The Federal Posse Comitatus Doctrine: Slavery, Compulsion, and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

In antebellum America, as in pre-industrial England, it was commonplace to witness civilians accompanying sheriffs and justices, scouring the countryside in search of scoundrels, scalawags, and other law-breakers. These civilians were the posse comitatus, or uncompensated, temporarily deputized citizens assisting law enforcement officers. At its core, the posse comitatus was a compulsory institution. Prior to the advent of centralized police forces, sheriffs and others compelled citizens to serve “in the name of the state” to execute arrests, level public nuisances, and keep the peace, “upon pain of fine and imprisonment.” Despite its coercive character, though, the posse was widely understood as one among many compulsory duties that protected the “public welfare.” Americans heeded the call to serve in local posses, explained jurist Edward Livingston, because of communal “ties of property, of family, of love of country and of liberty.” Such civic obligations, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, illustrated why Americans had such a pressing “interest in … arresting the guilty man.” At once coercive and communitarian, lamented Henry David Thoreau, the posse comitatus exemplified how those that “serve the state … with their bodies,” were “commonly esteemed good citizens.”