Counties pretty much throughout the nation are the corner-stone of the system of partisan government and organization.
Counties, for this variety of reasons, therefore, would seem to be a fit subject for scrutiny as to their relation to some of the vital issues of American life.
[1] Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 1913, contains a number of important monographs on the subject.
CHAPTER II
JUST WHAT IS A COUNTY?
Before our forefathers had “brought forth upon this continent a new nation,” there was no universal standard relationship in the colonies between the local and the general colonial or state governments. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the towns had begun as separate units; then they federated and gradually developed an organic unity; that is, the localities produced the general government. In the South, on the other hand, the local governments had more the semblance of creatures of the general government designed to meet the expansion of the earliest settlements into wide and therefore less wieldy units for administration.
By the time of the constitution of 1789, it became possible to standardize the division of labor of governing the continent. In the center of the scheme were placed the states, which reserved to themselves all the governmental power there was, except what the constitution specifically conferred upon the federal government. Henceforth, whatever may have been its historical origin or its ancient traditions, every local division of government was to content itself with such functions as were to be portioned out to it by superior state authority. It was to have no “inherent” powers. It was to act simply as an agency of the state, which had power at will to enlarge or diminish the local sphere of activity or wipe it off the map entirely.
Now the duties which state governments assumed in the early years of the republic were as simple as necessity would allow. This was preeminently the day of “as little government as possible.” The people of the states covenanted with themselves, as it were, to stand guard over life, liberty and property. It was a broad enough program, but it was the custom in those days to interpret it narrowly—no humanitarian activities beyond the crude attempts to deal with the more obvious phases of poverty; no measure of correction in the modern sense; no “public works.” As an incident in meeting these obligations, the constitutional convention and the state legislatures met and laid down statutes or codes of conduct affecting these elementary needs of a civilized people. They defined the various crimes (or adopted the definitions of the English common law); they legalized a civil procedure. It was definitely settled that the voice of the whole people should control in determining what the state should do for its citizens.
Then came the question of getting the means for applying these abstract principles to daily life, of bringing to every man’s own door the means for enforcing his rights. Had the American people proceeded from this point along logical lines they would have cut the administrative machinery to fit their state-wide policies. But it was not so ordered. The officers of the state had determined upon the policies; the officers of the localities were to execute the policies. The period of the American Revolution, with its deep-seated distrust of kingly power, was the beginning of an era of decentralized administration which gained rather than diminished in force for as much as two generations. For the purpose, the existing counties served as instruments ready to hand and their status now became fixed as the local agencies of the state government. New counties were formed from time to time as needs arose. In each of these counties was a loose, but more or less complete organization, which it will now be fitting to describe.
More important perhaps than any other enforcing agent of the county, in these still primitive days, was the sheriff, who sooner or later became a fixture in every American colony. This most ancient officer of the county had been perpetuated through the centuries from Saxon and Norman times. He had inherited nearly all of the powers and prerogatives of his historical prototype as they obtained in England during the seventeenth century. He did not preside over a court in the county, but he could make arrests for violation of the law, with or without a warrant. If his task was too much for one man, he could summon to his aid a posse comitatus of private citizens. And inasmuch as he was obliged not only to apprehend, but to hold his prisoner for trial, it very naturally fell to him to take care of the lock-up or jail.