The County: The "Dark Continent" of American Politics

by Henry S. Gilbertson

The first settlers in the permanent Virginia colony found a climate that was mild and a soil that was fertile. Numerous rivers radiating through the country furnished a natural means for transportation. Indians were not a serious menace. The settlers themselves were of the landed gentry, closely identified with the established English Church.

Out of such a combination a very definite polity inevitably grew. The people were destined to spread themselves far and wide; agriculture was to be their chief pursuit; little government would be needed and the forms and substance of democracy would have at best a slow growth.

For many years the local government consisted primarily of small groups of settlements which were called hundreds or parishes and were presided over by a vestry of “selected men.” When the plantations were large and scattered, government was sometimes supplied by the owners themselves. But in 1634 in Virginia, the example of English institutions took firmer root and eight shires or counties were formed and made the unit of representation in the colonial assembly and for purposes of military, judicial, highway and fiscal administration. The officers were the county lieutenant (the militia officer), the sheriff (who acted as collector and treasurer), justices of the peace and coroners. All were appointed by the governor of the colony on the recommendation of the justices, and the latter thus became a self-perpetuating body of aristocratic planters controlling the county administration. This body of appointed justices constituted the county court, which to this day in some of the southern states is not only a judicial body, but also corresponds to the board of supervisors or the county commissioners in other localities.

Such was one line of descent. The Virginians, like most of their contemporaries, knew little and cared less for political science. They simply turned to their English experience, pieced together some old-country institutions and adapted them to the new world. Their experiment succeeded for the time being at least. It could scarcely have failed under such simple conditions.

Of quite a different sort were the influences at work in New England. A severe climate, a rocky soil and menacing Indians drove the colonists into compact communities, where they could live by shipping and fishing. They too were fortunate in striking an environment that rather exactly fitted their old-country experience. For they were a homogeneous, single-minded body of people with firm traditions of democracy and a common religious faith. From the congregational form of organization that was characteristic of the Puritan movement to the town meeting for purposes of civil government, was a single easy step. Thus the “town” idea came to hold the center of the stage in New England local affairs. But it never had the all-sufficiency in its sphere which the county had in the South, and even New England had to recognize a need for more comprehensive subdivisions. And so, in 1636, Massachusetts was divided into four judicial districts in each of which a quarterly court was held. In 1643 four counties were definitely organized, both as judicial and militia districts, and before the middle of the century there was established a system of representative commissioners from each town, who met at the shire town to equalize assessments. The office of county treasurer was created in 1654. Later a militia officer was appointed, and within a few years county officers were entrusted with the duty of registering land titles, recording deeds and probating wills—functions transferred in part from town officers and in part from the governor and council.

So from Virginia and Massachusetts flowed the two streams of institutional influence, the former tending to make the county the exclusive organ of local government, and the other emphasizing the town. Maryland, though it had started out with a somewhat special type of organization borrowed from the County Palatine of Durham, with its manors and hundreds, later came under the sway of Virginian precedents and three counties were established there in 1650. The Carolinas, which were not thoroughly organized until the eighteenth century, followed the Virginia plan in its main outlines. Georgia’s development was not well begun until after the Revolution. Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine all followed the lead of Massachusetts, though the first two of these states minimized the importance of the county to an even greater extent.

To these two lines of influence the central states added the idea of a distinct administrative authority, which was composed in New York of a new body made up of the supervisors of the towns, in New Jersey of the local assessors and in Pennsylvania of special commissioners. These new departures were established in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In all of these states, it should be noted, the township also existed for a limited number of purposes, such as the care of the poor, for election, administration and for purposes of taxation.

The westward movement of population had begun before the Revolution. Following in general the parallels of latitude of their native soil, the pioneers carried their local institutions with them for transplantation, regardless of the wholly different underlying conditions that now confronted them. In their closely populated, homogeneous settlements the New England pioneers that crossed over into the Western Reserve had been accustomed to act through town meetings. Nothing would do now but a reincarnation of the old institutions. The six-mile rectangles into which the surveyors had divided the western territory gave them their opening. There was accordingly developed in the open prairie among the isolated homesteads a unit of government that at least superficially resembled the old New England town. It was but a geometrical expression, to be sure, but the mere shadow of it seems to have given satisfaction. But in 1802, when the state of Ohio was carved out of this territory, this exotic growth was cut short and the “county-township” system of Pennsylvania was adopted. Indiana followed Ohio in this step and the system came to predominate in the Middle West, as for example, in Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

The instinct for harking back to precedents appeared also in the early history of Michigan. When it was organized as a territory it was divided up into counties. But in 1825, under the stimulus of immigration from New York where the township-supervisor plan was in vogue, townships had to be established for particular purposes to meet the prevailing demand for this type of self-government.

In the South, Kentucky and Tennessee took their cues from Virginia and established the justices in control of the county administrative affairs. Mississippi and Alabama took Georgia for their model.