William J. Purman biography blog

William James Purman may not be my favorite Florida Carpetbagger, but he is the most interesting and, perhaps, the most controversial of his peers. He is a fascinating subject for a biographical article. I considered writing a "formal" article for a scholarly journal, such as the FHQ, but past experience has proven that journal articles about long-forgetten Reconstruction Era figures garner little, if any, attention. The blog format is appealing because of the informality which encourages revisions, digressions, and copies of long quotations. Furthermore, more readers will stumble across a blog page, either through google searches, or just accidentally, than will ever see an article in a local history journal. I've assembled quite a lot of information about Purman, and I'll be posting over at www.williamjpurman.blogspot.com over the next few months.

Speaking of baseball.... an 1874 game in Jax between the Fat Men and the R.E. Lee Club

From Jacksonville's The New South newspaper dated July 25, 1874:

"Fat Man's Club
There will be a contest between the above named Club and the R.E. Lee's second nine. The name and weights of the Fat nine are as follows:
Captain - Peter Jones, Catcher, 190.
F. E. Little, Pitcher, 195.
M. S. Littlefield, Short Stop, 205.
J. H. Dove, 1st Base, 177.
R. P. Moody, 2d Base, 179.
J. J. Holland 3d Base, 215.
H. Vandolen, Centre Field, 282.
H. A. Pattison, Left Field, 200.
Charles Fridenberg, Right Field, 185.
P. Bettelini, Lieratary, 265.
T. W. Osborn, Umpire, 230.
J. J. Finley, Scorer, 200.
R. L. Wood, Long Stop, 195.
Total 2,718.
The above named members of the Fat Man's Club, will be promptly on hand on the ground known as the R. E. Lee grounds, at the head of Hogan street, at 3 o'clock P. M., Tuesday the 28th of July. The public are invited to attend, especially the Phat ladies.
J. H. Dove, Secretary.
Peter Jones, Captain."

Notice that the svelte short stop, M. S. Littlefield, was the culprit in the most infamous railroad financing scandal in Florida's history. Former U.S. Senator Thomas W. Osborn, no stranger to railroad schemes himself, was the umpire. The scorer, J. J. Finley, was a former Confederate general and later U.S. congressman from Florida. Surprising that he didn't play with the R. E. Lee's. What is a Lieratary? This may be only baseball team fielded in history where the first baseman was the lightest and the center fielder the heaviest. No wonder a "long stop" was needed.

Oct. 26, 1869: U.S. Troops enter Jackson County

After demands for intervention from the Internal Revenue officials were finally joined by Florida's indecisive Gov. Reed, the War Department dispatched a detachment of twenty soldiers from the 8th U.S. Infantry stationed in Atlanta. The troops arrived in Marianna on Oct. 26. By this time, however, the violence had largely died down. Frank Baltzell, the young editor of the Marianna Courier, vehemently opposed to the entry of soldiers in Marianna, angrily pointed out that "peace and harmony" had already been restored. Baltzell feared that, instead of ensuring calm, the arrival of the soldiers would only serve to embolden the few remaining Republicans in Jackson County.

The arrival of the troops on October 26 certainly did not quiet James Coker. Coker announced that anyone who claimed a reward for the arrest of his son for the murder of Nichols family would not live to benefit from it. At a dinner a few nights later, Coker insulted and menaced Sheriff West and "damned" Hamilton, Purman, Assessor Lowe, Dickinson, "and any man that would take an office to 'boot-lick' these fellows." He regaled anyone who would listen about his past plots to kill Hamilton and Purman.

Mid-October, 1869

On October 12, Dickinson learned that the dead man on the road was Fleishman, but he was warned not to retrieve the body. Dickinson held an inquest and the jury quickly returned the usual verdict of "killed by unknown." Only the next day was Fleishman's body recovered and his identity confirmed.

After Billy Coker, Jack Myrick, and Edward Alderman disappeared, violence continued only sporadically. A few freedmen's houses were shot at or broken into. A black woman, Lucy Griffen was "attacked three times on the street and frightened." Warnings were circulated that "a crowd had determined to kill" Matt Nickels's surviving daughter. Dickinson remained vigilant. Once, he reported seeing someone at his windows around midnight. Another time, he received a warning that Jack Myrick was on his track.

By mid-October news of the horrific events in Jackson County had begun spread. From Washington, both Congressman Charles M. Hamilton and State Senator William J. Purman reacted to Dickinson's letters reporting the violence. Purman confided to Dickinson that his "remedy" for the "bloody ills" of Jackson County was to dispatch "a battalion of colored militia." Then, he wrote, "the vermin and demons would leave for Texas and Hell" and "all good people would then find safety for their lives and property." Hamilton gave a statement to the press representing "a bad condition of affairs" with "eleven attempted or successful assassinations of prominent men since last spring." He feared going back to Jackson County since, he believed, there was a "strong probability" should he return "that his life will pay the penalty of his politics."

At the same time, an IRS assessor visiting Marianna, who had been threatened by Coker, reported to his supervisor that Jackson and Washington counties were "under the control of an armed mob" that prevented "the execution of the internal revenue laws." This report was printed in newspapers across the country. With a federal official fearing for his life and prevented from carrying out his duty, pressure begin to build for the dispatch of federal troops into Jackson County.

This account is adapted from my forthcoming narrative history, The Jackson County War, to be published shortly by Dale Cox.

Oct. 11, 1869: The murder of Samuel Fleishman - 140 years ago

During the week following his expulsion, Fleishman had not been idle. After being ejected across the Georgia border, he proceeded to nearby Bainbridge. There he encountered Marianna merchant Louis Gamble who, on his return to Marianna, reported that Fleishman had informed him that he intended to go first to Quincy and then back to Marianna. Fleishman traveled to Quincy, where his relatives lived, but he soon departed for Tallahassee.

Fleishman was undaunted and determined to return to his family, home, and property. He was next spotted at the Chattahoochee penitentiary where he asked Malachi Martin for protection. Martin responded that he had no power in Jackson County and advised Fleishman not to cross the river. Fleishman, Martin later testified, insisted that he must return to Marianna as "all he had in the world was there...his family,... his store and stock of goods and all his interests." The two men proceeded to the village where they learned that communication with Jackson County had been cut and all were afraid to go there except those who were "one of the white people who belonged to the party there." Disregarding these warnings, Fleishman set off for Marianna. After crossing over the Apalachicola River, Fleishman encountered Martin's employee, Sims, who stold Martin he had warned Fleishman that he would be murdered should he proceed on his route and offered to drive him in his buggy back to Chattahoochee. Fleishman insisted on continuing his journey. Sims was the last person to report seeing Fleishman alive.

On Monday night, Fleishman's bullet-riddled body was spotted about a half mile from the place where he encountered Sims.

The story of the Fleishman family in Jackson County ended abruptly at this point. Fleishman's burial site is unknown and the county records contain no file of his estate. Shortly after the murder of her husband, Sophia Fleishman and her children left Jackson County for New York City. Unconfirmed stories suggest that the Altman store was ransacked. A final inquest held two months after the murder reiterated the previous inconclusive verdict. Despite the extreme likelihood that Fleishman's slaying was an orchestrated ambush, no suggestion as to the identity of the murderer was ever publicly offered.

Oct. 5 - Oct. 9, 1869

On Tuesday morning, Oct. 5, while Reed hid under the Ely house fearing for his life, Fleishman returned to Coker's store where found an "organized meeting" of "persons of influence in the county" in progress. Coker spoke first and informed Fleishman the attendees were a committee that represented the whole community and that it was their desire that Fleishman "should leave for the good of said community." If Fleishman did not leave, Coker announced, he would "be killed on account of certain expressions" he allegedly made on the day of the picnic shootings. The committee hoped that Fleishman would comply, and they would not to have to kill him. They were concerned, Coker continued, that Fleishman's death would lead to twenty or thirty more killings. His departure, they believed, would "save bloodshed."

Before this large gathering, Fleishman stood his ground. He insisted that he was not leaving. Fleishman now bargained with Coker and the committee over the terms of his banishment. He was informed he had two hours to leave. This deadline was pushed back until 5 p.m. and then sundown. Fleishman still refused to agree to exile. He declared that he would "rather die than leave." If he was accused of a crime, he argued, he should stand trial and accept the punishment. At the very least, he demanded that he be given until January to wrap up his business. With some exasperation, the committee members repeated that they had no desire to take his life, but rather "wished to save it, and to do the best thing they could for the safety of the community." Exasperated, the committee finally declared that Fleishman would be carried off at sundown, "willing or unwilling."

Leaving Coker's store, Fleishmen went straight to Dickinson, "the only officer of the law in the town," to protest the threatened eviction. Dickinson transcribed Fleishman's account and Fleishman signed the resulting statement in the form of an affidavit. A few hours later, Coker entered Fleishman's store and demanded that Fleishman turn over all the arms in his stock "for the men in defense of the town during the present excitement." When Fleishman hesitated, Coker assured Fleishman that he would take responsibility for returning his property. Wilbur Jenkins, Fleishman's clerk who had joined the earlier meeting at Coker's store, handed Coker the key and Coker left with eight guns, eleven pistols, powder, shot, and caps. Fleishman ran back to Dickinson and swore out another affidavit to report Coker's appropriation of his merchandise. At sundown, Fleishman still had not complied with the committee's order, stubbornly remaining in his home. After 9 p.m., four men came to take him from his wife and six children and carried him off to the Georgia border, about twenty-five miles from Marianna.

The night riders continued to terrorize the black community. By now, however, some likely targets took precautions by hiding and were not found in their homes when the anticipated knock came in the middle of the night. Richard Pooser, who had been shot the previous spring, did not show such foresight. Edward Alderman and E. Butler drew him out of his house in Marianna and ordered him to march down a street leading into the countryside. Pooser broke and ran, evading shotgun and pistol blasts, and found refuge under Dr. Theophilus West's dining room. Joseph Nelson, who was Henry Reed's step-son, saw how the Reeds had narrowly escaped with their lives and made his own plans to leave for Jacksonville. He arranged to escape by accompanying Washington Chapman to Gadsden County. Nelson joined a train of Chapman's wagons and managed to get out of Jackson County alive, despite being stopped several times along the way by groups of armed white men. Together with his dog, Sherman, Nelson continued on his journey until he arrived at the railroad in Quincy, where he boarded the train to Jacksonville.

By Thursday, Oct. 7, divisions began to emerge in the white community. At a meeting of white citizens, William D. Barnes, William H. Milton, and James C. McLean "favored peace on all sides" and spoke out against "drunkenness and abuse of power." James Coker, however, took offense at these comments and protested against this abuse of "our young men who had taken a little too much, or had acted a little irregularly." An appointed committee resolved to "use every lawful effort in our power to arrest and punish the guilty parties." They further condemned "all acts of violation of the laws by whomsoever committed," called for exertions "to restore peace and quiet to our distracted county." The committee closed by offering "a reward of One Thousand Dollars for the apprehension of Calvin Rogers, one of the perpetrators of the deed." As an afterthought, a motion was passed offering a one thousand dollar reward "for the apprehension of the murderers of Wyatt Scurlock and child."

On Thursday afternoon, Billy Coker's band committed their most barbaric atrocity. Matt Nickels may have dodged their bullets previously, but Billy Coker, "Pete" Alderman, and Jack Myrick were determined to finish him off. The Courier provided chilling details. The three young men came to Nickels's house and "conversed several minutes, pretending to have an order [from] an officer." They marched Nickels, his wife, Mariah, and his sixteen year old son, Matt Jr. "forward to town but changed their course after getting a short distance from the house." The family was led to a lime pit in the woods about one half-mile away. There, the family was brutally murdered, their throats slit. Only a daughter escaped death.

The slaying of the Nickels family was deemed excessive even by previously silent whites. On Friday, Oct. 8, Justice of the Peace Adam McNealy issued a warrant for the arrest of the suspected murderers. This time an inquest into the killings was held, and after one minute the jury returned a verdict indicting Myrick, Coker, and Alderman. By the next day, all three men were reported missing and were presumed to have fled the county. One legend placed them in France where Myrick's sister lived with her husband, the Comte de Lautrippe. Other rumors located Myrick in Texas years later. The departure of these young men facilitated the reestablishment of calm.

This account is adapted from my forthcoming narrative history, The Jackson County War, to be published shortly by Dale Cox

Oct. 3 & 4, 1869

The next two days were comparatively calm. Dickinson continued to be frustrated in his attempts at initiating legal proceedings into the McClellan and Granberry murders. It would be best, he reluctantly concluded, to "await the return of quiet."

On Monday, the 4th, prominent white citizens drafted an account of the past week's events, which they sent to Governor Reed and the Weekly Floridian newspaper. The letter's authors insisted that Rogers had shot the McClellans and strongly suggested that Granberry was complicit in that murder. They "felt compelled to state" that Rogers was to blame for "much of our troubles" because of his "domineering manner" and "repeated acts of oppression" as constable. The letter's authors advised, however, that the situation was now under control and that "[o]ur people are doing all in their power to keep down further violence, and we expect to be able to do so."

On the same afternoon Samuel Fleishman was summoned to a meeting at Coker's store with leading citizens, which was then adjourned to the next morning. Fleishman was one of the few openly Republican whites remaining in Jackson County. In the days following the picnic shootings, a rumor spread in Marianna that Fleishman had advised blacks gathered at his store to avenge the slaying of Stewart Livingston and Wyatt Young by murdering whites. Various versions of this story circulated.

After dark fell, the night riders again set out. Their target that night was Henry Reed, a freeborn black carpenter. At one o'clock in the morning, Reed heard a knock on his door. A voice told him that Dickinson was waiting for him at the courthouse. Reed saw through this ridiculous ruse and replied that he was too sick to go out and Dickinson would have to wait until morning. The besiegers insisted he come out. When Reed announced he was getting his coat and hat, he was told he would not need them and to come out immediately. Reed's fifteen-year-old son, William, jumped out of a window and, as he ran past the garden gate, a blast of buckshot missed him except for nicking his ear. Reed peeked outside and seeing a double-barreled shotgun pointed at him, quickly closed the door. Now the night riders were more insistent, yelling that they would bring more men to tear the house down and would blow out Reed's brains if he didn't comply. Reed's wife, Harriet, began to cry, fearing that her son was already dead and her husband was to be murdered momentarily. Reed observed the men guarding the back of his house move around to the front and he quickly leapt out the back-window. He ran in the darkness toward the Ely house where he hid underneath until the next afternoon.

Oct 2, 1869: A small hell on earth

The morning after the slaying of Maggie McClellan, fifty to sixty armed white men patrolled Marianna’s streets. John Q. Dickinson’s diary records the events of this terrible day and his frustration at being shut out from information. Calvin Rogers appeared and was immediately pursued by Coker’s son, Billy, and his friends. For the first time since the Battle of Marianna, and perhaps the last time, the hoots of the rebel yell resounded in Marianna as the young men chased Rogers through the town. Rogers escaped but Billy Coker, Jack Myrick and another man seized two black men, Oscar Granberry and Matt Nickels, ordering them to help track down Rogers. After the two men were instructed to march ahead, Granberry was shot down dead, but Nickels managed to escape into the woods.

Throughout the morning, white men continued to stream into Marianna from the countryside. By noon, Dickinson estimated that at least two hundred men, most armed with double-barreled shot-guns and many mounted, roamed the town and scoured the surrounding area. Dickinson found "wild excitement" with young men "drunk and desperate" and "elder and better men" afraid and keeping out of sight.

Dickinson pleaded for the restoration of the rule of law and proper procedure, but he was threatened by Coker and ignored by everyone else. Eventually, James McClellan agreed to swear to an affidavit and Dickinson issued a warrant for the arrest of Calvin Rogers for the murder of Maggie. Dickinson, however, was warned not to hold an inquest over the killing of Granberry.

The rest of that Saturday, "drunkenness and misrule and excitement abounded" in the streets. In Dickinson's words, Marianna had become "a small hell on earth." After dark, the night riders ventured forth, for the first time since the spring, to terrorize black families in their isolated homes in the countryside.

This account is adapted from my forthcoming narrative history, The Jackson County War, to be published shortly by Dale Cox.

Oct 1, 1869: Revenge gone astray

On the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 1, the grand jury that convened two days earlier after the slaying of Wyatt Young and two-year-old Stewart Livingstone abandoned its deliberations and returned the verdict of "shot by unknown person." Tempers that had simmered with anger since the Finlayson murder the previous spring now exploded. Some Marianna African Americans plotted to settle accounts once and for all. The targets for their vengeance were not the rumored shooters at the picnic, but the leadership of Jackson County's Regulators - the secretive, organization of whites determined to resist Reconstruction policy and Republican control.

At about 9 p.m., merchant James P. Coker and attorney James F. McClellan stood on the porch of Marianna's hotel, speaking with some other men. McClellan's eighteen-year-old daughter, Maggie, sat beside the two leaders of Jackson County's Regulators. Shots burst out from the darkness, apparently from quite nearby. Tragically, the assailants blundered just as badly as the ambushers who botched the attempted assasination of Calvin Rogers earlier in the week and another child suffered the consequences. Maggie, "a beautiful and amiable girl," fell dead, and her father was wounded in the shoulder. Coker, unhurt, fired back with his pistol into the night. McClellan or Coker, depending on the account, claimed to have recognized the voice of Calvin Rogers giving the command to fire.

Coker sprung into action, summoning all men from his organization to gather in Marianna. His Regulators immeidately seized control of the town and detained any black men who dared venture out of their homes. A number of riders galloped out into the countryside to sound the alarm. Decades later, Joseph Barnes told historian William W. Davis that he had ridden that night "almost to the Choctawhatchee" River to rouse the white men of Jackson County.

Maggie McClellan's tombstone (pictured above) with its faded inscription can be found in the graveyard of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Marianna. The burial location of Stewart Livingstone is unknown.

This account is adapted from my forthcoming narrative history, The Jackson County War, to be published shortly by Dale Cox.

Sept 29 & 30, 1869

The morning after the picnic shootings, the investigation of the picnic site continued, but no new evidence turned up. The same morning, Dickinson convened a grand jury in Marianna. Amid speculation about the identity of the shooters, one young white man affiliated with the town's Regulators was named. In the meantime, another shooting was reported. About nine miles outside of Marianna, Columbus Sullivan, a white preacher, and George Cox, black, were hauling cotton when they were riddled with buckshot. Cox was lightly wounded. Sullivan's face was mutilated and he died from his wounds about a week later. The gunman escaped. Dickinson wrote to his friend Congressman Charles M. Hamilton about the need for "a first-class detective" in Marianna or, alternatively, "a few Henry rifles" which, he wrote, "would have an excellent moral effect here." During these tense days, rumors began to spread in the white community that dry goods merchant Samuel Fleishman had made some kind of statement advising a group of African American men gathered in his store to avenge the picnic shootings.

September 28, 1869: the War erupts

The most tumultuous, and tragic, events in Jackson County’s history have taken place in the autumn, including the Battle of Marianna in 1864, and the infamous Claude Neal lynching seventy years later. The shootings and assaults of the Jackson County War lasted more than two years, but the most virulent phase came during several weeks beginning in late September 1869.

On the morning of Sept. 28th, five years and one day after the Battle of Marianna, a party of about twenty African American women and children set off on a picnic outing. Their destination was the Natural Bridge, a few miles outside of Marianna. A few men, including Constable Calvin Rogers escorted the group. Rogers, an African American, had long been resented by Regulator elements and, after the shootings of Purman, Finlayson and Constable Pooser the previous spring, an assault on Rogers seemed inevitable. At about 9 a.m., assailants concealed behind thick bushes fired thirteen or fourteen shots in "rapid succession." Rogers, sitting in an ox cart, had his clothes and wallet torn by three or four shots, but suffered only a grazed arm. Rogers fired back in the direction of the shooters with the one round in his gun. He called out to Wyatt Young, who had gone on ahead, to bring ammunition. Meanwhile, confusion and fright overcame the party of picnic-goers. An ox pulling a cart carrying two-year-old Stewart Livingston panicked and bolted. Wyatt Young grabbed the little boy from the cart just as a bullet passed through the boy's skull and into the left side of Young's chest, killing both of them instantly.

As abruptly as it had begun, the firing ended. Within ninety minutes, news of this tragedy reached Marianna. John Quincy Dickinson, the senior law enforcement authority remaining in Jackson County, organized a posse of thirty men to search for the killers. They scoured the area around the site of the shooting for evidence. "A mysterious buggy-track" leading from Marianna to the Natural Bridge and out toward Greenwood was discovered, but nightfall ended the investigation.

This account is adapted from my forthcoming narrative history, The Jackson County War, to be published shortly by Dale Cox. Updates to thejacksoncountywar.com will be more frequent over the coming weeks as the 140th anniversary is remembered.

August 1869: A Plot Foiled

After the Finlayson/Purman shootings, Florida's Governor Reed posted a two thousand dollar reward for the arrest of Dr. Finlayson's murderer. The leading suspect, Sergeant Thomas Bond, was supposed to have fled to Texas, but in August, rumors spread that Bond had appeared in Jackson County. Green White, a Jackson County freedman, decided to take advantage of Bond's return to claim the money. White devised a plot seemingly taken straight from the Bible. Bond was known to visit a house of prostitution on Jackson Co. side of the Chattahoochee River. White enlisted a woman at the House in his plan. On Bond's next visit, the woman was to grab Bond's guns, presumably while he was in a vulnerable state, and White, waiting outside the House, would then enter and seize Bond. White recruited two black soldiers stationed as guards at the Chattahoochee penitentiary to join this conspiracy.
The result was a complete debacle. Instead of Bond's capture, the attempt ended in the shooting deaths of two of the conspirators: Sergeant Sancho Turner and Green White, and the wounding of a bystander.
Despite the murder of one his soldiers, Malachi Martin, the prison's warden, feared provoking Bond and his friends. Martin tried to convince his guards to accompany him without their weapons to investigate and recover the bodies. Naturally, the soldiers refused to disarm themselves. Instead, Martin and a Mr. Sims hired the ferry to carry them and two coffins across the river. Martin found the corpses about twenty paces apart with their loaded guns at their feet. Because the bodies were too decomposed to be moved, he buried them where they lay. No one was ever brought to account for the murder of Green White and Sgt. Turner.

This account is adapted from my forthcoming narrative history, “The Jackson County War,” to be published shortly by Dale Cox.

"Excellent Barbecue": Celebration of the 4th of July in Jackson County during Reconstruction

During the Reconstruction years, the commemoration of the Fourth of July in Jackson County reflected not just the turmoil of the era, but also hinted at the possibility of racial and community reconciliation. There is no record of celebration of the nation’s birthday in 1865 when the county was still recovering from the shock of both defeat and emancipation while under military occupation. The next year, however, after the arrival of Freedman’s Bureau’s agents Charles Hamilton and William Purman, dramatic developments ensued.

