Which term describes Southern organizations tasked with enforcing slave codes and suppressing resistance?

• A. Hue and Cry
• B. Slave Patrols
• C. Mutual Pledge
• D. Jury Nullification

Answer: (B)

The main idea here is organized policing designed to maintain slavery by monitoring and controlling enslaved people. Slave patrols were groups of white men in the Southern states whose explicit job was to enforce slave codes, patrol roads and plantations, stop enslaved people who were outside their allowed areas, check passes, arrest runaways, and discipline gatherings. Their presence created a continuous system of surveillance and coercion aimed at preventing resistance and upholding the legal framework of slavery.

Other terms don’t fit this specific role: hue and cry is a general alarm concept from earlier European policing, mutual pledge refers to community-bound duties in some colonial towns rather than a dedicated slave-control force, and jury nullification involves juries declining to apply laws rather than a armed or organized patrol enforcing those laws on a day-to-day basis.