Chesnutt's work was written during the era of post-bellum literature in which themes of racism were explored, specifically in southern American states.
One of Chesnutt's more famous works, along with "The Passing of Grandison", the story focuses on issues of race, miscegenation, and identity.
He is one of the more educated and wealthy townspeople of Troy based on his wealth within slavery before the Civil War.
[1] The town's typical occurrences are disrupted when Captain Walker, a respected Civil War veteran, with one arm, was murdered.
It was assumed to be a local mulatto man named Tom, the last person to be seen with Captain Walker before the discovery of his murder.
The citizens of the town, however, were not satisfied with the Sheriff holding Tom in the county jail until his hearing.
A local African-American man named Sam overheard the conversation amongst the lynch mob and reported it to the Sheriff.
Sheriff Campbell, unlike the rest of those within the town, comes from a family of wealth and is highly educated.
His family owned numerous slaves and had plantation style land masses before the Civil War.
After the jail is unlocked Tom states that he has but no choice to kill the Sheriff in order to escape.
Tom then explains that he is his bastard son who was sold when he was younger to help pay for the debts that the Sheriff and his family owed.
The Sheriff then wraps Tom in a tourniquet and locks him back up and returns home with Polly.
The Sheriff arrives early in the morning the next day at the county jail to find Tom dead.
The accusation that Tom was the murderer of Captain Walker is an example of how racism is a major theme within the text.
It is never revealed who the killer was, however, the town had already concluded that Tom committed the crime because of his skin color.
Miscegenation is “the interbreeding of people considered to be of different racial types.” Within the short story, the relationship between the Sheriff and Cicely demonstrates the mixing of races and cultures.
The term mulatto is used within the narrative multiple times, defining the mixing of races that created Tom.
The term in modern times is not commonly used however during the 19th century, mulatto was used to classify biracial individuals.
In P. Jay Delmar's The Mask as Theme and Structure: Charles W. Chesnutt's "The Sheriff's Children" and "The Passing of Grandison", Delmar examines how Sheriff Campbell wears a "mask" for most of his life until he encounters Tom right before he dies.
The Sheriff is described a learned, wealthy, southern man who is loyal and dutiful to the county of Branson and the people of Troy.
According to Delmar, The Sheriff "always lived by the code of the Southern aristocracy, one which sanctioned his behavior toward his lover and child".