Charleston slave badge or tag South Carolina, circa 1818
rectangular copper badge with chamfered corners, impressed: CHARLESTON, SERVANT, 1818, NO. 906; and verso marked: LAFAR (John Joseph LaFar, 1781-1849 prominent Charleston silversmith).

Provenance : Slave tags are copper badges that were used to license slaves when working for wages on a temporary basis. The wearing of badges served to identify "hired" or "jobbing" slaves from runaways, free blacks, or loitering slaves. "Hiring out" was widely practiced in many slave societies but the issuance of badges to control it, however, was appearently a unique feature of urban slavery in Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Mobile and Norfolk. All of these cities had badge laws, but evidence suggests that Charleston was the only city to regularly enforce them.

Slave hire created a problem for South Carolina lawmakers beginning in the eighteenth century. Some employers hired slaves without permission of owners, while some owners, desirous of making profits from slave hiring, sent their slaves out to find work. Badge laws emerged to permit the short-term employment between owner and lessor without written contracts. They were also intended to placate the interests of skilled white laborers, who persistently complained to lawmakers for stricter controls, as they were in competition with hired black labor. At times, free blacks were subjected to badge laws; they had to obtain badges in order to identify themselves and to undertake certain occupations.

After 1800, the City Treasurer's Office was charged with the responsibility of distributing badges. The office commissioned the manufacture of badges, collected fees and kept a register of owners and their slaves. Unfortunately, these records are now lost, but the study of newspapers, family papers, and legal records is beginning to elucidate labor relationships between slave and non-slave segments in antebellum Charleston. [Theresa Singleton, Ph.D]

Literature: Greene, Harlan Greene, Hutchins, Harry S. and Hutchins, Brian E. SLAVE BADGES AND THE SLAVE-HIRE SYSTEM IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1783-1865. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004.