legal actors. Yet these individuals insisted that Black prisoners should be pardoned, not from a place of mercy, but from their complex, at times conflicting commitments to racial hierarchy, patriarchy, racial capitalism, and an authoritarian legal order.

Author

• Sean Kim Butorac, North Central College