In late June, 1866, Hamilton was approached by a delegation of African Americans who sought permission to organize a parade through Marianna to be followed by a barbecue to celebrate the Fourth of July. The marchers intended to carry the stars and stripes and portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
Hamilton gave his tentative approval, but immediately dispatched a message to Tallahassee requesting the consent of Florida's Governor David S. Walker and Maj. Gen. John G. Foster, commander of both the Bureau and the military Department of Florida. The general and governor approved, but warned Hamilton to take precautions to avoid disorder and ensure that no arms were carried at the parade. Meanwhile, Jackson County whites, learning of the proposed event, angrily objected, insisting that the freedmen had no right to celebrate. The sheriff asked General Foster to reconsider his approval. Dr. Ethelred Philips reflected the suspicions of many when he remarked in a letter to his brother that the "pest" of a Bureau agent had "put up the negroes to celebrate the 4th." Anger was inflamed by rumors that Hamilton had ordered the freedmen to attend the event bearing arms. With more than one thousand freedmen expected to take part, Philips admitted that whites felt "a little uneasy." It was now hinted that some white men were ready to stop the celebration by force and shoot anyone who dared carry the banners and United States flag in Marianna.
Hamilton next consulted attorney William H. Milton, who served as Marianna's mayor and judge of the county court. Milton did not object to the celebration on principle but advised that it was not a wise idea. Parading Lincoln's portrait would appear, he warned, as though the blacks were "flaunting defiance in our faces." Hamilton took it upon himself to bargain terms and agreed to persuade the freedmen to abandon the plan of bearing the portraits. Hamilton insisted, however, that the stars and stripes must be carried. "The time had passed," he declared "when the American flag could not be unfurled anywhere within the National domains."
Hamilton became increasingly anxious and confessed that he feared for his personal safety. He requested that General Foster dispatch U.S. troops, but the response from Tallahassee was less than reassuring. Because of illness, the only soldiers available to send to Marianna were the 82nd U.S. Colored Troops. Instead of sending in black soldiers, Foster advised that it would be better to let "matters take their natural course...to test the feeling prevailing" in Jackson County.
In a welcome anticlimax, the Fourth of July celebration of 1866 was a complete success. The event passed "with remarkable quietness and good feeling on all sides." Not only did they not interfere, but most white males of the area came to partake of the "excellent barbecue." At first, Hamilton was at a loss to explain this surprising outcome. He surmised that the approvals of General Foster and Governor Walker had proved decisive in persuading the whites to relent. After further thought, he supposed that the threats had been mere bluster and that he and the freedmen had called their opponents' bluff by insisting on holding the celebration regardless of intimidation.

The following year’s festivities were not preceded by the same tension and near hysteria. More than 5,000 people, including many local whites and visitors from neighboring counties and states, attended a peaceful celebration that was even more successful than the previous year's event. The day began with a long procession through Marianna led by the Stars and Stripes and, this time, the parade included portraits of Washington and Lincoln. A speaker’s stand was erected by the Chipola River, and the barbecue was opened with a prayer and a recitation of the Declaration of Independence. Resolutions venerating the memory of fallen patriots were read along with addresses advocating the Republican party. The speeches were followed by an "excellent & abundant barbecue."

The murder of Dr. John Finlayson and the other killings and shootings early in 1869 did not discourage Jackson County blacks from continuing their new tradition of hosting a mass Fourth of July celebration. Once again bringing together both races, the 1869 event was a success. The day was beautiful as was the setting "upon the slope of an extensive hill that was covered with grand and massive oaks." The festivities were presided over by Jesse Robinson, one of Jackson County’s African American state assemblymen. Robinson was followed by a diverse list of speakers, including Democrats William H. Milton, William E. Anderson, Dr. West, and Republicans Calvin Rogers and Purman, who had returned to Marianna for the occasion despite narrowly escaping assassination just over three months earlier. All orators were met with "the ringing applause of the large assemblage."

With this triumphant celebration, however, ends the record of grand Fourth of July barbecues organized by the black community for the enjoyment of both races. It may well be that such events continued to occur but became so routine that they did not merit reports in newspapers. It is more likely that as the Republican Party weakened and collapsed under the pressure of white resistance and redemption during Reconstruction, the capability and willingness of African Americans to sponsor such celebrations faded along with their freedoms.

This account is adapted from my forthcoming narrative history, “The Jackson County War,” to be published shortly by Dale Cox.

June 1869: Secession (to Alabama) Agitation

With the heat of summer, violence waned. The races settled into simmering, but peaceful, co-existance. Meanwhile, the attention of the Jackson County political leadership and business community turned toward renewed discussions between the states of Florida and Alabama over a proposal for Alabama to annex the Florida Panhandle in exchange for financial assistance. Purman, who left Marianna as soon as he recuperated from the February shooting sufficiently to travel, had been appointed by Governor Reed as a commissioner to negotiate on behalf of Florida.

Jackson County residents had long been frustrated by the state's inability to support the building of a railroad to Marianna. The most desirable plan was the extension of the tracks that ended in Quincy to Chattahoochee and over the Apalachicola, thereby finally connecting Marianna by rail with Tallahassee and Jacksonville. Plans included extending this line west from Marianna to Pensacola to traverse the entire state. Democrats already predisposed to despise Gov. Reed's Republican "carpetbagger" administration found further cause for outrage in the state's continuing financial crisis and the backroom deals with politically-connected speculators that later erupted into the Swepson-Littlefield scandal.

In an unique confluence of both Republicans and Democrats, Jackson County residents supported secession of Florida counties west of the Apalachicola to Alabama. Hopes for the eastern route abandoned, plans were floated and companies incorporated to build a rail line north to Dothan and south to St. Andrew's Bay. In the pages of his Marianna Courier, Frank Baltzell enthusiastically endorsed the plan negotiated by Purman, the man he detested most.

Frank Baltzell gave voice to the frustration of his fellow citizens:

"The whole railroad scheme is a sham and humbug, and instead of commencing a road they are squabbling over precedents of incorporations, rights of franchise and other stuff of like nature to postpone beginning until after the election in November. The bills making the appropriations were framed in such a manner that a subterfuge can be sought and obtained, in case extension to the Apalachicola river will better conserve the interest of the Middle and East.
The only hope for facilities and improvement lies in annexation, and we appeal to our citizens to abandon the irretrievably indebted State of Florida, that is unwilling to give them their rightful part of the internal improvement fund and would deceive them in the last breath of connection, and rally to the annexation and Alabama, and our long neglected section will soon see the smoky signals of prosperity and happiness hovering over our valleys and the echo of its pulses throbbing among our lonely hills.
If our aprehensions are unfounded it would behoove our friends to vote for annexation that would at least, make these companies develope their pretended intended intentions."
[Pensacola West Florida Commercial, July 16, 1869]

A public meeting was held in Marianna in August attended by one of Alabama's negotiators, and a referendum was scheduled for the Panhandle counties for October. With the endorsement of both Republican and Democratic leaders, Jackson County residents were certain to approve annexation by a wide majority. In the fall, however, other events intervened to draw attention away from annexation. Marianna did not get its railroad connection to the east until early 1883. [Greg Turner, A Short History of Florida Railroads, 85]

May 1869: Return of Frank Baltzell's Marianna Courier

From the Tallahassee Sentinel of May 15, 1869:

SALUTATORY- The first number of the resuscitated Courier, published at Marianna, is before us, with the salutatory address of the Editor, from which we extract the following:
With this number we resume the publication of the Marianna Courier, suspended in December last.
It is customary on such an occasion to open with an elaborate editorial article setting forth the interests to which it will be devoted, the opinions to which it will adhere, the doctrines it will advocate, the political party it will support, and at the same time showing up the wants of expectant readers with a prospectus or bill of fare of the interesting articles to be introduced. But we will deviate from this honored custom, let our bastling speak for itself, and make our dissertation brief.
To advance the interests of Jackson county and West Florida, to have a local expositor of the opinions of the town and county, and to disseminate information important to the advancement of the farmer and mechanic are the objects to which the Courier aims it efforts.
FRANK BALTZELL

Frank Baltzell was still a teenager when he joined his brother George A. as editor and publisher of the Courier newspaper which they had founded in 1866 with their father George F. Baltzell, the prominent jurist. An 1870 newspaper directory listed the Courier as consisting of four pages, appearing each Thursday, with a circulation of 850. It was described as the "only paper publshed in the five eastern counties of west Florida, where it has an extensive circulation and commanding influence" (The Men who Advertise, Geo. Rowell & Co., NY, 1870, p. 627).
Frank Baltzell had already gained reknown for his feats as a boy during the Battle of Marianna. A committed Democrat and opponent of Reconstruction policy, Baltzell soon gained attention for his caustic and eloquent editorials and became a favorite of Charles Dyke, editor of the Tallahassee Weekly Floridan, the state's leading Democratic newspaper. Baltzell can be blamed for inciting hatred of Hamilton and Purman, but his views apparently accurately reflected the opinion of most of Jackson County's white community towards the Bureau agents and their allies. Baltzell did not reserve his criticism solely for Republicans, but also attacked the young "chivalry" who failed, in his view, to adapt to the post-war situation through economic industry and initiative. As conditions deteriorated in Jackson County, however, Baltzell came increasingly to rationalize inexcusable offenses committed by local whites. Unfortunately, no intact copies of the Courier remain from the years that Frank edited the newspaper. Numerous extracts in other Florida papers, however, give a strong impression of Frank's powerful and influential, and sometimes irresponsible, writing style and opinions.

April 1869: Aftermath of the violence

There are no records of arrests - and certainly no convictions - for the shootings of the spring of 1869. The circuit court grand jury, led by foreman John M. F. Erwin of Greenwood, expressed with "deepest regret...[its] utter inability to obtain evidence sufficient to bring to justice a large number of the guilty." Erwin commeneded the "hearty cooperation" of the county's civil officers and citizens, but, conveniently or not, conceded that "crime of the deepest die goes unpunished." Erwin was a prominent merchant and sometime politician who bitterly opposed the Bureau and its aims. His stately home stands in Greenwood today.

The violence of the spring terrified Jackson County African Americans. T. Thomas Fortune later recalled the extraordinary efforts of his father, state assemblyman Emanuel Fortune, to fortify and defend their home. Fortune wrote that white men stalked the home day and night and vividly recalled tripping early one morning over a man sleeping beside a shotgun at a position overlooking their homestead. Emanuel Fortune sensed his "life to be in danger at all times." Finally, Fortune heeded the counsel of his friends, white and black, to leave. He distributed his property among his relations and neighbors and packed up his family, settling in Jacksonville. His son rued that his father received almost no compensation for the farm, business, and chattel he had assiduously built and accumulated since Emancipation.

March 1869: violence following the Finlayson/Purman shooting

The Finlayson/Purman shooting initiated a period of violence that left an additional five Jackson County men dead and six more wounded during the spring of 1869. The first of these victims was James T. Colliette, a forty-two-year-old white farmer and father of five children, shot to death in his house. There was speculation that Colliette had been involved in the Finlayson/Purman shooting, although his role may have been limited to his "sanctioning the foul deed." A few weeks later, a young white man named Swain, staying at the McGriff farm near Chattahoochee, "was decoyed out...after night by a noise made about the stables...shot and killed." In the same neighborhood, two weeks later, two black men were shot and wounded. On the night of April 3, Richard Pooser, an African American county constable was severely wounded by a load of buckshot.

Meanwhile, Jackson County's leadership responded to the violence. James. L. G. Baker, one of the county's largest land-holders, presided over a meeting of Marianna citizens, which condemned the Finlayson/Purman shooting and arranged for resolutions to be printed in Florida's major newspapers. The committee, however, defeated any movement toward reconciliation by asserting that Purman had confessed, on his presumed deathbed, that the shooters' motives had been personal, rather than political. Purman, gradually recovering, insisted from his sickbed in Marianna that the assassination "was entirely political" and contended that the committee had misrepresented him. John Q. Dickinson, the Jackson County Bureau Agent who succeeded Purman, took upon himself the task of promulgating Purman's position and sent letters to several Florida newspapers and even to his native Vermont. Dickinson's letters immediately provoked a letter writing campaign accusing him of disparaging Jackson County's white citizenry.

Feb. 27, 1869: the (almost) sack of Marianna

Jackson County's African American community was outraged by the assault on their two friends. The next day, Feb. 27th, a committee representing the black community visited Purman who lay in his bed, clinging to life. The committee men - "armed to the teeth" - informed Purman that they had assembled six hundred to eight hundred men ready to "come in and sack the town that night." (This "assembling of an unlawful mob of armed citizens" was confirmed by the circuit court grand jury's presentment later than spring). Purman later testified that he had begged the delegation to desist from their threatened plan, and coaxed them to swear that they would call off their men and order them to return to their homes. A Marianna resident confirmed that "but for Major Purman's influence, the town would have been destroyed by the excited colored population, over whom the Major has complete control." The town was spared that night and, for the moment, open racial warfare in Jackson County was averted.

An investigation at the shooting scene found tracks of two men leading from the site of the shooting. Although no further evidence was discovered and no witnesses came forth, the names of the shooters were openly discussed in Marianna during the following days.

The opening salvo of the Jackson County War: The murder of Dr. John L. Finlayson and wounding of William J. Purman

Late in the evening of Feb. 26, 1869 in Marianna, FL, - 140 years ago this day - Dr. John L. Finlayson and state Senator William J. Purman were peppered by buckshot fired by a hidden assailant. Finlayson, struck through the forehead, died within mintues while Purman was more lucky and survived the shot that passed through his neck and jaw, although his life was in doubt for several weeks. The two young men were returning from a minstrel performance by the small garrison of U.S. troops periodically stationed in town when they were ambushed close by the Davis-West home that stands in Marianna today. Dr. Finlayson, about thirty years old at the time of his death, was a native of Jackson County and the oldest son of a fairly prosperous planting family that lost much property during the Battle of Marianna. Although a Confederate army veteran, Finlayson befriended Hamilton and Purman - the Bureau agents stationed in Jackson County - and, by 1867, had become active in the Republican Party, drawing the resentment of his neighbors. Purman had served as Bureau agent in Jackson County from early 1866 until his election to the state senate in May 1868 and was detested as a carpetbagger by Jackson County's white population although highly esteemed by its African American citizens.

The consequences of the shooting were severe: long simmering tensions exploded into violence and terror that lasted, with varying degrees of intensity, for almost three years. Finlayson's death left an enormous void: he was the only Marianna medical doctor willing to attend to the region's black population, whose many poor he treated gratis. He also had recently been appointed county clerk of court. Almost immediately after Finlayson's murder, his wife, Sarah Jane Bond, left Marianna with her two small children, John and Sallie, to mourn at the home of her parents in Mobile. Within two months Sarah Jane died, falling "an innocent victim to grief in devotion to her husband."

[Photo: Dr. John L. Finlayson - from the Florida State Archives collection]

Jackson County War - Anniversary

2009 marks the 140th anniversary of the nearly three years of sporadic violence known as the Jackson County War. The estimated total number of murder victims ranges from 80 to 180 - of whom at least 90% were Republicans and, of these, 90% were African American. The full story of the Jackson County War will be told in my forthcoming book to be released by Dale Cox's publishing house later this year. In anticipation of the release of the "Jackson County War," and to memorialize the events of the terrible period, I will periodically post information about key dates as their anniversaries come up in the course of the coming years. The shooting that signaled the start of this conflict will be described tomorrow.

Purman biography at ANB.org

My biographical sketch of William J. Purman for Oxford Univ. Press's American National Biography site is currently viewable at the update section at http://www.anb.org/articles/07/07-00815.html . I had also written a similar piece about Hamilton early in 2008.

143 Years Ago Today: Charles M. Hamilton arrives in Marianna

On Jan. 29, 1866, Charles M. Hamilton arrived in Marianna, Florida to establish the Freedmen's Bureau office for Jackson, Calhoun, Washington and Holmes counties. Hamilton, then twenty-five years old, remained an officer in the Veterans Reserve Corps. With no practical experience, other than brief service as a judge advocate general staffer, Hamilton now found himself responsible for promoting the welfare and defending the rights of more than 5000 recently freed slaves in his district.

John Quincy Dickinson's Grave - Old Cemetery, Benson, Vermont

Publications Update

Short biographical sketches I have written about Hamilton and Purman are available at Oxford University Press' American National Biography website www.anb.org

T. Thomas Fortune's "After War Times" with my introduction and annotations will be published by Dale Cox before the end of 2008

The Jackson County War should be published in early 2009 in time for the 140th anniversary of the beginning of that conflict.

Purman-Finlayson Wedding Account

The Tallahassee Sentinel reprinted an item from the Washington Chronicle, dated Oct. 20, 1871, describing the wedding of W.J. Purman and Leadora Finlayson:

"FASHIONABLE WEDDING - The wedding of Major William J. Purman, of Florida, and Miss Leadora P. Finlayson, of the same State, at the Metropolitan Church in this city, yesterday morning, was a brilliant and fashionable affair. A large number of political and personal friends of the bridegroom, together with many friends and acquaintances of the lovely bride, who, during her brief residence in Washington, had formed many warm friendships in our fashionable circles, were present on the occasion. The bride was attired in a neat and attractive traveling costume of brown silk, of a delicate shade, richly trimmed, and with hat and gloves matching to a charm. The bridegroom wore a black cloth coat and vest, pearl-colored pantaloons, and gloves of the same. The nuptial ceremonies, Rev. Dr. Newman officiating, were beautiful and impressive, as will be appreciated by all who have ever been present on similar occasions at the church of this eminent divine. The happy couple left on the noon train for a wedding tour to Niagara Falls, New York, and Boston, whence they will proceed to their residence in Tallahassee, Florida.
Major Purman is one of the representative men of his State, and has rendered valuable services in its reconstruction, having been a member of the Constitutional Convention, and subsequently held other important offices. He is at present United States assessor of internal revenue, and also ably fills a seat in the Florida Senate. His talents have won for him an unusually successful public career, and those who know him well have naught but words of praise for him as a gentleman of sterling integrity and honor in his personal relations. His bride is the daughter of the late Colonel Angus Finlayson, a native, and during life one of the most prominent citizens of West Florida; a staunch Unionist during the war, and whose family ever professed the firmest principles of loyalty. A brother of the bride, who was clerk of the Circuit Court of Jackson county, of which Major Purman was then judge, lost his life in an attack made by ex-rebels upon Major P. and himself, a year or two ago - an instance of the perils to which Union men are exposed in the far South. - Washington Chronicle, Oct. 20"
[Tallahassee Sentinel, Nov. 4, 1871]

Editor Walton of the Sentinel confirms that "Handsome Charley" Hamilton is handsome

As I wrote in the FHQ paper, Hamilton's Democratic opponents attacked him viciously, including mocking his pompous word-choice ("gassy Hamilton") and his poor oratorical skills. They also chose to taunt him as "handsome Charley." This backhanded compliment was not intended to be ironic. The critics emphasized Hamilton's good looks as though that were his only feature warranting attention. Walton, the editor of Florida Republican administration's "official" newspaper, chose to respond on Hamilton's behalf:
"'Handsome Charley' Here is another good illustration of the littleness of small minds. The Democratic editors having no other guilt to charge upon the Hon. C. M. Hamilton begin and quarrel with his physical appearance. Well, it should be a consolation to a man to know that he has some pleasing quality. We know several Charleys in this vicinity, two at least, who have not even the qualification of good looks to recommend them, much less any higher excellence. If the face is the mirror of the soul, what a deformity that arrangement of theirs must be!" [Tallahassee Sentinel 11/12/1870]
It should be recalled that this paragraph came out after Hamilton had been defeated by Josiah Walls in his bid to gain the Florida Republican Party's renomination for Congress at the August 1870 convention. Hamilton's graciousness in this defeat brought him much good-will. The Republican press, however, would turn against Hamilton the following year after he publicly exposed Senator Osborn's role in the Great Southern Railroad.
Regarding the Great Southern Railroad scandal, it is interesting to find that in Nov. 1870, Senator Osborn, his brother and president of the GSR, Rev. Osborn, and the GSR's agent, M.H. Alberger had dinner in Jacksonville with Florida's Chief Justice Randall and the reputedly impeccable Jonathan C. Gibbs. [Tallahassee Sentinel 11/26/1870]

Hamilton's Nov. 1868 Campaign Circular

A few days after Hamilton accepted the nomination as Florida's Republican candidate for Congress, he sent out the following campaign statement:

CIRCULAR

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF FLORIDA- As it may not be possible for your nominee (of the Republican party) to visit every part of the State during the present important canvass, it being necessary for him, your present Representative, to attend as soon as possible, the meeting of Congress in December – it is proper that he should address you some words of encouragement, defining briefly his position, and then commit himself and the success of the party to your earnest care and faithful keeping.
Having been a Republican from my youth – casting my first vote (a soldier's ballot) for the re-election of the revered Lincoln in '64 – it is but natural that my whole sympathies should be, as they are, radically Republican. But I claim no virtue because of this, for it is a solemn duty I owe both to our country and to her people. Seven years military service during the most eventful period, just ended, of her existence have made sacred the obligations I, with all the loyal people, owe to our regenerated Union, and to the now universally free institutions of our country. As Republicans, we have wrought this great national salvation – purging slavery and human inequality from her borders, and erecting in their room in the lasting temple of the Union, freedom and equal manhood for all! Now as Republicans it is incumbent upon us to vindicate our work, and in the same patriotic spirit which actuated us in accomplishing this high object, to preserve for all the future this priceless harvest of the seed sown in the land thrice enriched by rivers of the loyal blood of our countryman. We can fellow-citizens, we must do it.
The enemy, as hostile, as relentless, as treasonable as ever, are at our gates demanding the surrender of the Government their wicked rebellion failed to overthrow; still refusing to abide the decision of the sword to which they in acknowledged folly appealed; still heardless of the thundering voice of the Nation which has now made their military conquerer their civil ruler. Surrender not to them; heed not their insane appeals to your passions and your prejudices, for they seek to lead you as they did in '61- further on to your ruin.
Under the mantle of the people they plead for the miserable aristocracy who composed the Democratic party of the past, and who now compose the "Conservative" party of the present.
It is a sectional party, and a party of caste, and its object is to continue to favor this class at the expense of the poor, and to over throw the loyal Republican Governments which guarantee Equal Rights to all the people alike.
The Republican party is the part of the Union, the peoples' party and its object is to secure and maintain the Union and the Constitution of our fathers, and the Republican Governments established in the South under the wise and generous Reconstruction laws of Congress; to educate and elevate the laboring people on whose shoulder more than any other rest the burdens of the Governments to organize a system of free common schools, the fountain of popular knowledge that all the people may readily qualify themselves for the responsibility of citizenship. For education is the strong, grand pillar of a free Government – the sword in the hands of the people to protect their lives and property, and the shield of security to their liberties. During an hundred years this "Conservative" party in the South has stood in the way of the enlightenment and prosperity of the people and the progress and welfare of the Southern portion of our Union. Let us strike down this criminal barrier in this propitious moment, and the flood-gates of domestic happiness and prosperity will open wide, and welcome Peace flow in along.
With the glorious triumph of the Republican party in the election of Grant and Colfax still animating our hearts; with the assurance that this country will be the habitation of Republicanism forever; and with the encouragement given us by the harmonious action of the Convention on the 3d and 4th inst., which you rare called up on to approve by your votes on the 29th of December, I congratulate you, citizens, upon the bright auspices under which it is our privilege to enter this decisive campaign.
Do not rely wholly upon public meetings and speeches – battles are lost by too much parade. Victory is achieve only by sleepless vigilance and constant labor, and your standard bearer earnestly calls upon all who would vindicate the party which saved the Union, the Constitution and the flag, of the country, founded by Washington and saved by Lincoln, to rally under the victorious folds of the Republican standard, and vote to sustain it still.
With the firm belief that in times like the present, Conservatism is treason, and that Radicalism only is patriotism, I bid you God-speed,
Charles M. Hamilton
Marianna, Fla., Nov. 12, '68

[Sources: Jacksonville Florida Union 12/3/1868; (Tampa) The True Southerner 12/10/1868]

Hamilton accepts Republican party's nomination as candidate for Congress

One of my goals with this blog is to make available any materials related to my research that are not included in the published articles or that I discover at a later date. I recently found a few statements that Hamilton sent to Florida newspapers during his campaign to be re-elected to Congress in late 1868.

