Florida Sheriffs: a History, 1821-1945.

By William Warren Rogers and James M. Denham. (Tallahassee, Fla.: Sentry Press, 2001. Pp. vi, 345. $29.95, ISBN 1-889574-11-2.)

For most of southern history, county sheriffs have assumed central roles in local politics, social life, and race relations. But despite their importance in southern society, sheriffs have received modest attention from historians. In Florida Sheriffs William Warren Rogers and James M. Denham attempt to fill this lacuna in one state's history.

The book is encyclopedic, ranging from the antebellum period through World War II Rogers and Denham provide a wealth of information on Florida's sheriffs; they identify, for example, every man known to have held the office in the state over a 124-year period and note the number of Florida sheriffs who fought and died in the Civil War. In charting the institutional development of the sheriff s office, the authors also recount the political and economic history of the state. More descriptive than analytical or interpretive, the book focuses on the ways in which political, economic, and technological change posed increasing challenges for county law enforcers in Florida.

Rogers and Denham offer a sympathetic portrait of Florida's sheriffs. The men "who wore the most authoritative star" (p. 280), the authors argue, were largely decent, conscientious, and brave men who were typically overworked and underpaid. The "[r]equirements for the sheriffs badge were mainly reliability, honesty, good character, and a willingness to take on dangerous tasks" (p. 33), according to Rogers and Denham. Its publication underwritten by the Florida Sheriffs Association, the book devotes particular attention to the "age old battle of lawmen versus criminals" (p. 194), to the responsibilities shouldered by sheriffs, and to the business conducted at the annual meetings of the Florida Sheriffs Association.

Although the authors acknowledge that some sheriffs may have been corrupt and "perhaps even colluded with lynchers" (p. 161), Florida Sheriffs highlights the exploits of the courageous men who maintained law and order in a wild, turbulent state. The discussion of the Reconstruction era, for instance, notes the activities of the Ku Klux Klan but emphasizes that sheriffs "struggled as individuals to fulfill their basic obligations of enforcing the laws, protecting Florida's citizens, and apprehending criminals" (p. 113). Likewise, the discussion of lynching revolves around episodes in which sheriffs resisted lynch mobs and saved--or tried to save--African Americans. Rogers and Denham also describe the horrors of economic life and race relations in Jim Crow Florida, but they barely examine the complicity of sheriffs in the convict lease and debt peonage systems.

Florida Sheriffs is filled with colorful vignettes and written in an accessible style. It stops short, however, of systematically engaging scholarly debates or exploring larger themes about the role of sheriffs in the construction of political power, legal culture, or race relations in the South.

JEFFREY S. ADLER
University of Florida