This paper is a preliminary reexamination of Michael Hindus' discussion of the extralegal activity that marked antebellum South Carolina. In the years since Prison and Plantation was written, historians' emphasis on extralegal violence in the South (in its many forms) has caused us to lose sight of an important nuance of Hindus' claim, the idea that the extralegal activity involved shaming and monitoring as much as dueling and lynching. This paper, and the larger project of which it is a part, attempts to redress this imbalance by considering this forgotten form of extralegal activity.
My intention is not simply to resurrect Hindus' idea that extralegal justice in South Carolina was both pervasive and complex. I hope to modify his conclusion to reflect the recognition of the gendered nature of the second type of extralegal justice he identified. In antebellum, upstate South Carolina, there were informal courts of public opinion, which judged and punished malefactors, and these courts were distinctively female. Female, that is, in the sense that women (elite women) were the judges on this informal court of public opinion, but not exclusively female in terms of whom the court judged, since there are hints that it was expected to judge both women and men.

My work builds on the recent studies by Elizabeth Varon and Cynthia Kiernan, which examine the political role of women in the antebellum south, concluding that they were politically active in a variety of ways. My work extends their conclusions into the legal realm, though it compliments their findings in many ways. For example, consistent with Varon's arguments about the importance of temperance societies in antebellum Virginia, I have found evidence from upstate South Carolina that indicates that women exercised their power to judge in temperance settings. Other, preliminary, evidence indicates that religion was an important site of women's judgment, and provided referents for some, though not all, of the judgments they rendered.

This paper will use a case from Edgefield, South Carolina, in 1849-50, as a way into this informal court of public opinion, the gendered aspect of extralegal justice in antebellum South Carolina, and the bases of judgment.