Florida did not participate in the national election that Nov. as the state's new Republican administration decided the state wasn't stable or organized enough to vote that November. Instead, Governor Harrison Reed nominated Florida's three electors who, of course, delivered Florida to Grant and Colfax. Reed did, however, arrange for the election of Florida's Congressman to be held but not in November like the rest of the nation, but on Dec. 29. Hamilton was renominated as Florida's Republican candidate for Congress at the Republican state convention on November 3, 1868.
After being informed he had received the Republican party's nomination, Hamilton responded with the following acceptance statement which was published in several newspapers:

Marianna, FLA., Nov. 8th, 1868
E. M. Cheney, Esq.
Sec'y Rep'n State Executive Committee:
MY DEAR SIR – In formally acknowledging the receipt of your courteous communication of the action of the Republican Convention held in Tallahassee on the 3d inst., which resulted in my "unanimous renomination for the Forty-first Congress," it may be my duty to give utterance to more than the mere acceptance of the nomination.
It is truly gratifying to me to know that this result met with such cordial acceptance and that the convention closed amid the utmost harmony.
The issue which are presented for our earnest consideration in the coming canvass are few and clearly defined. They are: the successful accomplishment of Reconstruction upon the Congressional basis – the permanent establishment of free Republican Institutions in this State, and the earnest vindication and maintenance of the Republican "Carpet-Bag" State Government inaugurated upon that basis, with Loyalty, Intelligence, Universal Suffrage, and Equal Rights as the four cardinal cornerstones of its foundation; the extension of the great principle of uniform suffrage over all the States by amendment of the National Constitution; the speedy education and elevation of the laboring masses; the preservation of our country's credit inviolate by the payment of National securities and interest, in gold, or in greenbacks, according to the specifications of the bond; the reduction of taxation as pedial as the public necessity will admit; the acknowledgement of the present pressing necessity of the polity of free trade; the removal of political disabilities from disenfranchised ex-rebels as soon as this may be safely done; the strict and faithful adherence to the creed of the Union that loyal men shall protect and rule what loyal men have saved and made.
For each and all of these issues I take my uncompromising stand in the affirmative, and while, with modest diffidence, I tender my acceptance of the grateful thanks for the consideration bestowed by the nomination, I call upon those who have honored me with their confidence and support in the boisterous past to rally again under the Republican banner and bear it on to the third glorious victory awaiting it on the 29th of December.
The voter is as deeply interested in the success of the party as the candidate can be, for the victory of the one is the triumph of the other, and defeat is the overthrow alike of both.
Having just returned from a visit to every part of the State, and everywhere witnessed the happy earnestness of our host of Republicans, I congratulate the party upon this universal harbinger of success.
While it is unfortunate that at this time the attempted impeachment of our Governor – which unlooked for ever I sincerely deplor – has given rise to uncertainty and doubt, I trust and believe that this event will not disturb the unity of the Republican party, or be allowed to endanger its success in the upcoming election, and I trust that the party will stand by and sustain the present legally constituted authorities of the State until a competent tribunal has decided that they do not deserve our support, for in the united force of the party is our only hope of success.
Yours, very respectfully,
Charles M. Hamilton


[Sources: Jacksonville Florida Union 12/3/1868; (Tampa) The True Southerner 12/10/1868]

Current Project: The Book

The project I have been delaying for quite a period of time is finally moving along. The "Jackson County War" book is intended to be the definitive account of the years 1866-1871 in Jackson County starting from when the Bureau arrived, carrying through the murderous years after readmission and lasting until the violence quieted down with the reassertion of white control over most county posts and the intervention of the U. S. government under the Enforcement Act.

Hamilton's brawl in Walton County, Florida

Dale Cox, author of the authoritative "Battle of Marianna" brought to my attention John L. McKinnon's "History of Walton County." Published in 1912, "History of Walton County" is unabashedly sympathetic to the white southerners and critical of carpetbaggers and Republicans. Amazingly, McKinnon has a detailed account of Hamilton's the melee with Walton County whites while on a campaign to organize black voters prior to the election for delegates to the state constitutional convention. Emanuel Fortune describes this brawl in his testimony before the Congressional "Ku Klux Klan" committee that interviewed witnessed in Jacksonville in late 1871.

First is Fortune's account:
"I went with Colonel Hamilton to Walton County to inform the people there of the constitutional convention, and to get the republicans there to go in favor of the convention. He and I went into the court-house; the audience, of course, were generally back country people, very poor people. After the meeting, at which he and I both spoke, we were informed that while speaking there was some disposition for a disturbance. After the meeting we all dispersed, and in going to the hotel some colored men came to us, and we were advising them what to do on the day of election. After they came several more came, and there was a right good bunch around us, some eight or ten. The white fellows, who were off at a store not very far off, got very bitter about it, as they did not want us to communicate with them at all. They came hustling up toward us, and Colonel Hamilton, I suppose, got mad, for he spoke very abruptly to them. They pitched right in for a fight, and there was quite a scuffle. Men were going to cut him in the back, but I kept them off. One picked up a rail and it broke in two, and they turned and fled. It all ended by his tripping in the wild grass, and this fellow got on him and choked him. That ended the fight, because he considered that he had the best of it." [Source: Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Conditions and Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States," House Report No. 22, pt. 13, 42nd Congress., 2d Sess (Washington 1972), 98-9.]

Next is McKinnon's version of the same event with some prefacing material:
[342] The carpetbaggers followed close behind us with their best speakers in negro precincts. W. J. Purman, Hamelton and Dickson, with their headquarters at Marianna, were the campaigners through Walton. They made extrava-
[343] gant, rash promises to the negroes, reminding themselves no doubt of the old rhyme:
“Much to promise and little to give Causes the fools in comfort in live.”
“The forty acres and the mule,” was their leading promise to the end. The whites attended all of their meetings when they knew of them, and would take them up on their rash, foolish promises; but they would hold secret, night meetings, and say things that they would not dare say in the presence of the whites. They were good speakers and educated as to books, but bankrupts as to character. They called an open advertised meeting at Euchee Anna in the open day time, pretty much every negro voter was there. This was called their “Grand Rally Meetings.” The white voters were there in force, the meeting was held in the old courthouse in the southern part of the town. They had to be checked up several times in their extravagant statements. They lead us to believe they wanted their opponents to reply when they were through. But when they finished, they had a tacit understanding with the negroes to meet them for private instructions, and they went out in a body in the direction of the hotel where they had stopped, not by the street way, but direct through a grove that intervened, and when they were well in the grove and near the hotel they stopped. Hamilton, a tall, stout, rawboney man of fair complexion, light hair and blue eyes weighing about two hundred pounds, 38 years old, a college athlete in appearance, stood talking to the negroes as they gathered around him in the grove. The white voters who moved on to the business part of town by the street way,
[344] saw that he had stopped and was talking with the negroes. Bill Bell, a farmer from Knox Hill, a full match in build, weight, and years, for Hamilton, with dark complexion, black hair and dark eagle piercing eyes, said, “Men we have had enough of this today, and those negroes have had enough, let’s go over there and send these rascals over the river and the negroes home, where they belong?” “All right” came from everybody. They walked up to the circle, Bell in the lead, while Hamilton was yet speaking. Bell with his right hand on the left shoulder of one negro, his left on the right of another, made a breach and enlarged at the circle, walked right up in front of Hamilton and said in loud unmistakable tones, using severe ugly adjectives, “See here, Hamilton, these negroes have had enough of this stuff today, you are fixing them up to be put under the ground. You were allowed to say too much in yonder building, you can’t sneak out here in these bushes and stir up the devil in them, and let me tell you right here, if you know what is best for you, you had better cross the river and crawl up in your hole.” Hamilton straightened himself up boastingly with an air of bravery, and he was brave with his big crowd of negroes around him and said, “I am a free born American citizen exercising the right of free speech and don’t want to be disturbed in this way.” “You are,” said Bell, “a free born American jackass risking the dangers of a free fight!” “You are more of a jackass than I am,” said Hamilton. As these words fell upon Bell’s ears, he dealt a blow with his right fist directly in Hamilton’s breast that staggered him. It was promptly returned and while these blows and fencings were flying swiftly there went up a cry from the white voters, “A fair fight, a fair fight!” They clenched each
[345) other then and went at it right. The negroes indiscriminately took to the woods, running pell-mell in every direction. Purman and their negro driver made for the hotel, got their horses and were ready on the ground a little while to go for the river. Bell proved more than his equal in a clenched wrestle. Hamilton realizing his situation cried out, “Am I left alone, have they all deserted me?” It was then the white voters laid hold on them, loosed their hold on each other, pulled them apart and there they stood unexhausted in front of each other with their faces scratched a little, the greatest damage done being to their Sunday clothes. Hamilton got into the carriage with Purman and the negro driver and they went down the Douglass Ferry road, the negro driving with such flying speed through the sand and dust that flew so thick and high above their heads, that they were hid from view. When they got to the ferry it was night. They urged Mr. Campbell to help them across that night, that they might be safe. When they had told him what had befallen them that day at Euchee Anna, he told them that it would not be safe to try crossing the river at night and that he knew all of those men and would guarantee their safety with him that night, that all they wanted was for them to let the negroes alone. They stopped until morning in security and passed over the river, and that was the last of carpetbaggerism in Walton. The most remarkable and creditable thing in this whole affair was, that there was neither knife or pistol drawn during the encounter, notwithstanding in these times, and on such occasions men went armed to the teeth. [Source: Florida Heritage Collection http://susdl.fcla.edu/fh ]

The versions are generally similar but with some different details. Fortune's account is an eyewitness testimony recited almost four years after the incident. McKinnon is unclear about whether he was present at the event or is relating an account he heard from others. Either way, McKinnon, publishing his book in 1911, McKinnon was presumably remembering events that took place more than forty years earlier. The major differences are McKinnon's placement of Purman at the scene which Fortune does not mention. Considering that Fortune was, if anything, closer personally to Purman, and mentioned both men repeatedly in his testimony, it is unlikely that Fortune forgot Purman's presence. Hamilton and Purman were so closely associated, particularly in the disdain of white Floridians, that McKinnon probably naturally assumed that Purman was also in Walton County that day. Also, McKinnon does not mention Fortune's role in the fight and instead dismissively refers to the "negro driver." Fortune, conversely, was an able speaker and a candidate for the convention and, according to his son, a fierce and courageous fighter. Fortune, however, does not refer to the desperate scramble to get out of the county and "across the river" that McKinnon describes with obvious amusement. The accounts do agree in the general nature of the fight and that Hamilton got the worst of it. Hamilton, of course, despite his height and youth, suffered from a disabling leg injury and may have already had the chronic respiratory ailment that tormented him for years. McKinnon's physical description of Hamilton conforms with other contemporary accounts, except that McKinnon overestimates Hamilton's age by 11 years.

Jimmy Coker- making Florida safe for democracy (United States v. James Coker)

On November 8, 1870, elections were held in Florida for Congressman and state assemblyman. The Democratic candidate, S.L. Niblack disputed the victory of Republican Josiah T. Walls (who had defeated Hamilton for the Republican nomination back in August). Testimony taken in the dispute went into detail about a disturbance at the polls in Marianna on election day. Unsurprisingly, James P. Coker was in the middle of the fray. A number of Jackson County freedmen testified.

According to witnesses, Coker approached a polling station in Marianna and ordered the black men waiting to vote to stand back and, this failing, began hitting people with his walking stick. When the black voters objected and insisted on their right to vote, Coker said that they had been there long enough and that if they did not give way, he would clear them out or he would "have their blood or guts." Coker rushed the polls with a group of white men and when the black men refused to fall back he said "God damn you, I won't leave enough of you to tell the tale, let alone to send the news to [Gov.] Reed." Coker pulled out his pistol and turned toward Jerry Robinson who was standing behind Coker. When Robinson insisted on his waiting his turn to vote, Coker said "Didn't you hear me give the order for you God-damn niggers to leave the poll?" and threatened to kill Jerry Robinson. According to Richard Pooser, Coker stated that the blacks were obliged to vote the Democratic ticket and that if they didn't' they would have to leave Jackson County. Jesse Robinson, a candidate for Jackson County representative to the state assembly that day, testified that he was struck in the mouth by Dr. Alexander Tennille and that he looked back to see Coker and Jerry Robinson fighting and witnessed Coker drawing a pistol with the evident intent of shooting Jerry Robinson. "Little" Jim Baker overtook Coker, seizing him around the waist as Coker struggled to get away, and grabbed Coker's pistol. Baker likely prevented Coker from shooting Jerry Robinson. Benjamin Livingston testified that he heard Baker tell Coker to "go and make up with that negro, or it might cost him a great deal of trouble. He (Coker) said, 'I won't do it; I would rather kill him.'"

Daniel Bryan stated that after Tennille struck Jesse Robinson, he kicked Bryan and said "forty acres of land, God damn you, without a mule." Tennille then approached Richard Pooser who related that Tennille said "Pooser, God damn your radical soul to hell, forty acres of land without the mule. This has been a negro Government, but now it is going to be a white man's Government. You have been voting for niggers, carpet-baggers, and scalawags, and we white men are going to put a stop to it." Tennille waived a hickory stick over his head telling the blacks to get back so the whites could vote. Many black citizens, perhaps 100 to 200, who were waiting to vote went home after this outburst of violence.

For these actions, Coker was indicted by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida for hindering, delaying obstructing and preventing citizens from exercising their right of suffrage, as guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment. A warrant for his arrest was issued on Dec. 13, 1871. The case of U.S. v. Coker was closed without conviction or going to trial.
(sources: 42d Congres, 2d Sess., Mis Doc. 34, Part 2, Additional Papers in the case of Silas L. Niblack vs. Josiah T. Walls; NARA, RG21, U.S. Dist. Courts, Northern Dist. of FL, Tallahassee Div., Criminal Case Files 1850-1871, Box 1.

Posting Charles M. Hamilton's Freedmen's Bureau Papers

Among my main reasons for this starting this blog was my imagining the creation of a virtual file cabinet. A significant amount of the material I collected during research of the Fleishman and Hamilton articles does not appear in print. For example, while I cite many newspapers and letters, the complete text of those sources, obviously, are not contained in the articles. I am uncomfortable, however, with the depository of these primary sources being a drawer in my basement. With no proprietary interest in keeping the contents of these sources to myself, I originally envisioned putting this information on-line, searcheable and discoverable by other researchers. I initially transcribed Hamilton's Freedmen's Bureau papers in order to conveniently search the text of Hamilton's monthly reports and miscellaneous letters from 1866 and 1867. Currently, I am considering ways of posting those papers, whether as full text, or as links. Another, more ambitious project that I am considering is creating a virtual Marianna Courier. I can find only one intact 1873 copy of that newspaper from the reconstruction period at the New York Historical Society. Many excerpts from the Courier, however, do exist having been reprinted in other local newspapers, a number of copies of which sit in my files. If they could be scanned (I don't have the patience to transcribe them all), they could be posted on the net and added to with subsequent findings.

Current Project

I am currently transcribing and annotating a series of 21 articles published by T. Thomas Fortune in 1927 titled "After War Times." In these articles, Fortune recalls his boyhood in Marianna, his involvment in the politics and patronage system of Florida Reconstruction, and his move to Washington where he attended Howard University. The articles give an eyewitness account (though somewhat clouded by the passage of years) of events and individuals - many of whom are mentioned in my articles and this blog.

Yet another Hamilton portrait from the Brady studio sitting

From the National Archives.

Jonathan C. Gibbs really, really hated William Purman

J.C. Gibbs is universally regarded as the most admirable figure of Florida's reconstruction era. Born free in Philadelphia, Gibbs attended Dartmouth and became the first black to hold a state-wide office in Florida. Gibbs was appointed Secretary of State by Gov. Reed after Purman declined appointment in favor of various other posts [See my posting below on Gibbs dated May 1, 2006]. Gibbs made sure to appear in Jackson County in August 1870 to challenge Hamilton's campaign for re-election to Congress. At the subsequent convention, Gibbs in fact was himself a candidate contesting Hamilton's renomination. According to Gibbs, the ostensible reason for the speeches in Marianna was the dedication of a school house. Gibbs, Hamilton and Purman all spoke before a large, tense, armed audience. Gibbs spoke without incident and had no problems during his visit but Hamilton and Purman barely escaped with their lives for fear of assassination by local whites. The conservative Tallahassee Weekly Floridian gleefully reported that Gibbs had stated that Hamilton and Purman were to blame for the violence in Jackson County. With no copies of the speeches available, I had always assumed that, as usual, the Floridian was exaggerating to exploit the divisions in the Republican Party. To my surprise, the Floridian was reporting Gibbs' position accurately. On March 8 and 18, 1872, Gibbs was examined as a witness in the contest by S.L. Niblack of Josiah T. Walls' victory in the 1870 Congressional election (Walls had defeated Hamilton for the Republican nomination). Walls had called several witnesses to show that the Republican vote in Jackson County on Nov. 8, 1870 had been supressed because of threats of violence, primarily by James P. Coker.

Asked about the "state of society" in Jackson County around the 1870 election, Gibbs testified that "I know that a highly disturbed state of affairs existed in Jackson County. I was there in the month of August, preceeding the election with the member of Congress, Mr. C. M. Hamilton." This of course was literally true, except that Gibbs traveled to Marianna with the intention of undermining Hamilton by challenging his hold on his most reliable base of voters just prior to the Republican state convention. Gibbs then confirmed most "deliberately" the questioner's statement that during his Aug. 1870 speech Gibbs had charged Purman "with being responsible for the bloodshed and disorder that existed in Jackson County." Purman, according to Gibbs, had given "advice and counsel contrary to the peace and welfare of all parties; he was wild and erratic in his course." Gibbs testified that "There is no friendly feeling toward [Purman] from me, because he has acted unjustly toward me; still, I want justice accorded him, and my prejudice is not sufficient to cause him injustice; but I don't think Major W.J. Purman is anxious for justice in his case." When asked if Gibbs believed himself to be in "danger of being poisoned by Major Purman or any any other Federal office-holder," Gibbs replied that he "honestly and truthfully believe that Major W.J. Purman is so treacherous that no one can tell exactly what he will do."

What are the reasons for this animosity against Purman - a Republican stalwart who retained the loyalty of Jackson County blacks, who had survived an actual assassination attempt, and whose decline of the post Secretary of State had made Gibbs' appointment possible? First of all, Purman was a leading figure in the organization of the "moderate" faction of the Florida Republican Party and was instrumental in their seizure, using underhanded tactics, of the 1868 convention from the "radical" faction. Gibbs, a delegate to the convention, initially voted with the radicals. Whatever Purman's personal sympathies, the moderates were correctly seen by Gibbs and many Florida black Republicans as exploiting black votes to gain power while promoting black rights but simultaneously denying Florida blacks real influence in Florida's government. In 1870, Purman was also the prime backer for Hamilton's re-nomination for Congress, a post that Gibbs was determined should go to a black (See Gibbs' letter to Charles Sumner, Aug. 24, 1870). Gibbs also alludes to having been "violently attacked" during a debate in Florida's senate by Purman.

[AMENDED 7/3/08: This "attack" probably refers to Purman's leading an investigation by the Senate in January 1872 into Gibbs' conduct regarding financial matters while Sec'y of State. Apparently Gibbs was absolved of Purman's charges of misapporpriation of funds. An anonymous correspondent to the Republican Jacksonville Courier alleged in early 1872 that Purman's attempt to remove Gibbs from office stemmed from Gibbs' blocking Purman from running for state Senate from Jackson Co. (presumably the letter writer meant the 1872 fall election) as part of a deal to support Osborn's renomination for U.S. Senate. This correspondent alleged that Gibbs had received several warning in late 1871/early 1872 to "be careful of his water bucket lest poison be put inside it by some of his dear carpetbagger friends." The veracity of this letter is uncertain and it is not out of the realm of possibility that it was written by some mischief-making Democrat.]

Perhaps to a unique degree, Purman endured the bitter animosity of Florida's Democratic whites and black radicals. Despite Gibbs' opposition, Purman went on to be elected to Congress from Florida in 1872. In 1874, Gibbs challenged Purman's reelection by seeking nomination to Congress for himself (Brown, 30). Purman prevailed over Robert Meacham in a bitterly contested nomation process. Gibbs died on August 14, 1874 in the middle the contentious nomination fight.

New addition (7/8/07): Some additional information that may provide an another reason Gibbs was so intent on seeing Hamilton defeated for renomination for Congress in August 1870. According to Canter Brown, Jr.'s Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924, Gibbs had been the radical "mule team's" nominee for Congress in 1868 after the debacle of the Constitutional Convention in Jan.-Feb. 1868 (p.11). Hamilton prevailed at the subsequent election. In light of Gibbs' receiving votes for the nomination at the 1870 convention, it is clear that Gibbs aspired to - or was at least willing to be supported for - attaining the Congressional seat held by Hamilton. This personal defeat in 1868 as a result of the triumph of the Osborn-Purman moderate Republicans at the bitterly contested convention might have added more fuel to the fire of Gibbs' resentment toward Purman and his close associate Hamilton.

Addendum [2/4/08]: The flattering comment of Purman's biographers that he had given up the position of Secretary of State in 1868 so that a black might receive that post and thereby preserve party comity may be exaggerated. The initial sec'y of state upon readmission was a white man, George Alden. Gibbs only received the job later in the year.

