As a dynamic protagonist, Sheriff Campbell is at the center of “The Sheriff’s Children.” He is a round character who experiences a variety of internal and external conflicts that drive the story and its exploration of personal morality and responsibility. Charles W. Chesnutt uses the sheriff’s narrative arc to complicate and advance the themes of Structural Racism and Personal Responsibility and Social Versus Moral Duty, bringing him into contact with Tom, who is the instrument of the sheriff’s eventual moral and intellectual awakening.

From the outset, Chesnutt establishes Sheriff Campbell as a romantic character struggling with unsettling realities. This “tall, muscular man” with “a ruddier complexion than is usual among Southerners” and a “white shirt open at the throat” (135) is first cast as a Romantic hero. He is a “man far above the average of the community in wealth, education, and social position” (136). He belongs to one of the elite families who previously enslaved Black people on their plantations but, having traveled and earned a university degree, he has been exposed to contemporary and “advanced thought.” To the town, he is the “authority on all subjects connected to the outer world” (137).