The Southern militias not only quelled rebellions; they were also there to prevent another Stono. They oversaw the slave patrols and regularly searched the homes of the enslaved for weapons.130 Georgia even upped the ante with a “standing warrant to search any black’s house,” enslaved or free, for “offensive weapons and ammunition.”131 In short, James Madison, the Virginian, knew “that the militia’s prime function in his state, and throughout the South, was slave control.”