Libels from Wallace's "Carpet-bag Rule in Florida"

In the Hamilton paper, I cited John Wallace's influential history "Carpetbag Rule in Florida" first published in 1888. James Clark has effectively analyzed the biases in Wallace's book and has even questioned Wallace's authorship (see, Clark, "John Wallace and the Writing of Reconstruction History," FHQ 67 (April 1989). From my observation, Wallace (or the Democratic politician who used Wallace's name - Clark suggests William Bloxham) mixes in accurate reporting and even precise character analysis with outrageous libels against FL Republican politicians. Just two years after publication of Carpetbag Rule in Florida, Democratic Senator Samuel Pasco observed of Wallace's book that "[m]any of its details are inaccurate and there are manifest errors and mistake of facts when the author gets beyond his personal experience, but within that range there is no reason for doubting his disclosure of plots, intrigue, and villainy." Samuel Pasco, et al., Why the Solid South or, Reconstruction and its Results (Baltimore, 1890) p. 162. Pasco's comments did not deter generations of historians from citing Wallace without question. Several of Wallace's disparaging comments and back-handed compliments about Hamilton are found in my FHQ Hamilton paper. Here are a few more issues raised by Wallace:
1. What was Hamilton up to at the Florida Constitutional Convention of 1868?
Even though Hamilton was not an elected delegate to Florida's Constitutional Convention, NY Tribune reporter Solon Robinson named him among the "leading agitators" working on behalf of the "moderate" faction battling the "radicals" for control. Wallace quotes the Richards-Saunders report to Congress about the 1868 FL Constitutional Convention. Richards and Saunders, "radical" leaders, accused Hamilton of aiding the moderate faction's underhanded tactics for gaining a majority of seats (Hamilton, FHQ, 495). According to Richards and Saunders, "C.M. Hamilton, until very recently agent in the Freedman's Bureau, and believed by most of the delegates to be still in command, with power to enforce his orders, went and took from their beds two of the delegates who had already signed one constitution, took them to the State-house, and, between the hours of twelve and two o'clock in the night, they assumed to organize a convention..." [US House of Rep., 40th Cong., 2d Sess., Mis. Doc. No. 109 "Constitution of Florida" dated March 23, 1868, p.2]. A response to Richards/Saunders authored by Wm. Gleason and George Alden, introducing the moderate-drafted constitution presented to Congress, rejected this allegation: "The accusation made against C.M. Hamilton that he went and took from their beds two of their delegates who had signed the minority constitution, is false in every particular..." [US House of Rep., 40th Cong., 2d Sess., Mis Doc. No. 114, "Proceedings of the Florida Convention," dated March 31, 1868, p. 9]. While this rebuttal is obviously not dispositive, Wallace's account, repeating the allegations of Richards & Saunders, has gone unquestioned by historians.

2. Purman the Profligate
Perhaps the most outrageous libel in Wallace targets William Purman. Purman is a leading contender among several viable candidates for the title of most hated man in Reconstruction era Florida. It seems that everyone involved in politics, excluding the men who knew him best (Hamilton, Dickinson and the Fortunes), made some terrible accusation against him. Wallace (or more likely, Bloxham) writes of a meeting in 1874 in Chattahoochee pitting Republican politicians Marcellus Stearns and Malachi Martin against Purman. After a chaotic violent session, Purman, according to Wallace "returned later in the evening and called a lot of colored women together, and after giving each of them some money, he said to them that he was a good "Publican," and wanted supper; and to further assure them that he was a good "Publican," told them that he did not want to sleep with any white person, but wanted to sleep with the blackest person in the neighborhood. John D. Harris, a Methodist preacher, was along as one of Purman's canvassers, and it looked as though he had been "dipped" three or four times, and so Purman selected him to sleep with. This action on the part of Purman had its desired effect, as most of the freedmen spoke out and declared him to be a good "Publican," and he had no more trouble in that part of the country." (Wallace, p. 300).

It is difficult to know where to begin to refute these charges of immorality. First of all, Purman had been married to Leodora Finlayson since 1871 and already had one child. It was apparently a successful marriage as evidenced by its duration (fifty years), the six children and the affectionate letters Purman wrote about his wife after her death. Secondly, it was common for the opponents of the carpetbaggers to attempt to discredit them by spreading accusations of their consorting with blacks. For example, after John Q. Dickinson's assassination, rumors were spread that he was murdered by a black man jealous over Dickinson's relatinship with his wife. The insinuation of homosexuality, however, goes even beyond the normal accusations of immorality. Perhaps not surprisingly, Dunning school historian Walter L. Fleming reprinted this section without comment in his "Documentary History of Reconstruction," vol. II (Cleveland, 1907), p. 282.

3. Purman's inflammatory oratory
Walter Fleming also quoted another passage from Wallace which describes the effect of Purman's oratory on his black audiences: "He played upon the weaknesses and impulses of the colored people and drew from them shouts of joy, and responses of applause and approval with the skill and ease a master organist brings out the great swells of music by a gentle touch of the key. These would occur when he was eloquently depicting to this eager listening audiences the horrors of slavery and the cruelty and oppression they had undergone." Fleming, quoting Wallace, vol. 1, pp. 377-8. Purman as Jackson County Bureau Agent made many speeches to the local freedmen of Jackson County concerning their "rights and responsibilities" as citizens. Contrary to Wallace's (and Fleming's) intention, this passage adds to our admiration of Purman.

Business Dealings of Our Cast

Reconstruction era Florida provided a free-for-all business environment in which members of the state legislature eagerly participated. Lists of incorporators of various transportation and related land improvement companies reveal complex, constantly shifting personal alliances. In 1868, Senator Osborn and his associate, M.H. Alberger, appear as stockholders of the Southern Inland Navigation and Improvement Co. Alberger also appears as a shareholder with Florida's other senator, Gilbert, on the stockholder list of the St. Johns and Halifax Navigations and Improvement Co. Gilbert, however, joined Emanuel Fortune and Purman in the Jacksonville and St. Augustine Railroad Co.
The infamous (at least to readers of this blog) Great Southern Railroad Company brought together such disperate figures as Reed, Carse, T.W. and A.C. Osborn, Stearns, Jenkins, Charles Hamilton, Purman, Josiah Walls and Pearce. Purman and U.S. Marshall Wentworth held shares in the Pensacola and Barrancas Railroad Co. Robert Meacham was an owner of the Monticello and Georgia Railroad Co. Charles Hamilton appears together with Purman, Wentworth, J.Q. Dickinson, Jackson Co. Sheriff Thomas W. West and Charles E. Dyke Jr. (!) as shareholders of the West Florida Railroad Co. to stretch from St. Andrews Bay (modern Panama City) to Marianna). Walls and Meacham joined in the Suwanee and Inland Railroad Co. and Purman, Wentworth and Malachi Martin (!) were among the owners of the Florida Telegraph Co. Hamilton and Purman appear on one last time together on the shareholder list of the Aquatic and Tropical Plant Propagating Co. (to cut a canal to Lake Okeechobee to be consolidated with the efforts of Osborn's South Inland Navigation and Improvement Co.). All these companies were created in 1868, immediately upon readmission of the state and meeting of its legislature. Is it doubtful that Hamilton ever saw a cent from these ventures. Purman continued to have business interests for years in the state.

Simon Fleishman: testimonial on behalf of Dr. J. A. Jones - More treasures from the GA Weekly Telegraph

We remember Simon Fleishman as the only one of the five adult Fleishman men living in the Jackson-Gadsden area during the 1850s and 1860s to remain in the South through the entire Reconstuction era. Simon, like Benjamin, also had a distinguished war record. Simon turns up in the Georgia Weekly Telegraph under unexpected cirucumstances. In Feb., 1873, the Telegraph reported in a puff piece - virtually an advertisement - about the "unparalleled success" of Dr. J. A. Jones in treating the "most inveterate and dangerous diseases." Among other patients, the Telegraph cited Dr. Jones' successful correction of the vision problem of "Mr. Simon Fleishman, of the mercantile house of S. Cohen, Esq., in Americus." The Telegraph also included the following statement from Simon:
"For twenty-five years my eyes have been deformed and very crooked. I came to Dr. Jones yesterday, who by a delicate, but very skillful, operation, has made my eyes straight and perfect. I feel very grateful to him and recommend him as a skillful and reliable surgeon.
SIMON FLEISHMAN
I am a clerk with S. Cohen, merchant in Americus, Ga.

I was present at this operation, and testify to the truth of the above statement.
CHAS. WACHTEL
Clothing merchant in Brown's Hotel Block, Macon, Ga."
[Ga. Weekly Telegraph, Feb. 18, 1873]

William Saunders, Hamilton and the 1868 election

Articles I recently discovered in the Georgia (Macon) Weekly Telegraph warrant revisiting Florida's Fall 1868 Congressional campaign.
Soon after Charles Hamilton was elected in May 1868 to represent Florida for the remaining months of the 40th Congress upon Florida's readmission that summer, he had to campaign again to be renominated to stand as the Republican candidate in that Fall's election if he were to join the 41st Congress in 1869. Governor Reed had postponed the Congressional election in his state until December 29th and actually canceled Florida's participation in the national November election having designated electors to support U.S. Grant, the Republican nominee for President. Florida's Republican Party met in early November and Hamilton was renominated. He was opposed, however, by William Saunders, a leader of the "radical," "mule team" faction at the state constitutional convention that past winter, who declared his candidacy for Congress as an independent. In its report on Florida politics dated Nov. 15, 1868, the Weekly Telegraph prints the following:
"Saunders, independent colored candidate for Congress, in quite a lengthy circular to voters of the State, denounces the nomination of Hamilton by Representatives as a fraud upon colored voters, and says Hamilton's supporters boasted of having cheated colored Republicans out of their last chance.
Saunders in a circular dated Headquarters Union League of Florida, addressed to members of the League, says the Republican Nominating Convention have put up a man whose name alone insures defeat, and calls on colored Republicans to send a live black man to the next Congress. Saunders signs himself Grand President Union League of Florida."
Two days later, the Telegraph's correspondent reported that "A circular of the 'Unterrified Tiger Committee,' published to-day endorses and recommends Col. Wm. U. Saunders as the people's candidate for the 41st Congress - as a representative man of his race and of the people of the South. Saunders takes the stamp at once." [GA Weekly Telegraph, Nov. 20, 1868].
The Democratic press adopted Saunders' critique of Hamilton and in a transparent attempt at encouraging a split of Republican voters to the benefit of the Democratic candidate for Congress, the Tallahassee Weekly Floridian newspaper repeatedly compared Hamilton unfavorably to Saunders and claimed that the Republican Party had given up hope of Hamilton's prevailing in the election.
The reality of Hamilton's level of black support was quite different, however, than that declared by Saunders and his cynical supporters in the press. In an article dated Nov. 19th, the Telegraph's Tallahassee correspondent reported that the "official paper" (presumably the Republican Tallahassee Sentinel), carried a "proclamation" signed by "Robert Cox, Chairman" and "A.C. Lightboom, Secretary, both of who are colored," purportedly representing the voters of Leon county after meeting to consider the choices for congressional candidate. According to the Telegraph, they proclaimed that "finding Saunders' course will ruin the State, and more especially the Republican party, and will bind us hand and foot, that Democracy may triumph, and having seen the condition of the colored men of Georgia, who have been prostrated from the condition of manhood which the Constitution gives them, by having Democracy as rulers, say they know the split in the Republican ranks, particularly in the colored element of the population of that State, brought them to their present condition; that the Constitution of this State opens the doors to every former rebel, however vicious, allowing him to vote; that they cannot afford to have a split in their midst, without swamping. They appeal to every colored man in the State to stand firm in support of C.M. Hamilton, the regular nominee, who is a good Republican, and asks Saunders to stay still awhile, when he shall be taken care of, and notify him that if he enters the field justice, noted as a great tiger hunter, will shoot him politically dead." [GA Weekly Telegraph, Nov. 27, 1868].
Hamilton, campaigning with "untiring energy" prevailed with 9,749 votes, three thousand more than his Democratic opponent, and well ahead of Saunders' total of 877 votes. Little did the 28 years old Charles Hamilton know that this electoral triumph would be the pinnacle of his political career.

Engraving of Hamilton

Through Googlebooks, I just found a fairly substantial contemporary biography of Hamilton in "The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical," by William Horatio Barnes, (1870). While there is nothing new of significance in this portrait, it does include an engraving obviously derived from the one of the Brady studio "official" photographs. It is likely that Barnes solicited the biographical questionnaire notes found in the Florida archives. Barnes does include a few interesting sentences that certainly warrant quoting in this blog. After Hamilton joined the Veteran Reserves Corps, Barnes writes that "Lieutenant Hamilton's tall and soldierly appearance and superior qualifications attracted the notice of his superior officers, and he was given an appointment on the staff of General Martindale, Military Governor of the District of Columbia (Barnes, 244). Discussing Hamilton's responsibilities as Bureau officer, Barnes writes that "No officer of the bureau in the State of Florida identified himself more thoroughly with these great ends of official duty than Colonel Hamilton. His reputation for efficiency and just administration was so wide-spread that the poor and oppressed, ignorant that State lines could interpose an obstacle in their way, came hundreds of miles, out of the lower borders of Alabama, to lay their grievances before his tribunal." Following his "unanimous" nomination for Congress at the Republican State Convention on Feb. 25, 1868: "In the canvass that followed the zeal and eloquence with which he addressed the people was inspired by the desire as much for the adoption of the State constitution as the palladium of freedom and equal rights, as for his own election." Barnes includes a lengthy quote from the "Florida Union": "Col Hamilton received the nomination of the party and secured its vote at the election in May, on the double ground of fitness for the position, and of his services in behalf of his party; his consistent course as a radical Republican, in all matters involving political questions, and his unwearied and successful exertions in behalf of Union men and freedmen while an officer of the bureau at Marianna. During his few weeks in Congress last spring, he took a prominent and active part for so young a member, and comes back to his constituents with a good record and without reproach."
UPDATE: reproductions of the Hamilton engraving [Digital ID: 1250164] are available for purchase from the New York Public Library through the "Digital Gallery" section of its www.nypl.org website.

Ethelred Philips refers to Hamilton

Dr. Ethelred Philips (1801-1869) of Marianna wrote a series of letters during the 1860s to his cousin James J. Philips of North Carolina that have been preserved. Much of the content of the letters is devoted to business issues and Philips' theological musings. Philips, a staunch unionist, also describes the rise of pre-war "secesh" fervor and the confused, depressed state of Marianna after the war. Unfortunately, Philips engages in very little discussion of local politics and personalities. The letters add no new information about the figures who played significant roles in reconstruction era in Jackson County. The only direct allusion to Hamilton is as follows:

"We are cursed with one of those pests that remind us daily of our degradation “the bureau man.” He put up the negroes to celebrate the 4th inst. as the anniversary of their freedom with a grand dinner on the edge of town & to form a procession with the U.S. flag and Lincoln songs – a separate dinner for their former masters & friends whom they have invited & whom they are to serve most respectfully. We are a little uneasy about it for there will be probably a thousand or more present." (E. Philips to J. Philips, July 2, 1866).

This letter, of course, confirms Hamilton's reports of the tension building in Marianna prior to the first July 4th parade organized by the freedmen with Hamilton's approval.

William Mallory Levy, Part IV: Character, Controversy and Assessment

JEWISH CONNECTION
Levy may or may not have had Jewish ancestry, but he certainly did not identify in anyway as a Jew. He and his two brothers of whom we have information affiliated with Protestant churches. In a book about Williamsburg during the war, a letter writer mentioned Col. Levy coming "to the Church the day before he left the neighborhood" (Carol Dubbs, "Defend this Old Town: Williamsburg During the Civil War, p. 39). His funeral service was held at Natchitoches' Episcopal Church and he was buried in the "American Cemetery" at a time when Natchitoches had a Jewish community and Jewish cemetery. No contemporary documents, from Virginia or Louisiana that I have found, even those extremely critical of Levy, make any allusion to his supposed Jewish origins. Nor are the researchers I have contacted who are familiar with the history of the Jewish communities of Louisiana and Virginia's Tidewater able to cite any connection between Levy and those communities.

CHARACTER
Descriptions of Levy's presence and appearance are glowing. In an otherwise excoriating article, the Times's correspondent wrote that Levy was of “handsome presence, excellent manners, soft and pleasing speech, good education, much law learning, excellent practice, considerable wealth, seemingly popular, a Congressman of unusual distinction for a single term…” (NYT, July 9, 1877). The female letter writer who encountered Levy during his visit to the church at Williamsburg during the war wrote that Levy "made himself very charming- repeating poetry to me- which I really enjoyed" (Dubbs, p. 39)
The Cincinnati Enquirer presented a truly bizarre, over-the-top protrayal. The "attention" of the Enquirer correspondent visiting New Orleans "was arrested by the arrival of a person who seemed to be no less distinguished for his extradordinary physical appearance than his exquisite toilet. He was a six foot individual, with a magnificnet head and handsome face set upon a pair of giant shoulders, a finely-molded body, and the leg of an Apollo Belvedere. He was neatly arrayed in a fashionably-cut black, with white vest and black silk tile [sic.]. A handsomer man I'm sure I never saw." The infatuated correspondent continued, stating that when Levy removed his hat "he exposed a cranium which for ponderousness rivals, if it does not excel, that of Daniel Webster, mounting up in rugged ledges, as it were, until it formed such an intellectual dome as bespoke the mental giant. He chin was exceedingly massive, his just a little sensuous, and a pair of effulgent gold spectacles added brillancy to two already bright eyes, bulging in a manner quite fanciful, but denoting great power of speech. He was just such a man as would be taken for a chief among ten thousand." The breathless correspondent learned that Levy was "the wheelhorse of Democracy in this latitude." He was a lawyer and had "amassed a fortune." "His pretensions have always been of an aristocratic character. In his poorest days he managed to live in a fine mansion, drove blooded horses and kept an establishment worthy of one who enjoyed a stated income. His eloquence was of the most brilliant and persuasive character, carrying judges by storm, and swaying multitudes by its invisible power." Levy had previously disdained "the politician's flesh-pots..contended [sic.] himself to pursue his profession quietly, drive a fast horse, spend whole days playing dominoes with his Creole burghers, or suffling a poker deck with a crowd who enjoyed his inimitable wit much, but his money more. 'He always lost at poker,' said my companion, but he can put more fun in an anecdote or more hell in a political speech than any orator I ever heard.'
The correspondent was introduced to Levy at New Orleans' prestigious Boston Club [Gen. Richard Taylor and Judah Benjamin had both been members] that evening. He observed that "Colonel Bill was at once the center of an admiring group. And he should have been, such a splendid voice, rich, mellifluous, strong and resonant I never heard before. I had just a mere taint of Lord Dundrearyism [A Dundrearyism is an aphorism, proverb, colloquial phrase or riddle humorously combined with another in such a way to render it nonsensical. For example: "birds of a feather gather no moss." The word comes Lord Dundreary, a character in the stage play Our American Cousin who is prone to making such mistakes - Wikipedia] about it, which is doubtless the result of an overweening vanity which always characterizes people when they are smart and good-looking, too. His wit is keen and brilliant, and his anecdotal humor fully up to Lincoln. I learned that Colonel Bill was indeed an intellectual prodigy, who had been buried for twenty years in the swampy recesses of Louisiana, 150 miles from railway or telegraph, and whose light a mere chance had now drawn from a dark bushel." (Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, letter dated June 7, 1875).

CONTROVERSY
In July 1877, the New York Times printed an extremely critical assessment of Levy in the context of a discussion of Pierson's murder in December 1876. The Times correspondent stated that after Pierson challenged Cosgrove on the street, he was killed not by Cosgrove but was "butchered" by "the crowd." The Times related that Pierson had been shot at previously. According to the Times, Pierson had testified before the "Congressional Committee" in January 1875 that he had been warned in confidence that assassins had been hired "by a man in high position to assassinate me.. I state here publicly that William M. Levy was that man who offered money to persons to take my life." Levy is described as Pierson's law partner and brother-in-law. According to the Times, the "cause of animosity against [Pierson] was his republicanism intensified in Levy's case by pecuniary matters." According to the Times "Pierson often stated after this, that if he ever was killed it would be by the connivance of Levy, who was then member of Congress. At that time [Levy] appeared in full harmony with the Natchitoches White League." The Times correspondent wrote that Levy had been considered for a cabinet position by Hayes and that "beneath his fine exterior he had a merciless soul...Two men were shot during the war by his orders at the head of Rapides Bayou without trial or plea. If he had no hand in the actual killing of Pierson, he certainly had no hand in bringing his murderers to justice." But, the Times stated, Levy had fallen out of favor locally. He had lost the Democratic Party's renomination to Congress to J.H. Clam, "an unreconstructed rebel." The Times wrote that "Levy had become too much contaminated with the Republican flesh-pots. He ruin was decreed and persecution was commenced. An opportunity to embarass him finanacially was unexpectedly used, and he suffered." His debtors "repudiated their debts and ostracized him. The doors of life-long friends and even relatives were closed against him." Cosgrove's Vindicator denounced him. "He lost all he had and to day [July 1877] has hardly enough for bread. None of his old clients will employ him. He is a broken man and his fine presence is no longer a disguise for the emotions beneath it. His miserable condition is said to be apparent to even a casual observer." The Times correspondent concluded that "if the bright and forgiving spirit of Pierson looks down on the scene where it was once so active, it must be with a pitying glance on the utter prostration of the once proud and vindictive William M. Levy" (NYT, July 9, 1877).

A lot of the Times' account is hard to believe. Although, as evidenced by his role in the Hayes-Tilden affair, Levy appeared to be a pragmatic, as opposed to an unreconstructable, Democrat, he certainly had not abandoned the Democratic Party for the Republican side so as to justify the censure described. Less than three years after the article was written, Levy was named to Louisiana's Supreme Court by Democratic Governor Wiltz. There is no evidence that Levy ever expressed any sympathy for Louisiana's Republicans or the assertion of the rights of the state's black citizens at the heart of Reconstruction. Consequently, it is hard to believe he would have even been abused in the manner of a scalawag. Nor does he appear to have been impoverished: an 1880 letter from his wife talks extensively about their farm. Any ostracism by the white community was certainly not devastating as the Levy family did not feel compelled to flee Natchitoches and returned Levy's body there for burial.

ASSESSMENT
Levy's accomplishments are as follows: he was a successful and respected attorney, had a respectable war record in two wars, entered the public service several times in his career culminating in the distinguished offices of congressman and the Louisiana Supreme Court. Newspaper descriptions depict a charismatic and attractive presence. There are, however, more questionable apects of his career. Certainly his personal appeal had its limits as evidenced by his failure to be reelected colonel by his Louisiana troops in 1862 and his failure to be renominated as the Democratic candidate for Congress from his district in 1876.
Though he was an unapologetic Confederate, Levy's faithfulness to the cause of the South really can't be taken out of context and held against him since he did not have a reputation as a firebrand urging seccession. Nor did he leave behind a record of racist rhetoric. In fact, his political pragmatism in service of the South, may have alienated him from some of the more hardcore, "unreconstructed" former rebels. Suggestions of his involvement with the local White League and his being mixed up in his law partner and brother-in-law's persecution and murder are troubling. His "great" accomplishment, the only time he attracted national attention, was his role in the supposed conspiracy behind the compromise settling the Tilden-Hayes dispute, delivering the presidency to the Republicans and the South back to Democratic Party white rule. The immediate effect of this deal was ending Reconstruction in Louisiana. The long-term impact was the institutionalization of Jim Crow for almost 90 years.

