Nightwatch & The Beating of the Drums

The earliest known mention of the nightly curfew being applied specifically to enslaved people appears in a law passed in February 1686/7, “An Act inhibiting the trading with servants and slaves,” which prohibited “negroes, or other slaves, upon any pretence whatsoever, to travel or goe abroad, from his or their master or mistresses house in the night time, between the sunsetting and the sunrising, or in the day time, without a note from his or their master or mistresse or overseer.”[10] Although Charleston’s watchmen were undoubtedly responsible for enforcing this law in the 1680s, the earliest known confirmation of this duty appears in an October 1698 revision of the Watch Act, which complained that “negroes frequently absent themselves from their masters or owners houses, caballing, pilfiring, stealing and playing the rogue, at unseasonable hours of the night.” This colorful phrase was repeated in several subsequent revisions of this law, and the strict enforcement of the slave curfew continued to be one of the most notorious characteristics of Charleston’s urban police force until the demise of slavery in Charleston in February 1865. Upon meeting with any enslaved person who “cannot give [a] good and satisfactory account of his business,” the town’s watchmen were required to apprehend and detain such person until morning, at which time their masters could retrieve their property on payment of a fine or after permitting the administration of corporal punishment to the slave.[11]

Since the enforcement of the nightly curfew was important to the preservation of the peace and good order in early Charleston, it was likewise imperative that the town’s polyglot inhabitants understand and observe the beginning and end of the nocturnal restrictions. For centuries, cities and towns in England and on the European Continent had answered this need by means of an audible signal, usually given by a drummer parading through the streets in a twin practice known as the tattoo (or taptoo) and reveille (or travallia). The beating of the tattoo at sunset announced the “setting of the watch” and served as a warning to slaves, servants, and sailors to repair to their respective domiciles or vessels for the evening. At sunrise, the beating or sounding of the reveille lifted the curfew and signaled the official beginning of the workday. The medieval Statute of Winchester mentions neither the tattoo nor the reveille, nor does it mention the use of the drum to set and relieve the night watch. Such practices evolved in subsequent centuries, however, and reflect many generations of experience in guarding both civilian settlements and military garrisons. The immortal plays of William Shakespeare, for example, contain numerous references to the daily setting and raising of the night watch, and thus testify to the ubiquity of the practice in seventeenth-century English society.[12]

The earliest reference to drums in South Carolina appears a half-century after Shakespeare’s death, among the earliest records of the nascent colony. A drum is included in the 1669 inventory of materials shipped with the first English settlers to South Carolina, and in 1671 the colonists requested additional drums, heads, snares, and tensioning ropes from their agents in London.[13] Although evidence from the early years is lacking, it is likely that Charleston’s urban night watch employed drums to perform the daily tattoo and reveille from the beginning of its existence. The earliest known mention of beating the nightly tattoo and morning reveille, however, appears in a revision of the militia law ratified on 2 March 1695/6. During times of alarm or general muster, this law states, it shall be illegal to dispense “any strong drinke from and after the beate of the tattoo or before and untill the beate of the travallia [reveille].”