In short, Levy was one of numerous, now forgotten, public figures whose portraits haunt civic buildings throughout the nation. Like many, he was quite distinguished in his community in his own time, but did not possess achievements warranting historical recollection after his demise. For Levy, however, there is one significant and unsettling caveat to this verdict of oblivion and that is his shadowy and unascertainably leading role in one of the most infamous and damaging events of American history.

William Mallory Levy Biography: Part III- Post-War

After the war, Levy resumed his career as a lawyer in Natchitoches. During the reorganization of the Democratic Party during the Reconstruction period, Levy remained politically active as evidenced by his attendance at the Democratic Party's 1872 convention in Baltimore as a Louisiana delegate. In April 1873, Levy announed the formation of a law partnership with E.L. Pierson, brother of the wife of Levy's brother, called "Levy & Pierson" (replacing "Pierson & Levy").
E. L. Pierson was a member of the state legislature and was murdered in December 1875 by J.H. Cosgrove, editor of Natchitoches' Vindicator newspaper. ("The difficulty orginated (sic) in a newspaper controversy, in which the epithets of coward, &c, were exchanged. Pierson was a Kelloggite ["radical republican" - DRW], Cosgrove a Democrat." Ouachita Telegraph, Dec. 31, 1875 at http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/la/natchito/history/piersonc.txt).
Levy was elected to the 44th Congress (March 1875 to March 1877) as a Democrat. Though he was not renominated for Congress in 1876, Levy spent his "lame duck" months actively involved in the Tilden-Hayes controversy. In the disputed presidential election of 1876, Louisiana was one of five states whose electoral votes were in contention (Florida was another of these states and William Purman played a major part in that controversy). The Louisiana gubernatorial election of November 1876 was similarly contested. Both the Republican and Democratic candidates declared victory. Louisiana’s Republican-controlled board of elections confirmed the Republican candidate as the winner. Levy denounced the actions of the Louisiana board of election before the House on Feb. 20, 1877. The New York Times contended that Levy played a leading part in the compromise that ended Democratic filibustering aimed at preventing the House’s certification of the presidential election in Hayes’ favor. The Times also insisted that Levy was a leader in devising the deal that accepted the Louisana board of election's determination in favor of Hayes’ winning that state's electoral votes in exchange for the recognition of the Democratic candidate as Louisiana's governor. Though historians dispute the existence of a “deal” to settle the election, the Times insisted that Levy’s speech on the floor of the House on March 1, 1877 was proof of such an arrangement. Levy was quoted as speaking in opposition to the Democratic filibuster that "I feel that sound policy and the paramount consideration of the salvation of the State and people of Louisiana require that their Representatives in this House should abstain from a futile attempt to nullify that decision, and thereby postpone the redemption which is essential to their very existence and from which alone they can expect peace and prosperity” (NYT, March 31, 1877). Louisiana's electoral votes were delivered to Hayes and the Democrats took control of Louisiana, effectively ending Reconstruction in that state.

In 1878, Levy formed a law partnership with Daniel C. Scarborough which contined until Levy's appointment in April 1880 by Governer Wiltz as an associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. Levy died in August 14, 1882 at Saratoga Springs, NY at the age of 54. Levy's burial service was held at the Protestant Episcopal Church in Natchitoches on Dec. 11, 1882. Biographical sources indicate that Levy was buried at the American Cemetery in Natchitoches, but extensive indexes of graves at that place do not list his name. His widow, Catherine, died in New Orleans in 1900.

LEVY'S FAMILY
Charles H. Levy was most likely William's younger brother. Born on August 18, 1837, Charles Levy's biography lists him as a Virginia native and the youngest of seven children of John B. Levy, also a Virginian by birth who served in the War of 1812. The father John moved to Natchitoches in 1870, but moved the following year to Longview, Texas where he died in 1877 at the age of 89 (another source says he died on Dec. 29, 1880). Father John's wife, Emeline Butt (unclear if she was the mother of William), also a Virginia native, died in Texas in 1875 at the age of 72. Charles was educated in Portsmouth and entered the U.S. Navy's engineering corps. He resigned from the U.S. Navy in June 1861 and joined the Confederate Navy, being promoted to chief engineer in 1864. At the close of the war, Charles settled in Natchitoches. Like his brother, Charles became in involved in the Democratic Party and was elected justice of the peace in 1879. Charles and his wife, Emily Pierson, were members of the Episcopal Church and had six children, including one son named William M. Another brother, Richard Butt Levy Sr., was a trustee of the Presbytarian Church in Longview Texas and served as Texas Secretary of State for a number of years. Richard died in 1918.

William Mallory Levy Biography: Part II - Civil War

Robert Rosen covers Levy's military record extensively in his Jewish Confederates. Rosen, however, provides no evidence that Levy was actually Jewish. In April 1861, Levy was named captain of the LeCompte Guards from Natchitoches which became Co. A of the 2nd Louisiana Infantry (Louisiana Zouaves). The fact that Levy had military experience from his Mexican War experience certainly made him an obvious choice as an officer. Levy's unit was immediately sent to Virginia. As soon as his men arrived East, Levy sent a letter back to Natchitoches beseeching his fellow townsmen to provide funds for warm clothing for his men. Levy took the opportunity to visit his college town of Williamsburg. In July he was promoted to colonel. One of his soldiers wrote back to home to his parents that he thought the unit's new colonel, "Leavey," to be "the best colonel we have had" (W.W. Posey to Dear parents, July 30, 1861). Levy reported on his participation in the Battle of Lee's Mill in April 1862 in a letter to his wife, writing that "the cause is a righteous one and God is on our side and will watch over us." (Levy to My dearest wife, April 23, 1862). Major General Magruder cited Levy for "judgement, courage, and high soldierly qualities of conduct and arrangements, which I desire specially to commend" (Rosen, p. 105). Levy was not reelected to lead his unit and sought a field command elsewhere. Failing in this effort, he obtained an appointment as a major in the adjutant general's department which was confirmed by the Confederate Congress in July 1862. He became a member of Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor's staff in Louisiana and his closest aide (Rosen, p. 106). Levy had served in the division of Taylor's father, Zachary, in the Mexican War. Richard Taylor described Levy as "an officer of capacity and experience." One of Levy's roles was to represent Taylor's army in negotiating prisoner exchanges with the Union army leadership. During the summer of 1863, Levy was discussed as a candidate for the Confederate Congress from Lousiana's 5th Congressional district, but did not receive the nomination. Following Taylor to his next command, Levy was promoted to lieutenant colonel in Oct. 1864 and named Taylor's inspector general. He accompanied Taylor when he negotiated the surrender of the last Confederate troops operating east of the Mississippi in early May 1865.
[Flag image: regimental flag of 2d Louisiana from http://www.rootsweb.com/~ladesoto/second.html]

William Mallory Levy (1827-1882): The Biography- Part I

My research into the life of William Mallory Levy has reached a dead end. Despite inquiries in Virginia and Louisiana, I cannot confirm whether or not Levy was Jewish. Nevertheless, here is a brief biography of controversial nineteenth century figure.

VIRGINIA PERIOD
Levy was born in Isle of Wight, Virginia on October 30, 1827. In 1844 he graduated from William & Mary College where he studied law. In May 1846, Levy joined the Portsmouth Company of Volunteers, known as Co. F of the First Regiment of Virginia Volunteers, and served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Mexican War. A letter written by Levy in Mexico in July 1847 sent home to Portsmouth was sold at auction in 2003. Levy wrote "What a changeful life this is! I am on the battlefield of Buena Vista, you at home in the midst of friends. I supposed the damned war will not last always. I wish to God we could have a good fight and be done with it, for I pledge you my word I am getting devilish tired of Mexico." Soon after his unit's return from Mexico in August 1848, Levy announced that he had assumed the "editorial management" of Portsmouth's Chronicle and Old Dominion newspaper. At the same time, Levy publicly declared his change from the Whig to the Democratic Party. Explaining his switch, Levy stated that in "his connection with the army, in capacity of an officer..., he was convinced by a conviction of duty to his country, and the honest belief of the practical adaptation of measures entertained and avowed by the Democratic party to the good of the country, and to the proper and just administration of the government.." In January 1849, only four months after becoming editor, Levy resigned from management of the Chronicle and Old Dominion. For a time, until June 1849, he served as the second clerk for the Navy Storekeeper at Portsmouth. Around 1850, he married Catherine and they had a daughter Katie. About the same time, Levy was admitted to the Virginia bar and opened a law office in Portsmouth. Levy became active in local politics, serving on a Committee of Vigilance and as clerk of Portsmouth upon its incorporation as a town early in 1852.

ANTE-BELLUM LOUISIANA
In 1852, the family moved to Natchitoches, Louisiana where Levy worked as a lawyer and editor of the Natchitoches Chronicle. In 1859, he was elected to the Louisiana state legislature. The following year, Levy opened the firm of Levy & Dranguet with Natchitoches attorney Charles F. Dranguet. Perhaps indicating Levy's status in Lousiana's Democratic Party, Levy was named a presidential elector for Breckenridge's pro-slavery, National (southern) Democrat ticket in 1860. Prior to the outbreak of the war, Levy became friendly with William Tecumsah Sherman who was serving as superintendant of the Military Acadmey of Louisiana located in an adjacent parish.

Ferdinand Fleishman: Tragedy in Civil War Era Cincinnati

A previous post aluded to the tragic end of Ferdinand Fleishman. Ferdinand left Quincy, FL during the war. The Israelite told his story in its July 22, 1864 issue:
"CINCINNATI - Some five or six weeks ago, Fred. A. Fleischman, a German, of the Israelitish faith, twenty-eight years of age, arrived in this city as a refugee from Florida. He took the oath of allegience at Key West, January 28, 1864. He has been boarding at the Sylvester House, but Friday evening went to the residence of Mr. Oehlman on East Fifth street, and retired to his room at an early hour. In the morning his door was found locked, and no answer was made to knocking on the door, or repeated calls. Finally the door was forced upon, and Fleischman found lying on the floor, with a pillow under his head, his right arm bent over the shoulder, almost in contact with the temple, and beneath it a pistol, which had fallen from his hand after the discharge. The pistol is a small, singled-barreled breach-loader, partially covered with blood, and had been discharged, portions of the catridge still remaining in the barrell. He had placed himself in an easy position, and must have died instantly. As additional evidence that he had commited suicide designedly, he left on a sheet of fools-cap a note to Mr. Oehlman, as follows: "Mr. Oehlman - My clothes are at Mr. Moore's. You will find $31 in my pants pocket. Let my wife know. Ferdinand." Fleischman was suffering from a depression of spirit, induced partly by the expected arrival of his wife and four children, from Quincey, Florida, where he resided and owned considerable property, and partly by his cold reception on his arrival in New York, by those whose duty and pleasure it should have been to give him succor and extend to him the warm hand of friendship in this his hour of adversity. We most heartily sympathize with the bereaved family, and hope that the God of Israel will give them consolation."
Ferdinand had been mentioned in "The Israelite" a few years earlier. H. Loewenthal sent the paper a report, published on Dec. 21, 1860, of his visit to Florida where had had been called as a mohel. Loewenthal performed the brit mila for Ferdinand Fleishman's son in Quincy and reported that "I must confess that I never met with a more liberal set of men and women than I found in those I there become acquainted with. I am only sorry my time was too brief and my heart too wounded on account of my too recent affliction - you know I lost my wife lately."
Ferdinand was born about 1835 in Bavaria and was listed as a merchant in the 1860 census. He also worked for a while at the Aspalaga post office in 1859. Ferdinand and Fannie Davis, born in the late 1830s in Baden, Germany, were married in Gadsden County on Nov. 7, 1859. Fannie was listed in the 1860 census as having a fancy goods store. Ferdinand and Fannie had four children, Albert and Mary, both born about 1860, and Joseph and Bertha, both born about two years later. The child brought into the convenant by Loewenthal was certainly Albert. The 1860 census lists Fanny and Ferdinand with a two year old child, Samuel. Unlike Fannie's four children with Ferdinand, the 1870 census lists Samuel's last name as Davis. It is unclear whether Samuel is a child of Fannie's from a previous marriage or the child of a relative. The 1860 Gadsden census listed a S.M. Davis, born about 1838, clerk from Hessia Germany and the 1850 Gadsden census listed a Lewis Davis, a peddler born about 1820 in Germany. The connection between these people is unclear.
As reported in a previous post, Ferdinand seems to have found a substitute to serve in Florida's 6th Infantry Regiment, probably in mid-1862 when Simon and Benjamin enlisted and set off for the North in late 1863.
A few years after Ferdinand's suicide, Fannie married Morris Warendolff, a native of Prussia. Fannie and Morris were living in Gadsden County as of the 1870 census. This census lists two young children: Alexander (age 3) and Bernhard (age 1), both born in New Jersey. It is unclear whether these were Fannie's own offspring or Morris's from a previous marriage. The Israelite article describing Ferdinand's suicide reports the impending arrival of Fannie and her four children, suggesting that she may have gone North after all in 1864 and that the fifth child, Samuel, was not hers. Perhaps she met Morris in the North and married in New Jersey and had two children there. It is impossible to determine.
By 1880, Fannie was living in Brooklyn, with Samuel (now named Warndolff), her four children named Fleishman, the two Warndolff boys born in New Jersey, and three more Warendolff children who are defintiely Fannie's: Victor (born Florida 1871), Herman (born New York 1874) and Edward (born New York 1876). Morris is not listed with the family - presumably he was dead. It seems that Fannie later married a individual named Manheimer.


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION POSTED AUG. 31, 2009: Like Ferdinand, Samuel Fleishman had also lived in Quincy before moving to Marianna. In the Tallahasee Floridian & Journal dated Jan. 26 1856, the following announcement is found:
"Co-Partnership
PHILIP M. FLEISHMAN and FERDINAND A. FLEISHMAN, under the firm of P. & F. Fleishman, having purchased the entire stock of S. M. Fleishman, will continue the business at the old stand, and respectfully solicit a continuance of the patronage of their friends and the public in general.
P. & F. FLEISHMAN
_____
The subscriber having sold his entire stock to P. & F. Fleishman, would respectfully solicit in their behalf, a continuance of that favor so liberally bestowed on him.
S. M. FLEISHMAN
Quincy, Fla. Jan 1, 1856

Charles Memorial Hamilton: The Military Record

I glossed over Hamilton's military service in the FHQ paper. Here is a more complete account.

1861
May: joins Co. A, 5 Regiment Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry as a private at Jersey Shore, PA
June: Skirmish at New Creek, WV

1862
June - July: Peninsula campaign: Battles of Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, Charles City Cross Roads or White Oak Swamp, Malvern Hill
July: promoted to corporal
Sept: Battles of South Mountain and Antietam
Nov.: CMH courtmartialed, charged with "absence without authority from company while on picket duty." CMH was arrested by a Union army patrol outside of the picket lines near Rappahannock Station on Nov. 12, 1862. The Cavalry officer who had arrested CMH testified that he found CMH and another man outside of less than a mile beyond the picket lines at a house near the river with another man "carrying off some fresh pork." Col. Fisher of CMH's regiment testified that he knew "of no young man possessed of a better character." CMH's officers stated for the defense that they had given CMH permission to visit a nearby house to buy bread. CMH was found not guilty of the charges against him.
Dec. 13, 1862: Battle of Fredericksburg: wounded (fracture of tibia caused by gunshot), left on field for 5 days, captured and taken to Richmond
Dec. 1862 - Jan 1863: Imprisoned ("enjoyed the storied feliciities") at Richmond's Libbey Prison

1863:
Jan.: imprisoned in Richmond and exchanged
Jan - April: U.S. Hospital, Annapolis MD (receives 20 days leave of absence to PA home where fell ill with "typhus fever")
March: Promoted to Sargeant
May - Aug.: U.S. Hospital in Philadelphia (typhus fever and treatment of leg wounded)
Sept.: Ordered Invalid Corps to report as guard to the Provost Marshall's office, Philadelphia
Oct.: Discharged by order to the War Dept. to accept a commission as 2nd Lieut in Invalid Corps (Co. B, 9 Veteran Reserve Corp) on account of disability: fracture of tibia
Nov.; VRC unit stationed in Washington: CMH "detailed to commant the Guard, and take charge of the Aqueduct Bridge"

1864
Jan.: Takes charge of Washington's Chain Bridge
Feb. - Apri: detalied as Judge Advocate of a General Court Martial
April 1864 - Dec.: detailed on General Martindale's staff as assistant Pass Officer, also Transportation Officer
Dec.: Assigned as Post Adjutant as Forrest Hall Prison in Georgetown

1865 and later
Jan.: Transferred to to Central Guard House prison
March: CMH reassigned to his regiment
April: Granted leave to accompany his father to recover the body of his brother John killed at Peterburg; detailed back to the Central Guard House prison, returned to his regiment and then assigned to command the Guard at Secy Seward's residence
June: assigned to transport Burnett of the Confederate Congress to the care of Maj Gen'l Palmer in Kentucky
July - Oct.: detalailed as Judge Advocate General Court Martial
Oct: ordered to report with detachment of 33 soldiers to the Freedmen's Bureau sub asst commission at St. Mary's Co., MD
Nov.: returned to his regiment and elects to remain in U.S. service
June 1867: promoted by brevet to 1st. Lieut and Captain to date from March 13, 1865 for "faithful and meritorious services during the war"
Jan. 1868: Honorably discharged from military service

The Fighting Fleishmans of Gadsden County, FL: Forgotten Jewish Confederates

The Simon Wolf index is a list of Jewish Civil War veterans originally compiled in the 19th century. The index does not include any of the Florida Fleishmans. Benjamin and Simon Fleishman served in the 6th Regiment of the Florida Infantry. Simon, born Feb. 21, 1840, was listed in the 1860 census as living with Samuel Fleishman's brother Philip. Like Philip and Benjamin, Simon was a native of Bavaria - possibly he was another brother, but more likely a cousin since he was as much as 18 years younger than Samuel. Benjamin was listed in the census as boarding with the family of Ferdinand and Fannie Fleishman and their child Samuel. Born about 1832, Benjamin was also, like Ferdinand (born about 1835), a Bavarian. As discussed in the Fleishman paper in the SHJ Journal, Philip found a substitute to serve in the Confederate army in his place. Ferdinand is listed under the 6th Regiment, but apparently never served and left for the North where, as recounted in The Israelite, he committed suicide under miserable, lonely circumstances in July 1864.

Service records of Simon and Benjamin Fleishman:
SIMON FLEISHMAN: enlisted in Quincy on March 12, 1862 as a private in Co. B of the 6th Infantry FL. He was captured at Missionary Ridge (TN) on Nov. 25, 1863 and confined in the Union p.o.w. camp at Rock Island, IL on Dec. 1, 1863. Simon was released upon swearing an oath of allegience on June 22, 1865. He is described as 5'7.5", with "fresh skin, dark hair, hazel eyes." Simon was the only of the Jackson-Gadsden Fleishmans to remain in Florida long after the War. He was an "active businessman in Quincy in the post-war period" and a building on the west corner of the south side of Quincy's town square was known as the "old Simon Fleishman building." In 1907, Simon applied for and received a Confederate army service pension from the state of Florida. It is not clear that he ever married.

BENJAMIN FLEISHMAN: enlisted at Chattahoochee on June 14, 1862 as a private in Co. B of the 6th Infantry, FL. He was wounded at Chicamauga, GA on Sept. 20, 1863 and captured at Nashville, TN on Dec. 16, 1864. Benjamin was confined at Camp Chase, OH on Dec. 20, 1864 and was released after swearing the oath of allegience on May 11, 1865. Benjamin had some business interests in Jackson County after the war and briefly served as county treasurer. He died in the mid-1870s.

Record of the Florida 6th Florida Volunteer Infantry;
"The Regiment was formally organized on April 14, 1862 with the election of officers...After several months of training at Chattahoochee, the regiment was ordered to report to Knoxville, Tennessee....The 6th and 7th Regiments reinforced General [Edmund Kirby] Smith's army before the great Confederate invasion of Kentucky during the late summer of 1862. Moving fast out of Knoxville, through the Cumberland Gap, General Smith captured Frankfort and Lexington and threatened Cincinnati before his offensive ran out of steam. Many of the men in the 6th Florida weakened by the vigorous marching, poor food, and foul water, were laid low by disease... During the invasion of Kentucky the 6th Florida did not participate in any major engagements. For the next year the regiment was mainly used on guard and garrison duty in East Tennessee. The Unionist living in the mountains were a constant threat to the railroad that ran from Chattanooga, through Knoxville, to Virginia. The duty of guarding the railroad was dull but necessary. The Union offensive in Tennessee during the summer of 1863 changed this monotonous existence of the 6th Florida. The Confederates were forced to evacuate Knoxville, their small force there falling back to join General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee, which had been forced out of Chattanooga. This combined force retreated a few miles south to make a stand near Chickamauga Creek. At Chickamauga the 6th Florida had its baptism of fire. After Chickamauga all of the Florida regiments in the Army of Tennessee were formed into one brigade... This new brigade was stationed near the center of the Confederate line at the Battle of Missionary Ridge, and did not retire from the ridge until ordered to do so. After spending the winter at Dalton, Georgia, the 6th Florida was nearly constantly engaged in battle during the Atlanta campaign, suffering heavy casualties.... A much reduced regiment emerged from the Atlanta Campaign to take part in Hood's disasterous Tennessee invasion in late 1864. At the Battle of Nashville, the Florida Brigade, as well as the rest of the Confederate army, was virtually destroyed. The survivors retreated back to Mississippi. Here what was left of the 6th Florida was consolidated with the survivors from the other Florida regiments in the Army of Tennessee to form one regiment. This 1st (Consolidated) Florida Regiment was sent east to join Joe Johnston's army in North Carolina. Here they were finally surrendered to General Sherman's army at Greensboro, N. C. on April 26, 1865, three years after their violent adventure." [Posted by MelindaWebb Russ at http://history-sites.com/mb/cw/flcwmb/index.cgi?noframes;read=184]

Simon and Benjamin have both been added to the Jewish Civil War service database at http://www.jewish-history.com/database.html
[Flag image from http://www.florida-scv.org ]

Samuel Fleishman in New York

While Samuel spent at least a few years during the war in New York CIty, he also maintained a residence there after he returned to Marianna. Samuel appears in the 1868-1869 New York City Directory with a residence at 202 E. 27th street and a place of employment at 39 Third Ave. The Third Avenue address, of course, was the site Altman dry goods store after Morris and Benjamin moved uptown from the Bowery a few years after the death of their father, Phllip. Samuel is also listed in the 1869-1870 directory with a residence now at 252 E. 10th Street. The 10th street address was also the home of Samuel's widowed mother-in-law Celia Altman. By this time, the Altman store had expanded to include 43 Third Ave. The following year, Sophia and her children had moved to 318 E. 49th Street which they shared with Celia. Phlip Fleishman was living nearby at 318 E. 49th Street.

For our Jackson County, FL readers - Fleishman's Campbellton property

The Florida state archives contain several deeds transferring a property in Campbellton involving the Fleishman family. On Feb. 2, 1860, Samuel Fleishman purchased from B.A. Hinson for $1,250 a two acre property containing a "store-house and dwelling." The property "lying at the commencement of the Geneva and Orange hill roads" ran 140 yards South and 70 yards West. On Feb. 8, 1862, Samuel deeded this property to his wife Sophia for the sum of $2,500. Sophia transferred to this property to Samuel's brother Phillip Fleishman of Gadsden County on Nov. 29, 1864 for $2,500. Presumably Samuel transferred this property to Sophia when he contemplated leaving the South. The reason for Sophia's transfer to Philip so subject to similar speculation. Perhaps she contemplated leaving the South late in the War? If any readers are familiar with Campbellton, is this property identifiable?

CHRONICLE OF JACKSON COUNTY, FL RACIAL VIOLENCE, PART IV: 1868

1868 (January through June)
Hamilton left Jackson County in January 1868 and was succeeded by Purman. Purman had become deeply involved in Florida politics, spent much time out of the area, and left the Bureau in the summer after being elected to the state senate. At the beginning of the year, Purman observed that “a stronger spirit of hostility exists against the colored people to-day than ever before” and attributed that hostility to the freedmen’s “immovable position on Republican principles.” 1868 finds the first mention of the KKK. Purman’s replacement, John Dickinson, didn’t dwell on violent incidents in his reports. The following year, of course, assassination and mayhem would overwhelm the county and Dickinson would provide the most detailed eyewtiness report.

JANUARY
In the vicinity of Greenwood, Mr. Grey refused to deliver up a colored child, on the order of the Bureau “to its rightful guardians, and expelling with the flourish of firearms the holder of the order from the premises. Enraged at this treatment of his authorized demand, the freedman collected a band of half-a-dozen armed followers, and proceeding to the house of Mr. Grey obtained possession of the child without the exercise of any violence but of course by the force of the menace.” (WJP to AHJ, 1/4/68)

APRIL
Purman writes that the KKK has sent him“several very unfriendly notices” and that from assassination “no one is protected save by an overruling Providence.” (WJP to AHJ 4/30/68)

MAY

U.S. 7th Inf. troops leave Marianna (Marianna Courier in Weekly Floridian 5/19/68)

May 22nd, “Mr E D. Mooring, a limb of the “chivalry”, and a man of hot and rebellious character, was met on the public sidewalk by a colored woman who accidentally in passing brushed his knee with her hoopskirt, whereupon this valorous male struck her two severe blows in her face, and raved about like a madman. A high excitement was instantly produced in the colored community, and after much difficulty in finding a Justice of the Peace, which petty functionary was at last found in the outskirts of the county, Mr. Mooring was arrested for assault and battery. After a shameful and malicious judicial farce for two days before a nincompoop of a country squire, he was adjudged not guilty, and was accordingly not committed for trial before Court.”

May 23rd,: REDDICK BLUNT freedman, was killed near Marianna. Blunt “was under arrest for hog-stealing, and while in the custody of Constable Street and two colored assistants, for conveyance to the country jail, it is said he attempted to escape, and ran about half-a-mile from the road, through a heavy thicket in the woods, where he was overtaken and killed by a two charges from a shot-gun, in the right breast. A peculiar feature in this case is, that Constable Street made no pursuit at all, but remained in the road, while the colored assistants alone gave chase, and one only a short distance, while the third who was alone and shot the prisoner in the front part of the body, was a brother of the woman from whom the hog was stolen …this murder was unnecessary and unjustifiable.”

“Murder, homicide and assassination have long been so common in the experience of this section of the country, that their terrible occurrence scarely rises to the importance of a subject for sober conversation, and instead of producing horror and indignation in the moral faculties of the community, it excites only reckless comments and a fashionable spirit of bravado.” (WJP to AHJ, 5/30/68)

JUNE
June 4th: “Lot Wood, a vagabond whiteman, assaulted with a knife and ripped out the entrails of JAMES DONALD, an old freedman. There was no open provocation for this murderous deed, and the old man died in a week afterwards. Wood has escaped, and is skulking in the piney woods on the borders of the State.”

In Washington County: “Upon the vague and even unreasonable suspicion that James Bellamy, a freedboy, stole $75, he was carried out on the bay where he was tied to an anchor and plunged into the water for the purpose of extorting a confession of guilt from him, and in spite of all his frightful and prayerful asservations he was taken at 12 o’clock at night into the woods and hung to a tree, though all the while asserting his innocence, until at last half dead with fright and suffering, he was released to find his way back in the darkness as well as he could.”

“On the plantation of John Pitts, near Marianna, three colored women were wounded with fine bird shot, for the offense of merely drawing water from the well after being ordered to desist, while this same well always supplied the premises and quarters with water, and is the only one in the vicinity. One woman was quite severely wounded. All this was done for the unjust purpose of driving the hands off the plantation, in which attempt the Bureau several times restrained the employer.” (WJP to AHJ, 6/30/68)

CHRONICLE OF JACKSON COUNTY, FL RACIAL VIOLENCE, PART III: 1867

1867
The murder rate remained low in 1867 though incidents of violence and intimidation increased. The Hamilton and Purman complained repeatedly that the planters missed no opportunity to swindle their freedmen laborers by discharging them for petty offenses prior to the distribution of the crop share and by encouraging them to run up their store credit accounts at the plantation and with merchants who colluded with the planters. The Agents believed that, as Reconstruction policy progressed, the whites were becoming more “desperate and reckless.” They particularly complained of the influence of Georgia politician Benjamin H. Hill on Jackson County’s whites.

FEBRUARY
GILBERT WALKER (freedman) was murdered near Marianna on Feb. 2, 1867 by Hugh Parker (white). “Gilbert, engaged in hauling lumber, met a Mr. Bell driving an empty one oxcart in the public road, both gave way, but the road being narrow, and Gilbert heavily loaded, sufficient space to pass could not be given, and both stoped. Gilbert got down and held aside some bushes to permit Bell to pass – which he did. At this juncture Parker came up, on foot, and demanded of Gilbert why he did not turn out of the road. Gilbert replied that he did as far as he could. Parker retorted “If you ever do that again I’ll kill you”- and cursing him, added “I might as well do it now”- and put a revolver to his breast and shot him – Gilbert expired in fifteen minutes. Efforts were, at the time, and have since been made to arrest the murderer, but he still at large.” (CMH to ECW 2/28/67)

Hamilton and Purman visited Campbellton for the purpose of supervising labor contracts. “In the morning a few of the best citizens were present, but towards noon all of this ilk quietly disappeared off the ___, and a crowd of roughs had full sway. Whiskey was guzzled down in abundance to get up steam to assault the “Yankees”, and a mob of a dozen drunken, cowardly wretches, with revolvers buckled round them came into our room, criticizing and insulting us in the most provoking manner. Our only protection was in our revolvers laying on the table before us. They retired, came again, repeating this manoeuvre several times, when we were entreated by our colored friends to leave the town as quickly as possible, which in our unprotected condition we thought expedient to do, and did, in an open manner, with our revolvers in our hands, surrounded by a small-band of noble freedmen.” (WJP to ECW, 2/28/67) .

MARCH
Brutal murder, by beating, of freedman EPHRAIM BUCK. The freedpeople were afraid to give information “for fear of bringing down the vengeance of the murderers, & their friends upon themselves. It seems that Ephraim had been accused of stealing, and that afterwards he was seen upon Selmans (?) premises, and that Selman & McLernand – two men of notoriety – caught, abused and beat him that he died.” (CMH to AH Jackson, 3/31/67)

MAY
“George W. Melvin (white) was tried before the Circuit Court of this District held at this place during the month, charged with the murder of ELAIS HAMMOND (white) and convicted of manslaughter. Archy Hunter(?) (cold.) for rape upon the person of _____ Smith (cold) & acquitted; and Louis White (cold) for rape upon Sarah Bryant (white) & acquitted. Louis and Henderson White brothers, were charged with the commission in conjunction, of this fell deed, in Sept. last. Henderson, a boy of 15 years, was tried before the same tribunal last Fall (case then reported) was convicted, and executed by hanging, on 2 March last. He had a fair trial.”

On May 6th, “Joe and Frank Register, and Tip Skippee (white) outrageously maltreated a colored man (Chas. Russ) living near Vernon, Washington Co. It is said that this freedman who sustains a good character, I am told, - entered the room of a white woman where he was working, who reported the fact to the above mentioned boys, whereupon they took him (Charles) down into the swamp, hard by, and gave him two hundred lashes, and left him quite dead, in the swamp. Judge Bush acted promptly in the matter having the culprits arrested and bound over for their appearance at the next term of the court in that Co.”

On May 25th, Joe Moreton (white) of Campbellton assaulted, knife in hand, Franklin Hovey (cold.) with intent to kill, cutting him in several places slightly.” Moreton was arrested but immediately released upon bail.

Assailant approaches Hamilton with a knife in Washington County. Flower desecration incident at the Marianna cemetery. See Weinfeld FHQ article on Charles Hamilton for details (CMH to General, 5/31/67)

JULY
Appearance of B.H. Hill. White friends of the Bureau Agents insulted daily on the streets of Marianna. Another apparent attempt on Hamilton’s life in Campbellton.

A Mr. Teat, living on the Apalachicola river, in Calhoun Co., reported for driving three laborers from his premises and turning their families out of doors, and threatening to shoot them if they ever put foot upon his place again. The laborers were working for a third of the crop, and claimed that it was Teat’s object to deprive them of their share.
Teat’s neighbor, Mr. B. Baker, reported for having beaten a black girl with a club.
(CMH to AJH, 7/31/67)

AUGUST
Hamilton is instructed to investigate the location of the murder of DAN WEBSTER, a black boy, along the Chattahoochee River. (AHJ to CMH 8/7/67)

SEPTEMBER
On 9/27 evening “Archibald Hunter, a freedman of bad character, committed a violent rape upon a white woman, Miss Sophronia Bell, while she was proceeding to her home. It seems to be a most aggravated case, and the felon so far has eluded all pursuit.” (WJP to AHJ 9/30/67)

OCTOBER
Harassment of Republican southern whites continues. Blacks receive disproportionate fines for minor offenses (“the white man is fined five and the black man fifty dollars for the same offense”). Vandalism of Hamilton and Fleishman property. (CMH to AJH 10/31/67)

DECEMBER
Small group of soldiers dispatched by Hamilton to help freedmen collect their crop shares is driven off from several farms at gun point.

Two murders occurred during the month – all white. Silas Gladden shot one FULLERTON near Greenwood. Collet shot & killed DICKSON & Dickson’s brother avenged his death by killing COLLET. Both Gladden and Dickson escaped.

Whites are well-armed: “every man and boy in the county I am told carries his revolver and knife, and the civil authorities (there are none but the sheriff & his deputy – and the Judge of the Co. Criminal Court, & several justices – all the rest have resigned, or refuse to act) do not discharge their duties, either from fear, or from sympathy with the rebels.”

William Coker “a hot-headed youth of this place committed an assault & battery with intent to kill upon Robert Dickson, freedman, without the shadow of provocation. I directed the Deputy Sheriff R.N. Pitman to arrest him, but he has failed to do it. This man Coker, with a crowd of others of the same stripe have been raising little disturbances for some time past. This is the crowd I have every reason to believe that shaved my horses, and disfigured Mr. Fleishman’s buggies.” (CMH to AJH 12/31/67)

On Dec. 6, at Greenwood, NORMAN HALL stabbed JOHN COULLIETTE “with a knife, and a small .. the latter, seeing the use of the weapon.. his father, inflicted a like wound on Hall. Both the wounded men died.” GA Weekly Telegraph, 12/13/67 citing Marianna Courier.

CHRONICLE OF JACKSON COUNTY, FL RACIAL VIOLENCE, PART II: 1866

1866
Hamilton and Purman report only two murders, but white perpetrated violence is on the rise and increasingly organized. The local judiciary is firmly established as an agent of white domination and black subjugation.

FEBRUARY
Immediately upon Charles Hamilton’s arrival in Marianna, he observed the harassment of the white school teacher at the Freedman’s Bureau school in Marianna.

George Brammer (white), “the teacher here [Marianna] is frequently annoyed” and was “harassed by 4 young men threatening to arrest him.”

John Bate (white) of Jackson Co. “struck a freedwoman laborer in the face with a stick and ordered the freedwoman’s mother, Lucinda Poges [?] to correct her daughter for her insolence.” Lucinda protested. When Lucinda attempted to prevent Bate’s wife from throwing her possessions out of the house, “Bate’s son struck her on the arm, Bate struck her on the head and the dog bit her, hurting her severely.” Bate turned the family, husband, wife and child out of his plantation (CMH to TWO 2/28/66). Bate and his son were tried for assault and battery before the county criminal court. The son was acquitted and, Bate was fined five cents and costs. A month later Lucinda had still not recovered from her injuries. (CMH to JL McHenry, March 31, 66)

APRIL
Attacks on the Freedmen’s School in Marianna continued, but this time the freedmen began to show evidence that they were organizing themselves and standing up to the intimidation:
“The night school has been frequently disturbed. Report of mob calling out Brammer from the school house, menacing him with four revolvers and expressions of shooting him if he not promise to quite the place and close the school. The Freedman came promptly to his aid and the mob dispersed.”

“About the 18 or 19 of April: This same mob threatened to destroy the school that night, and the freedmen hearing this, assembled for self-defense. Not less than forty
colored men armed to protect themselves; but the preparations becoming known to the respectable rowdies, they only maneuvered about in small squads, and were wise enough to avoid a collision.” (CMH to JLMcHenry, 4/30/66)

MAY
Hamilton and Purman receive reports of “abuse, imposition, and assault and battery, on freedmen.” Certain whites are “too ready to inflict the most shameful treatment on the least whim or custom, or provocation whatever.” A particular source of tension is the continuing practice of white employers punishing freedman children, “which punishment, it is reasonable to believe is often cruel and unnecessary.”

Violent opposition in Greenwood and Campbellton to establishment of Freedman’s schools is so intense “that no teacher is willing to brave their fury in opening a school.” (WJP to CMH 5/31/66)

JUNE
Whites object to reports of upcoming celebration by freedmen to commemorate July 4th.
“Curses were showered upon the Bureau and freed-men, - swearing that they would shoot the men who carried the pictures and the flag, and, vi et armis, oppose the celebration.”
(CMH to JLM 6/30/66) [Celebration passed off peacefully].

JULY
Harassment of Freedmen by local law enforcement and supported by the judiciary is by now in full effect:
“Civil authorities are too prone to arrest the freed people for trivial offenses and petty ‘crimes.’ They do not certainly enjoy the privileges or liberties extended to the white citizens. They have no conscience against arresting and fining the freed-people to the full extent of the law for petty offenses against the State or individuals, and looking over them if committed by “my people.” I do not say that in doing this the Authorities transgress the law, or overstept it, - but I do say that partiality is shown. The freedpeople are sometimes fined excessively, from which the county treasury is replenished – and yet they to not get the benefit of the funds – especially the poor funds.” (CMH to JLM 7/31/66)

SEPTEMBER
Practice of requiring pre-payment of all court fees “is an effectual, impediment in the way of prosecutions for assault and battery on freedpeople, while cases of this character are becoming more numerous and aggravated.” “A disposition prevails among these petty magistrates and the people of their respective communities, to colleague and prevent as far as possible all prosecutions against white persons . . . and to watch every freedman with a lynx-eyed scrutiny, and on the slightest pretext arraign him before the authorities, and visit him with the extremest penalty of the law.”

An assault and battery was committed on Mary Jane Baker (freedwoman) by William. Parker (white). Justice Hughes refused to issue a warrant until the fee of six dollars should be prepaid. In about ten days, having raised the money, Baker applied again, when, on pre-payment, the warrant was issued. Parker was arrested, tried and fined $5.00.

The wife of Robert Cody (freedman) was beaten and assaulted and he was driven violently from the plantation of his employer, Cullin Curl without justifiable cause. When Cody sought redress, Judge Milton of the Criminal Court held the Freedmen’s Bureau approved contract invalid and Cody “became involved in twenty five dollars cost.” (WJP to CMH 9/29/66)

From the Columbus Daily Enquirer: "A difficulty occurred betwenn Wash. Melvin and ELIAS HAMMOND, about twelve miles west of Marianna, Fla., in which several shots were exchanged. Hammond was wounded in the thigh, of which he died a few days after. Melvin had two of his fingers shot off and his arm badly injured. Have no heard the cause of the quarrel." [9/18/66]

DECEMBER
Many cases of mal-treatment & shameful abuses…Assault & Battery – almost always without provocation – is frequent.”

TWO FREEDMEN are reported to have been way-laid and killed in this county, within the month. One was shot walking in the public road – the other while hunting in the woods, near Campbellton. No arrests made. (CMH to EC Woodruff, 12/31/66)

Dr. Ethelred Philips of Marianna reported that one of the men murdered had been ambushed by planters who suspected him of stealing corn. (E. Phlips to J. Philips, 12/19/66)

CHRONICLE OF JACKSON COUNTY, FL RACIAL VIOLENCE: PART I

During the War years and the first year of Reconstruction, racial killings were rare events in Jackson County, Florida. Charles Hamilton was asked to compile a list of murders occuring since the war began:

1861
4/13/1861: JOE, a “slave” murdered. John D. Padget (white) of Jackson Co. was tried in October 1866 for the murder and acquitted.

1863
2/13/1863: RUBEN, a “slave” was murdered in Calhoun Co. Fla. on the 13th of Feb. 1863, by Luke Lot (white). Lot was tried in the Circuit Court of the West Dist. of Fla., Judge Bush presiding, on the 2nd May 1866, verdict “not guilty” [NOTE: Luke Lot became a legendary figure of white resistance in the Florida, Georgia, Alabama border country during Reconstruction. Dale Cox suggests that Lot may have been instrumental in organizing the white community during the “Jackson County War”].

Spring 1863: (1) A negro was killed (shot), and (2) body of one drowned found in the Chipola River near the Natural Bridge, Jackson Co. “Their names, or the circumstances could not be ascertained. They were said to be ‘runaways.’”

1865
12/13/65: WYLIE “freedman, was whipped to death …in Marianna, by Ashley B. Hamilton” (white) of Jackson Co. Hamiton was arrested and sent to Tallahassee under guard but escaped “at the Arsenal” (Chattachoochee?). Hamilton was tried in the Circuit Court at Marianna on October 18, 1863 (same trial as Padget) “and the jury returned a verdict of ‘not guilty.’”

“As far as I can ascertain no murders have been committed by Freedmen since the commencement of the War, in this District, all of which is respectfully submitted.”
(CMH to J Lyman, 10/24/66)

Updates to come

I haven't forgotten this blog. Instead, I've been consumed by other matters such as editing my transcriptions of Charles Hamilton's Freedmen's Bureau reports. I'm not sure what to do with these documents. The file is too large to conveniently place on the blog. If anyone readers are interested in more information about the reports of the Freedmen's Bureau officers of Jackson County, Florida from 1866 to 1868 (Hamilton, Purman and Dickinson), feel free to contact me.

Finally: the Charles Hamilton article is in print

"'More Courage Than Discretion': Charles M. Hamilton in Reconstruction Era Florida" appears in the Florida Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, Number 4, Spring 2006. Copies are available from the Florida Historical Society at
http://www.florida-historical-soc.org

Abraham Coles Osborn, D.D., L.L.D.: The Biography

The Eagle offers the following description: "He is about 35 years of age [May 1871], five feet ten inches in height, rather light build, has a fair complexion, brown hair, and dark blue eyes, a sandy moustache, and a large mouth. Otherwise his appearance is not striking. He dresses in plain black, and wears a black necktie. He speaks so distinctly that every word and even syllable can be heard in any part of the church, but nevertheless his voice is not pleasant, and he pronounces some words in such a peculiar way that he would sooner be taken for an Englishman or Irishman than a native of New Jersey, which he is said to be." [Brooklyn Eagle, May 15, 1871].
Abraham Coles Osborn was born in Scotch Plains, NJ (near Plainfield) on Feb. 20, 1831. Brother Thomas Ward was born two years later. In the early 1840s, the Osborn family moved to Wilna, NY, between the Adirondacks and Lake Ontario. He studied at Madison Univ. (the predecessor of Colgate Univ.), a Baptist institution, and prepared for the ministry at Hamilton Theological Seminary (later Colgate Rochester Divinity School). Osborn's first pastorate was in Louisville, KY where he was ordained "a minister of the gospel" in 1858. In June 1861 (after Fort Sumter), Osborn left for Germany where he studied for seven months. He returned to Louisville and married Miss. Sarah E. Matthews of Louisville in December 1861. A year later the Osborns moved to St. Louis where A.C. accepted the pastorate of the Fourth Baptist Church. In 1867, Osborn received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from Shurtleff College (a Baptist seminary that became part of Southern Illinois University in the 1950s). Osborn's wife died in August 1868 and he spent most of 1869 touring Europe, at least partially, in the company of Senator T.W. In December, 1869 he accepted the pastorate at the Brooklyn Tabernacle church. In 1872, he married Miss. Emma Hatfield of New York (whom he had met in Paris) and, the following year, left Brooklyn for the Second Baptist Church on West 25th St. in Manhattan. In 1877, Osborn moved once again, now to North Adams MA until he accepted a pastorage in New Albion in Western, NY. In 1895, Osborn became President of Benedict College in Columbia, S.C. (a black college for the training of "teachers and preachers") where he remained until 1911. He received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Colgate in 1905 where he served as a trustee for many years. He returned to North Adams, MA where he died in 1916 at the age of 84 and was buried between Emma and T.W. Osborn was survived by three sons, Robert H., Ralph and Harold. [Obituary of A.C. Osborn from North Adams newspaper by Rev. J. Wilcox; Bio. sketch by Elizabeth Osborn Slater Hubbard]. These sources are courtesy of Mr. James Peck of Corona CA, a descendant of Spencer C. Osborn, older brother of A.C. and T.W. Mr. Peck has commented that "It seems [Osborn] spent more time in the secular world than the religious. He was a Chaplain to the wealthy and was married twice, both women from wealthy families."

Freedmen's Tribute to William Purman

William Purman, Hamilton's boyhood neighbor and friend, resigned his War Department post in Washington and came to Marianna, Fl. in early 1866. In mid-April, after Hamilton's request, Purman was appointed the Freedmen's Bureau's civilian agent for Jackson County (Hamilton was the military officer responsible for Jackson, Washington, Calhoun and Holmes Counties). Purman was appointed "Special Agent" at Marianna at the salary of $100/month beginning in June. Technically, Purman was Hamilton's subordinate, but after a short time it became apparent that they served as equals. Hamilton's attention and time were disseminated across his geographically large jurisdiction where much of the freedmen's population was widely dispersed. Dissatisfied by civilian agents previously appointed by Osborn, Hamilton was compelled to spend time away from Jackson County riding around the other counties under his responsibility. This burden became heavier in February 1867 when the Bureau terminated the positons of civilian agents in Hamilton's territory. In mid-February, Purman was instructed to report to the Bureau's Florida headquarters for further orders and in March he was appointed Bureau Agent at Volusia City. In April, the Bureau directed Purman to investigate Ralph Ely's ill-fated freedmen's colony in New Smyrna, FL. Shortly after Purman's reassignment, Hamilton wrote to his Bureau superiors requesting the return of Purman ("an Agent of very considerable efficiency- with a heart devoted to the Freedmen’s cause") to Jackson County [Hamilton to A.H. Jackson, March 21, 1867].
Hamilton's letter was soon followed by a remarkable document delivered to Colonel John Sprague, the superior Bureau officer for Florida:
"Colonel:
Your petitioners would lay their humble request before you in this form and ask you to restore to us our good Freedmen Bureau Agent, W.J. Purman, if it is possible to do so. As you are now Head we ___ to you in confidence asking this, though we know you are doing everything for the best.
He worked day & night for our good. Starting up our education. Starting up our societies. Making speeches. Settling our Difficulties, and explaining our difficulties and settling them up for us. explaining to all through the country how to work, how to make money & how to live in peace and harmony. We feel that he has done all of us more good than any man we ever saw. The people all want him back. And therefore Colonel if you can possibly do it, We will pray and thank you for it, with our blessings on the whole Freedmens Bureau. We remain your humble petitioners."
This letter, dated March 25, 1867 was signed by 70 freedmen led by Rev. Emanuel Fortune. Well-known signers include Calvin Rogers (later constable and murdered in early 1870), Benjamin Livingston (later state legislator, county commissioner and Marianna postmaster and councilman and the last black office holder in Jackson County prior to Jim Crow's entrenchment), Jesse Robinson (later state legislator and justice of the peace), Rev. Fuller White (later county commissioner and Marianna councilman), and Isham White (county commissioner) [For biographical information, Canter Brown, Jr., Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924].
Purman was dispatched in May by the Bureau on an inspection tour of West Florida and returned to Jackson County by the end of June 1867.

"Generalissimo of the Ku Klux": Jimmy Coker's War Record

Col. James P. Coker was the organizer of the Jackson County white community's resistance to Republican administration and Reconstruction policy. While he was not directly implicated in the violence of the "Jackson County War," Hamilton and Purman considered him the ringleader and even, in William Purman's words, Generalissimo of the Ku Klux in Jackson County. He tormented and threatened Hamilton and Dickinson and organized the meeting that announced the expulsion of Fleishman. Coker was arrested in December 1871 for violating the Enforcement Act, tried at the United States Court at Jacksonville and the government dropped the prosecution about a year later [Peek, "Curbing Voter Intimidation in Florida, 1871" FHQ, vol. 43, April 1865]. United States v. James Coker, December 11, 1871, Box 082429. (The Enforcement Act was "aimed at outlawing any denial of the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Intimidation to deprive the right to vote, conspiracy, and going abroad in disguise to prevent the free exercise of anyone's civil rights were also forbidden" - Peek, ibid).
Suprisingly, however, Coker did not have a distinguished war record. Coker died in Marianna on August 20, 1890 and his second wife, Ella, filed an application for a widow's pension from the state of Florida stating that Coker had served in Captiain John M. F. Irwin's Florida Calvary from Oct. 3 until mustered out on Oct. 11, 1862 and that he then served as "Quarter-Master and Home Guard from 1862 to 1865." The initial application was put on hold because Mrs. Coker did not furnish any evidence of Coker's "war service other than a statement from the Adjutant General that he mustered into service October 3rd, 1862, and mustered out October 11th, 1862." This did not constitute proof of war service as required by Florida's pension law. The Comptroller's office requested that Mrs. Coker provide affidavits from Coker's comrades in arms as to Coker's service.
Mrs. Coker submitted another application in 1927 stating that Coker was mustered out in1862 "to confiscate provisions and clothing and send to the front for the use and benefit of Confederate soldiers." Incredibly, Mrs. Coker presented, as her sole supporting evidence of Coker's service, the affidavit of Emanuel Spires, age 79, who had been a slave "owned by Mr. Thomas and General W. D. Barnes." Spires recalled Coker as "Confederate Government Agent to collect Food and ship to the front for the Confederate soldiers, and was known as a Contra-band Agent, for the Confederate Government." Spires seemed to remember Coker as having confiscated some wagons of food from his master's plantation and having been told by Coker that the wagons were being sent to the front. It is stunning that Jimmy Coker's widow resorted to the statement of an elderly former slave for the sole source of supporting documentation for her application for a military pension.
In 1927, the Florida Legislature apparently approved an act directing the state Pension Board to grant Mrs. Coker a pension.
[Source: Florida Confederate Pension Application Files: www.floridamemory.org].

More creative writing from the Floridian: Osborn's fictional rejoinder

The previous post contained an "interview" of Charles Hamilton by the Tallahassee Floridian's correspondent "Enfant Perdu." Several weeks later, Perdu reappeared (was this a monthly political humor column?) with the inevitable Osborn "rejoinder":

Interesting letter received by our Correspondent Enfant Perdu, from Hon T. W. Osborn, U. S. Senator from Florida.
[Private and confidential.]
U. S. SENATE CHAMBER
WASHINGTON, D. C., MAY 25, '71
DEAR ENFANT - I notice by a late copy of the Floridian, that you have interviewed Hon. C. M. Hamilton, and obtained his version in regard to the Great Southern Railroad affair, and as it contains what would seem to be an aspersion upon my political sagacity, I desire to inform you exactly where I stand, both in regard to the Southern Railroad, and the U.S Marshalship for Florida. As this letter is strictly confidential, I shall of course make it as plain and frank as possible.
Florida is my adopted state, and I have a great affection for her, which unfortunately her people do not seem to reciprocate. During my past political career I have tried to the best of my poor abilities to advance the interests of the State, (incidentally enriching myself at the same time) and I feel that I deserve some credit for my labors in this direction, for I am sensitive if I am fat.
The charge is made that in connection with the railroad scheme, I sought to enrich myself and brother at the expense of the tax payers of the State; but certainly no good christian will object to that, for the book they should square themselves by says, "If any provide not for his own, especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse an infidel."[1] I am free to say that both myself and friends are impecunious cusses, and if our debts were paid, would scarcely have enough money left to buy a waterfall for a mosquito; and we never intended to put the road through ourselves. What we did intend, was to get all the land grants possible and then sell our franchise to some foreign corporation, which at the completion of the work would have been virtually owners of Florida, and the citizens might growl, but they would be too poor to bite.
The object of my brother, Rev. A. C. Osborn, in becoming so deeply involved in the project was a purely christian and benevolent one. He believed the people of Florida to be deep in the "gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity,"[2] and desired to employ in the salvation of their souls the humanizing influences of a great railroad; thinking that every screech of the whistle and every puff of the engine, would admonish them of the necessity of preparing for the hereafter. His object was a noble one, and whoever casts a slur upon it deserves the horrible fate of Prometheus, who you will remember was chained to a rock for eating a vulture, that bird being considered sacred among the heathen. As for myself I am truly sorry that I ever had anything to do with it, for even the boot-blacks at the capitol, with an indifference to senatorial dignity approaching nearly to the sublime, have dubbed me "Railroad Tommy," and as I before remarked, I am sensitive if I am fat. [3]
However, I shall redeem myself I think for at the next session I intend to offer a bill, resolving that as Florida is too poor, the U. S. Government will father two magnificent projects that I now have in hand. One is to dredge out Lake Lafayette in Leon county, and make it navigable for light draft steamers, not drawing more than three feet of water, and mainly to be used for picnics, funerals, &c. The dredging is to be done by one of Hoe's largest cylinder presses (with double barreled escapement,) and to be under the supervision of E. M. Cheney, the eminent Jacksonville "gasometer," (vide New Era) who will bring to his new field of labor the greatest qualifications for the work, and no doubt give satisfaction to all parties.[4]
Project number two is one of incalculable value in a more sanitary point of view. It is nothing more nor less than to transport the famous Wakulla Springs to Jacksonville, to be used as a sanitarium by all having an "itch for office," as well as by members of the Y. M. C. A. [5] The transportation is to be accomplished by a new species of sub soiling, which I have just patented to be superintended by myself, and as it is to remain secret until fully performed, I shall only employ negroes in the work as they are best qualified to keep dark concerning it. These are the things that will make me famous, and the name of Osborn shall yet live in story "one of the few, the immortal names that were not born to die." [6]
Now in regard to the marshalship. When I saw Hamilton's name sent in to the Senate for that position, I actually trembled with dismay for you will doubtless remember that I once held the position of Register in Bankruptcy, and there might be some little technical informalities in my accounts, which only a friend should examine, so I determined that a friend of mine should be apppointed Marshal. I immediately notified Alberger to prepare and file some affidavits against Hamilton, while I hurried off to see Grant. On being admitted to the presidential palace, I explained to Ulysses my errand, and told him that if he would withdraw Hamilton's name and have Conant appointed, I would vote for the removal of Sumner, and in favor of San Domingo. He agreed to do so, and I left his presence with a happy heart. The best of the joke is, that when Hamilton called on Grant to ask an explanation he was grossly snubbed, and even refused a copy of the charges on file against him. [7]
I find that I have written a much longer letter than I intended and will now close, by carefully admonishing you to keep this letter strictly private in all respects.
Truly yours, OSBORN
ENFANT PERDU, Esq., Tallahassee, Fla.

Dear Floridian - In giving the above letter to the public, I feel that I am but fulfilling a simple duty, and that duty I shall carry out unto the bitter end, even though that end be BLOOD; and I hereby give warning that I can snuff a barn door at fifteen paces, and knock pennies off a cat's tail as fast that feline animile can histe them on. There is a subtle vein of rascality running through the honorable Senator's letter, which will no doubt strike his friends very unpleasantly, and they may blame me for having violated the confidence reposed in me; but I feel that I have a duty to perform, and like the Greek Philosopher, old Sarcophagus, I shall not allow mere personal friendship to stand in the way. I have no ill will against Mr. Osborn, but when any man, high or low, seeks to injure the State which I have taken under my protection, I shall in the sublime language of the Teutonic poet, "cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war."[8]
ENFANT PERDU
[Tallahassee Weekly Floridian, May 30, 1871]

NOTES:
1. 1 Timothy 5:8
2. Acts 8:23. Remarkably, this Floridian satire mockingly uses the religious justification earnestly invoked by Rev. A. C. Osborn to rationalize to his congregants his serving as president of the Great Southern Railroad.
3. Uncertain reference: perhaps popular minstrel show joke?
4. Lake Lafayette was a large shallow lake in Leon County (Tallahassee area). Hoe was a manufacturer of printing presses ("cylinder press"), often quite large machines. The use of printing machines for "dredging" is absurd. E. M. Cheney was a Republican political operative active during Florida reconstruction. "Gassy" was a frequent taunt invoked by the Floridian against its Republican targets. New Era was a Gainesville newspaper.
5. Wakulla Springs are a large natural spring and popular recreation area not far from Tallahassee. Obviously, the proposed "move" to Jacksonville is absurd. The joke about the YMCA is obscure.
6. From "Marco Bozzaris" by Fitz-Greene Halleck.
7. Hamilton's nomination for marshal was stalled by the Senate Republicans and ultimately withdrawn by Grant in favor of Osborn "Ring" loyalist, Simon Conant. Also in March 1871, Charles Sumner lost his position as chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations stemming, at least partially, from Sumner's opposition to Grant's plan to annex Santo Domingo. Such an alleged deal (Osborn opposing Sumner in return for Grant withdrawing Hamilton's nomination) - admittedly not alluded to anywhere else - could explain how Osborn, who had not been close to the Grant administration, could, together with New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, engineer Hamilton's humiliation with respect to the marshalship he desperately sought.
8. "Julius Caeser," (Act III, Scene 1), Shakespeare.

More Press Reaction to the Great Southern Railroad Scandal: Humor from the Weekly Floridian

Florida's most prominent newspaper, the Tallahassee Weekly Floridian was a staunch Democratic party organ that continuously launched vicious attacks on Florida's Republicans during Reconstruction. Long-time editor Charles E. Dyke's Floridian took special delight in the exposure of the GSRR which entangled many leading Republicans. Charles Hamilton, a frequent subject of the paper's taunts since he came to public attention in early 1868, unexpectedly found himself portrayed as a sympathetic figure for his role in bringing the GSRR scandal to light. Nevertheless, the Floridian couldn't resist mocking Hamilton and published a comic "interview" from correspondent "Enfant Perdu" that I have transcribed and annotated below. A similar comic interview with Osborn followed shortly thereafter. Photo: Charles E. Dyke, long-time publisher and editor of the Floridian (Fl. St. Archives)]:

Washington, D.C. April 17, 1871
Editors Floridian: I arrived in this city just when the so-called expose of the Great Southern Railroad Company, by Hon. C. M. Hamilton, M. C. from Florida, appeared in the columns of that spicy paper the Capital; and I resolved to seek an interview with Hamiton, and find out the exact status of affairs, in order if possible to set him right before his former constituents, and the people at large. When a man has once served a term in Congress; and then been repudiated by his constituents, it is ever afterwards hard work to find out his permanent abiding place. There is a great fascination to some about the scene of their former greatness, and they continue to hang around the city for years afterwards. Some sink lower and lower, until they become newspaper men, or engage in some other disreputable business, so you will please imagine that I had considerable trouble to find out where "Handsome Charlie"[1] obtained his daily "hash." At last I was directed to old mother Shipley's on "F" street, below the avenue, and so wended my way thither. Arriving at the house, I knocked at the door, and it was opened by a "ward of the nation," whose mouth looked like a buckwheat cake run over by a cart wheel. Being told that Col. Hamilton was in, I sent up my card, and in a few minutes a rather tall, handsome man, with blonde moustache and beard, came to the door, introduced himself to me as Chas. M. Hamilton, and invited me up stairs to his private den.[2] Arriving there, "Enfant," said he, "how does the old thing work?"
"Very dry," said I, and with that we did mutually "smile," and deposited about two inches of "bug juice" under our respective vests, lit our segars and prepared for sociable talk.
"Now Charlie," said I, "look here: how in the devil came you to make such an egregious blunder as to come out in the papers with those affidavits, letters &c.? You have ruined yourself irretrievably with your party, and placed yourself in a very unpleasant situation. Why, o why, did you do thusly?"
"Lend me your ears," said he, "and I will a plain unvarnished tale unfold."[3]
"Hold," said I, "your ears are large enough for all practical purposes; why do you want mine?"
"I was only quoting from the immortal old Billy," said he; "I meant I wanted you to listen to my plaintive story. They roused the lion in my breast by laughing at my plan in regard to the Great Southern Railroad, and adopting one of their own. If my idea had been carried out, we would each in ten years been worth $1,000,000.[4] I wanted the road to be called 'The Great Southern Zig Zag,' to start right from the steps of the Capitol at Tallahassee, and run so as to pass by every town in the State, with an underground branch through Marianna. in that way we could have busted every other company in the State, and done away with every other railroad in the State; thus obtaining all the travel and patronage. Osborn says his road would have had a terminus within miles of Cuba; mine would have terminated in Cuba, as we intended to sink a tunnel from Cape Sable, Fla. to Havana, and we could then have supplied the entire Gulf coast with insurrection if necessary.[5] Wasn't it a sublime idea?" said he, warming up with his subject; "could any other mind but mine have conceived such a stupendous enterprise?"
"No," said I, "not outside of a Lunatic Asylum."
He looked at me kind of doubtfully as I said this, but being a Euchre player, concluded to let it pass. "But, Charlie," said I, "how came you to destroy the plausibility of your expose by saying you had refused a bribe of $20,000? You didn't expect any one to believe that, did you?"
"Well, no," said he hesitatingly, "but d---n it, it wasn't in cash -- it was a check; and i knew d---n well it would never be paid.[6] So I made a virtue of necessity and refused it. Now if it had been cash, I would have voted all right for the scheme," (here he took a big drink).
"How do you account," said I, "for Alberger's letter saying he never made any approach to you in regard to the bill?"
"Oh h-ll," said he, "Tom Osborn knew his man when he obtained that letter. Alberger can manufacture letters and affidavits with a facility that has only been learned by long practice" - (a thin drink) - "Alberger is a d---d scoundrel, sir, a d---d scoundrel. Even State Treasurer Conover will swear to that. As for Tom Osborn, he's a mere puppet, and A. C. Osborn pulls the strings. By the way, lets take another drink and then I'll tell you a good joke on Osborn. It happened at Butler's last reception here. Osborn had been plaguing Logan, and in retaliation, Logan told the following story [7]: He said he dreamed he died and tried to get into Heaven, but St. Peter was on guard at the gate and refused to let him pass, saying no soldiers were admitted. Just then Osborn came along and tripped right in. 'I thought you didn't admit soldiers,' said I. 'Oh pshaw,' said Peter, 'Osborn's no soldier - he's no soldier.' Pretty good joke on Tom, wasn't it?"[8]
"Yes," said I, "a good joke; but Charlie, Osborn is a fine man, and holds four aces every time," (a big drink,) Hamilton deeply affected - in fact his emotions had got down into his legs and he could barely walk.
"I know," said he, "I am a disgraced and ruined man, but just think of the provocation I had. I am a poor unfortunate orphan, and was chizzled out of a nomination for Congress by the 'par nobile fratrum,' T. W. and A. C. Osborn, a combination of war and Gospel and a d--d nigger chosen in my place.[9] I can never go back to Florida, but I want you to tell the carpet baggers that if I have done anything I am sorry for, I'm glad of it, and if I have in my political career offended any of them, I am willing to accept their apologies. My revenge on Osborn shall be terrible. I intend to go into the Senate Chamber, turn Osborn across my knee and publicly spank him."
"No!" said I, "Charlie, you must not do that, for a greater than thou has said
"Let all the ends thou aim'st at
Be thy Country's, God's and Truth's" [10]
ENFANT PERDU
[Tallahassee Weekly Floridian, April 25, 1871]

NOTES:
1. The Floridian had referred to Hamilton as "Handsome Charlie" since the 1868 Congressional campaign. See "Perdu's" physical description of Hamilton.
2. Unclear as to the implication from the location of Hamilton's residence. Hamilton was married at the time and it is difficult to believe he lived quite so dissolutely as suggested by the WF.
3. The quote may be a mocking reference to Hamilton's readiness to quote Shakespeare. For example, as reported in another post, A. C. Osborn said that Hamilton had sent him letter in April 1871 prefaced with a quote from Othello.
4. In this satire, at least, the WF accepts the Osborns' allegations that Hamilton's motivation all along was his desire to seize control of the railroad. In other more serious reports, however, the WF doesn't pay any attention to this charge.
5. The "underground branch" alludes to the well-known fact that Hamilton could not return to Marianna and expect to leave alive. He barely escaped during his last visit to Jackson County in August 1870. Hamilton and Purman, and other Florida Republicans, championed Cuban independence and urged Congress to support Cuban rebels.
6. Hamilton had been hysterically attacked in the Democratic press for using mild profanity and slang in a speech he made at Jacksonville early in his political career.
7. Osborn supported Massachusetts' Benjamin Butler in his proposed candidacy against U. S. Grant for the Republican nomination in 1868 earning Grant's antipathy. Senator John A. Logan of Illinois was a leading radical Republican. Interesting that the WF claims that Rev. A. C. Osborn, not Senator T. W. Osborn was the main force behind the GSRR.
8. The joke is obscure. Osborn served throughout the war as an artillery officer, rising to the rank of colonel.
9. Noble pair of brothers (latin). To the contrary, Hamilton's public statements about Josiah Walls were uniformly gracious.
General points: no other references can be found to Hamilton's being a drinker or gambler.
10. Shakespeare, "Henry VIII" Act 3, Scene ii.

A.C. Osborn's Second Explanation

Sometime after the GSRR scandal broke in the press, Rev. Osborn received a request from a member of his church to preach from the following text: "he that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him." Osborn accepted the challenge. He did not address the charges leveled by Hamilton, but instead justified his own participation in the railroad to his congregants by sermonizing on the compatibility of the accumulation of wealth and Godliness.
The Eagle interpreted the message of Osborn's sermon as "that in making haste to be rich, he was doing a good thing - a wise, Scriptural, moral, and pious thing; and it may be reasonably assumed that he believes that all his clever scheming in the building of the railroad in Florida resulted in the edification of the church in Brooklyn." Osborn, in the view of the Eagle, announced the obsolesence of "the old notion that wealth is a dangerous possession, and its pursuit apt to be disasterous." Rather, "riches are not only quite compatible with godliness, but are among God's best gifts to man." Riches, according to Osborn "must be sought 'not for their own sake but to better enable us to do God's work.'" The Eagle dryly observed that "the reluctant Congressman Hamilton, in refusing to cooperate with Osborn, actually mised a chance of aiding in the evangelization of Southern Brooklyn through the agency of the Tabernacle church." The Eagle commended Osborn sarcastically for speaking this time, unlike his during his previous statements in his own defense, with no "futile attempt at evasion, equivocation, and misprepresentation. By boldly justifying what he has done in hastening to be rich Osborn at last honestly confesses what he has done." [Brooklyn Eagle, May 15, 1871].
Over the next few months, the Eagle took several swipes at Osborn and expressed its disbelief that the Baptist church had failed to take any action against him: "Why do not the Baptists [of the Long Island Baptist Association]...let us know whether they really believe that railroad-presidency and legislative jobbery are consistent with the pastoral profession?" [Brooklyn Eagle, June 16, 1871]. In late June, the Eagle could hold back no longer and made its most direct attack on Osborn's church for retaining him: "Aside from the charge of bribery, or attempted bribery of State legislators and Congressmen, the mere fact of [Osborn's] connection with railroad land lobbying schemes should disable him as a clergyman. It is the disgrace of the Tabernacle Baptist Church that it intrusted the official cure of souls to one who was confessedly engaged in a business which subjects even worldly men to grave suspicion, and which almost always involves corruption. What right has a minister of the Gospel, one avowedly set apart from grosser things and consecrated to a spiritual and religious work, to be running railroads and engineering appropriations bills?" [Brooklyn Eagle, June 23, 1871]. Osborn left the Tabernacle Church for another church in Manhattan in 1873.

A Thin Coat of Whitewash

The Tabernacle Baptist Church took up the challenge laid down by the Eagle to investigate its railroad president-pastor and, less than a one month after Hamilton's exposure of Osborn's conduct, the church "indorsed" Rev. Osborn "without qualification" and gave him "a complete certificate of 'uprightness, integrity, and moral character,' and at the same time offering no evidence on which their favorable judgment is based." Church resolutions expressed "'full and unimpaired confidence' in Osborn, and declare that the success which has attended his labors is 'evidence of the faithful performance of the duties of his office,' and that in the future, as in the past, he will honor his position as pastor of this chuch.'" The Eagle was outraged by this "whitewash." [Brooklyn Eagle, May 8, 1871]. The Eagle invited a member of the "Osborn Investigating Committee of the Baptist Tabernacle Church" to explain the Committee's "extraordinary report - a report which we are unable to characterize as other than a weak attempt to whitewash the railroad-lobby-pastor of that church." The invitation was declined provoking the Eagle to another column of outrage regarding Osborn. The Eagle reacted with anger toward accusations that it had treated Osborn unfairly since the Eagle had "made no charges against Osborn except such as were contained in his own letters." [Brooklyn Eagle, May 10, 1871]

"Osborn is condemned by his own pen"

After Hamilton's Washington Capitol "arraignment" of the Osborns received national attention, the Osborns struck back. Senator Osborn made a speech in his defense in the Senate that included selectively edited versions of letters and Rev. Osborn addressed his congregation in Brooklyn, the substance of which was printed in the Eagle. Rev. Osborn declared his innocence of any corruption or attempted bribery. His offers of stock to Hamilton had been in the form of an investment opportunity, not a bribe. He alleged that Hamilton had opposed the land-grant bill in Congress initially because his demands for control of the company and Florida's patronage had been rejected by the Osborns and, after his defeat for renomination, he threatened obstruction unless he would be awarded more stock, a salaried position with the company and the U.S. Marshall post he sought. Osborn asserted that he had not threatened Hamilton with political defeat but had merely predicted the outcome that would result from Hamlton's obstinancy. Osborn defended "the propriety of his engaging in the management of a railroad enterprise while the pastor of a church, by citing the example of the Apostle Paul as a tent manufacturer." The Eagle also printed the New York Tribune's acceptance of Osborn's explanation. [Brooklyn Eagle, April 27, 1871]
The day after printing Rev. Osborn's "lecture," the Eagle commented that the "gist of the discourse" was that Osborn's "attitude toward [Hamilton] was that of broker and a prophet." Osborn was an exception to "the axiom that 'the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client,'" for he "was not such a fool as to reproduce in his lecture the letters, written by himself, on which the charges against him were based and by which he is self-convicted." Osborn, the Eagle continued "forgets that the members of his congregation can read." The Eagle focued on Osborn's written instructions to M.L. Stearns to use stock in his hands 'at his discretion' in Tallahassee as damning. "If Osborn be not convicted by his own letter of misrepresentation in his lecture it is impossible to convict anybody of anything." Osborn "developed not merely recklessness of the obligations of truthfulness resting alike on ministers and all other men, but unparalled effrontery in asserting in [Church] the transparent falsehood...." His "assertion that he did not threaten Hamilton with political defeat, if he opposed the scheme, but only predicted it, is a paltry verbal subterfuge...." In conclusion, according to the Eagle, "Evidence so clear would consign any citizen engaged in a secular pursuit to lasting infamy. It remains to be seen whether a minister of the gospel can escape like condign punishment, or whether rather his name shall be stripped of its 'Rev.' prefix and its 'D.D.' affix. It is for the Tabernacle Baptist Church specially, and the religious community generally, to determine whether the cure of souls and the care of railroads, according to the corrupt modern method, are compatible trusts." [Brooklyn Eagle, April 28, 1871]

"The Pulpit Disgraced by the Lion of the Lobby"

Upon reprinting Hamilton's case presented in the Washington Capitol newspaper ("Hamilton's organ" according to A.C. Osborn), the Eagle's view of Rev. Osborn changed dramatically as demonstrated by the above headline. Though remaining skeptical toward Hamilton's purity, the Eagle was convinced by the letters exposed by Hamilton of the Osborn brothers' venality. Accepting Hamilton's accusations without question, the Eagle was particularly angry at Rev. Osborn when learning the true extent of his role in the affair. The editors may have been particularly infuriated after realizing that Rev. Osborn had duped the Eagle when it printed his self-serving defence, without scrutiny, a few days earlier. The paper begged "every reader who values the sanctity of the profession of a Christian minister to peruse the correspondence of the Rev. Dr. Osborn, pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church, corner of Hicks and Rapelyen streets in this city."Reflecting its pre-war Democratic Party loyalty, the editors saw their opposition toward Republican Reconstruction policy justified by the gross corruption that Hamilton exposed. Osborn's bribes and threats to drive Hamilton out of office, subsequently realized, showed that "the unutterable foulness of the Southern carpet bag swindle debauches the pulpit of the North." In his "contemplation of the millions his carpet-bag brother is to steal from Florida, for the benefit of both of them," Rev. Osborn lost "all sense of honor and honesty. In his letters he seems unconscious that he is proposing anything wrong, whereas every disinterested reader will see that his propositions are most infamous. The utter callousness of his tone is more revolting than even the amazing dimensions of the bribe he offers, or or the swindle he is proposing...he seems unaware that he is doing anything scandalous." Can Brooklyn, "the City of Churches retain its character and its morality, while its Doctors of Divinity thus peddle bribes among legislators, for shoveling the public lands into the pockets of their Senatorial brethren?" [Brooklyn Eagle, April 14, 1871].

The Brooklyn Eagle allows Rev. Osborn to plead his innocence

The Brooklyn Eagle, one of the nation's largest newspapers, had originated as a Democratic Party paper in the 1840s. During the war, the paper came under attack by the postoffice and mobs loyal to the Republican Party. Thomas Kinsella, appointed editor during the war, steered the paper toward a more moderate course and after the war, became a leading champion of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. When Hamilton went public with his accusations against Senator T.W. Osborn and his brother, Rev. A.C. Osborn, minister of Brooklyn's Baptist Tabernacle Church, Kinsella's Eagle could not resist jumping into the fray.
Briefly summarizing the account of the Great Southern Railroad scandal carried in the New York Tribune the Eagle initially concluded that "in the absence of any explanation, and upon the letter of Osborn, the disclosures are decidely damaging." The Eagle wryly observed that "The moral of the very immoral transaction, which will probably come home with most force to Rev. A.C. Osborn, is that it is always prudent to conduct such delicate negotiations by personal interview. Litera scripta manet; and if profanity were not unprofessional, Rev. A.C. Osborn would curse the day he wrote those letters to Hamilton [Brooklyn Eagle, April 10, 1871]."

The next day, an Eagle reporter interviewed Rev. Osborn about the affair and the paper, showing Osborn's influence, took a skeptical stance with respect to Hamilton: "About the time the war closed, a Mr. C.M. Hamilton, it is said, went down to Florida from Pennsylvania, as an attache of the Freedmen's Bureau, and before he had been there very long managed to get himself elected Member of Congress. The star of Hon. C. M. Hamilton was evidently in the ascendant, but there was a Senator Osborn from the same State, of whom he appears to have been slightly jealous, and on the part of the member of the House of Representatives a struggle for power was at once commenced and kept up during the two years he remained in office. The Senator appears to have looked upon Mr. Hamilton much as the late Artemus Ward regarded the kangaroo - that he was an "amoosin' little cuss"- and at the end of two years the nomination was conferred upon another candidate, and Mr. Hamilton was left out in the cold. He is at present in Washington waiting for something to turn up, and at the same time is engaged in carrying on the war against Senator Osborn and his brother, the Rev. A.C. Osborn, Pastor of the Baptist Tabernacle Church of this city."
The paper then printed Rev. Osborn's defense in which he alleged that Hamilton had attempted to take control of the company's stock and, after initially failing, demanded shares sufficient to control the company, salary as the company's counsel and confirmation as U.S. Marshall as his price for support of the a bill supporting the Great Southern Railroad in Congress. Osborn said that the President of the GSRR [i.e., A.C. Osborn] refused Hamilton's demands and contending that Hamilton's confirmation as U.S. Marshall would put him in a position to "very easily embarrass the operations of the Company," sent an affidavit to Senator Conklin (NY), member of the committee to which the nomination had been referred and filed a copy with the Attorney General. Hamilton's name was withdrawn from the Senate immediately after the affidavits were distributed and, Osborn insisted that "it is the impotent wrath of Mr. Hamilton at being thus foiled that causes him to make these groundless charges against Senator Osborn and myself." Rev. Osborn did admit to his interviewer that he had told Hamilton that the influence of the GSRR "would be brought to bear for the purpose of preventing his return to Congress if he did not do all in his power to secure passage of the bill, before the close of the session." Osborn stated that he had received a letter from Hamilton dated April 6th that "opened with a quotation from Othello, and then through eight closely written pages of letter paper explained how angry and disgusted he had been at finding on file in the office of the Attorney General, the copy of the affidavit."
This is the last time the Brooklyn Eagle would take a sympathtic position toward Osborn.

John Mellen Thurston - Senator and....Poet!

SENATOR JOHN M. THURSTON Senator from Nebraska; born in Montpelier, Vt., August 21, 1847; moved with his parents to Madison, Wis., in 1854 and two years later to Beaver Dam, Wis.; attended the public schools and graduated from Wayland University, Beaver Dam, Wis.; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1869 and commenced practice in Omaha, Nebr.; member, city council 1872-1874; city attorney of Omaha 1874-1877; member, State house of representatives 1875-1877; appointed assistant attorney of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1877 and general solicitor in 1888; presidential elector on the Republican ticket in 1880; unsuccessful Republican candidate for United States Senator in 1893; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1895, to March 3, 1901; was not a candidate for reelection; chairman, Committee on Indian Affairs (Fifty-sixth Congress); appointed United States commissioner to the St. Louis Exposition in 1901; moved to Washington, D.C., and resumed the practice of law; returned to Omaha, Nebr., and practiced law until his death August 9, 1916; remains were cremated at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Omaha, Nebr., and the ashes interred in the Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.C. [www.bioguide.congress.gov]

Let's read what the Chicago Tribune so tactfully and sensitively published upon the Senator's death:
His death recalled the second great tragedy of his life, which ended his political career and caused one of the most remarkable collapses of personal popularity in the nation's history. That tragedy was encompassed in the appearance of a poem about a year after his wife's death, which he composed to another woman - Miss Lola Purman of Washington, whom subsequently he married, and who survives him.
Prior to the incident of the poem, which was a sentimental piece, addressed to "The White Rose," Senator Thurston had stood unbeatable in Nebraska politics. He had been twice chairman of the national Republican convention, the last time in 1896. Yet in 1900 he was barely able to retain a seat in the convention.
Few more thrilling moments have passed in the United States senate than that in which Senator Thurston, after a tour of Cuban reconcentrado camps, on which has wife had accompanied him and during which she had died, prefaced his address on the horrors he had seen by the solemn words: "I speak at the behest of lips now silent." The whole senate reacted to it, and the nation reacted to it.
As we learned in an earlier post, Lola had precipated this incident by presenting the Senator with the infamous white rose at the opera. The Tribune was kind enough to provide the poem:
Here is the poem which proved Thurston's nemesis:

THE WHITE ROSE
I said to the rose, "O, Rose, sweet Rose,
Will you lie on my breast tonight?
Will you nestle there with your perfume rare
And your petals pure white?"

I said to the rose, "O, Rose, sweet Rose,
Will you thrill to my every sigh,
Though you life exhale in the morning pale
And you wither and fade and die?"

I said to the rose, "O, Rose, sweet Rose,
Will you throb with my every breath?
Will you give me the bliss of a passionate kiss,
Albeit the end is death?"

The White Rose lifted her stately head
And answered me fair and true:
"I am happy and blest to lie on your breast,
For the woman who gave me to you."
[Chicago Tribune, Aug. 10, 1916]
It is amazing that one hundred years ago, a widower's marriage to a younger (ok, more than 25 years younger) woman could end his political career. Maybe that poem only warranted censure.

various players from our drama

JOSIAH WALLS - Defeated Hamilton in the contest for the Republican party nomination for candidate for Congress at the August 1870 Gainesville convention. Walls unexpectedly emerged as the compromise candidate of choice after the Osborn Ring narrowly failed to win the necessary fifty votes for Robert Meacham and stalemate between the Osborn and Hamilton-Purman camps looked inevitable. Walls's nomination realized J.C. Gibbs's ambition of winning Florida's congressional seat for an Africam American. WALLS, Josiah Thomas, a Representative from Florida; born in Winchester, Frederick County, Va., December 30, 1842; received a limited schooling; engaged in truck farming; moved to Florida; delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1868; served in the State senate 1869-1872; presented credentials as a Member-elect to the Forty-second Congress and served from March 4, 1871, to January 29, 1873, when he was succeeded by Silas L. Niblack, who contested his election; elected as a Republican to the Forty-third Congress (March 4, 1873-March 3, 1875); presented credentials as a Member-elect to the Forty-fourth Congress and served from March 4, 1875, to April 19, 1876, when he was succeeded by Jesse J. Finley, who contested his election; resumed his occupation as truck farmer; died in Tallahassee, Fla., May 15, 1905; interment in the Negro Cemetery. {www.bioguide.congress.gov) After Walls was seated in the 42nd Congress, one of his first activities was pushing through Osborn's Great Southern Railroad legislation that Hamilton had resisted. [Photos from Florida State Archives]

various players from our drama (cont.)

MARCELLUS L. STEARNS - Maine-native Freedmen's Bureau officer for Gadsden County. Stearns recovered Dickinson's body after his murder and presented Dickinson's diary and the Fleishman Affidavits at the KKK Hearings. Stearns was a leading member the Osborn Ring and was entrusted by the Osborns with the distribution, at his discretion, of Great Southern Railroad shares so as to pave the way for passage of supporting legislation through the Florida legislature. Stears served as Florida's governor from 3/1875 to 1/1877. [Photo: Florida State Archives]

various players from our drama (cont.)

MALACHI MARTIN - Irish immigrant - Union army officer who became warden of the state penitentiary at Chattahoochee. Testified at the KKK Hearings about his encounter with Fleishman when Fleishman asked Martin for protection but Martin responded he had no power in chaotic Jackson County. Other than the mysterious Simms (whose statements Martin relates), Martin was the last person to report seeing Fleishman alive. Martin was accused of allowing terrible conditions at his prison.
[Photo: Florida State Archives]

Jonathan C. Gibbs

J.C. Gibbs (1827 - 1874): Distinguished and able radical Republican politician. A native of Pennsylvania, Gibbs graduated from Dartmouth College and came to the South after the war as a Presbytarian missionary. Served in a number of government positions including as Florida's Secretary of State. Gibbs resented the Florida moderate faction's failure to nominate African Americans for high level offices. He correctly saw Hamilton as vulnerable and openly advocated delivering Florida's congressional seat to an African American. Gibbs journied to Jackson County, the base of Hamilton's African American support, to organize opposition to Hamilton simultaneous with Hamilton and Purman's nearly disasterous appearance in August 1870. The convergence of Osborn's revenge and Gibbs's efforts brought about Hamilton's sudden downfall, though Josiah Walls, not Gibbs was the beneficiary. Many considered Gibbs the most impressive and best educated Florida public figure of his era, black or white.
[Photo: Florida State Archives}

Gov. Harrison Reed

Took oath on June 8, 1868; recognized by the federal commander on July 4, 1868; served until January 7, 1873
July 4, 1868 to January 7, 1873
Harrison Reed was born at Littleton, Mass., on August 26, 1813. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1861 as an employee of the Treasury Department and was sent to Florida by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 as a tax commissioner to deal with seized Confederate property. Reed gained a reputation for honesty in this office and was appointed Florida’s postal agent by President Andrew Johnson in 1865. He held this position until he was elected governor under the new 1868 Constitution.
Harrison Reed’s administration was a stormy one because he had to cope with a number of factions within his political party, the Republicans. Two serious attempts to impeach him originated with leaders of his own party. At the end of his term, Reed settled down on his farm along the St. Johns River. In 1875, he became editor of the Semi-Tropical, a monthly magazine devoted to southern agricultural and economic development. He died in Jacksonville on May 25, 1899.
[http://dhr.dos.state.fl.us/museum/collections/governors/about.cfm?id=16]
A leader of the Florida "moderate" Republicans together with T.W. Osborn, Reed received the party's nomination for Governor after the close of the Constitutional Convention in Feb. 1868. Soon after Reed assumed office, Reed and Osborn split over patronage issues and financial schemes. Reed survived several impeachment attempts engineered by his nemesis. Hamilton signaled his rejection of the Osborn Ring when he allied himself with the Governor in late 1869. The endorsement of the embattled and isolated Governor proved to be of no value to Hamilton at the August 1870 Republican nominating convention.

A friend "through all the combats that were fought"

Rev. Emanuel Fortune
[Photo from Florida State Archives]
Born a slave, Emanuel Fortune was a prominent minister and leading Republican party activist in post-War Jackson County. He was elected as a delegate to the Florida constitutional convention in early 1868 and as a Jackson County representative in the state legislature. A close friend of the Bureau agents, he accompanied Hamilton on voter registration and organization drives and may have saved Hamilton's life during a brawl with whites in Walton County. Fearing for life after the Finlayson/Purman shooting, Fortune fled with his family to Jacksonville in the summer of 1869. His son, Timothy Thomas Fortune benefitted from Purman's patronage when the latter was in Congress and became one the leading African American journalists of the early 20th century.

"that good brave, noble, valuable friend..."

Dr. John L. Finlayson
[Photo from Florida State Archives]
Fairly prosperous land and slave owners before the war, the Finlayson family had suffered financially, particularly during the 1864 Union arm raid known as "the Battle of Marianna." The oldest son, Dr. John L. Finlayson, a Confederate army veteran, born in 1838, was about two years older about than Hamilton and Purman and became close friends with the two men. Remarkably, Finlayson allied himself with the Bureau, providing medical services to freedmen and teaching adults at the Bureau night school in Marianna. He attended a Florida Republican convention in 1867 and accepted appointments as Bureau medical officer and later clerk of court for Jackson County (July 1868). Dr. Finlayson was shot dead by a concealed assassin on the night of Feb. 26, 1869 in the town of Marianna while walking together with Purman after attending a minstrel performance by the local army garrison. Shortly after John's death, his sister Mary Martha married Charles Hamilton. In October 1871, sister Leodora married Purman. In a letter to Dickinson, Hamilton recalled Finlayson, "that good brave, noble, valuable friend, whom I loved with an almost holy affection." John L. Finlayson's burial place is unknown.

Addendum (Jan. 2007):
Reading through the Florida legislative journals, I learned that Finlayson's assassination was followed by the "almost immediate death of his wife, who fell an innocent victim to grief in devotion to her husband." The Finlaysons left behind "two little orphans": Sallie (born about 1865) and John P. (born Nov. 1867). In Jan. 1870, state Senator Purman introduced a bill entitled "An Act for the relief of the children of Dr. John L. Finlayson, late Clerk of the Circuit Court of Jackson county." The bill passed and the children were awarded an annual payment of $300 for the period of ten years.

Addendum (Feb. 2007)
The orphaned Finlayson children, John P. and Sallie, are listed in the 1870 census living in Mobile, Ala. with a family named Bond. Presumably the Bonds are the family of their late mother. John P. continued to live in Mobile, married Lillie Ellen Barry, and had a son in 1895 whom he named John Purman Finlayson. "Purman Finlaysons" have resided in Mobile to this day. According to a descendant, the family became quite successful in the grocery business.

"almost inseperably associated for the greater part of our lives"

William J. Purman: Charles Hamilton's boyhood friend, fellow veteran, political ally, and brother-in-law. Hamilton obtained Purman's appoinment as Freedmen's Bureau civilian agent for Jackson County, FL obstensibly under Hamilton's command, though the two shared their duties as equals for almost two difficult years [photo: Florida state archives].
PURMAN, William James, a Representative from Florida; born in Millheim, Centre County, Pa., April 11, 1840; attended the common schools and completed his studies at Aaronsburg Academy, Centre County, Pa.; taught school; studied law at Lock Haven, Pa.; during the Civil War entered the Union Army as a private and served on special duty at the War Department until transferred to Florida in 1865; was admitted to the bar in 1868 and commenced practice in Tallahassee, Fla.; member of the State constitutional convention in 1868; served in the State senate 1869-1872; appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the State senate as secretary of state in 1869, but declined; chairman of the Florida Commission in 1869 for entering into negotiations for transfer of West Florida to the State of Alabama, which transfer was not ratified by Alabama; assessor of United States internal revenue for the district of Florida 1870-1872; chairman of the Republican State committee 1870-1872; member of the Republican National Committee 1876-1880; elected as a Republican to the Forty-third Congress and served from March 4, 1873, to January 25, 1875, when he resigned; member of the State house of representatives for one session and resigned when elected to Congress; elected to the Forty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1875-March 3, 1877); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1876 to the Forty-fifth Congress; returned in 1878 to Millheim, Pa., and engaged in agricultural pursuits; moved to Boston, Mass., in 1883; moved to Washington, D.C., where he lived in retirement until his death on August 14, 1928; the remains were cremated and the ashes deposited in a vault at Glenwood Cemetery. [www.bioguide.congress.gov]
Interestingly this biography does not mention the 2 1/2 years (spring 1866 to September 1868) that Purman was Freedmen's Bureau agent for Jackson County, FL.

T.W. Osborn: the villain of our story

OSBORN, Thomas Ward, a Senator from Florida; born in Scotch Plains, Union County, N.J., March 9, 1833; moved to New York in 1842 with his parents, who settled in North Wilna; attended the common schools and graduated from Madison (now Colgate) University, Hamilton, N.Y., in 1860; studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1861; during the Civil War entered the Union Army in 1861 as lieutenant and became captain, major, and colonel of Battery D, First Regiment, New York Light Artillery; appointed assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees and Freedmen for Florida 1865-1866; settled in Tallahassee, Fla., and commenced the practice of law; appointed register in bankruptcy in 1867; member of the State constitutional convention in 1868; moved to Pensacola, Fla.; member, State senate; upon the readmission of Florida to representation was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from June 25, 1868, to March 3, 1873; was not a candidate for reelection; served as United States commissioner at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1876; moved to New York City and resumed the practice of law; also engaged in literary pursuits; died in New York City, December 18, 1898; interment in Hillside Cemetery, North Adams, Berkshire County, Mass [www.bioguide.congress.gov]
BUT WE KNOW "THE REST OF THE STORY!"
[Left photo from Florida State Archives/ right from Library of Congress]
More biographical information about T.W. Osborn:
GENERAL THOMAS W. OSBORN, son of Jonathan and Amelia Osborn ....After graduation he entered the law-office of Starbuck & Sawyer, at Watertown, being admitted to practice law in 1861. It was not until after the battle of First Bull Run that he determined to do what hecould to sustain the government. He raised a company for light artilleryservice, afterwards known as Company D, First New York Light Artillery. Ofthis command he was commissioned captain. The battery served continuouslywith the Army of the Potomac and engaged in more than 30 pitched battles,from the Peninsula to Gettysburg, proving itself one of the best artilleryforces in the army, only equaled by the battery of Mink and Spratt, also raised in Jefferson, St. Lawrence and Lewis counties. After this generaland entirely truthful statement it is not necessary to go into details, for Osborn's battery has a record that can be found in the history of the Army ofthe Potomac. The services of Captain Osborn were so meritorious that he was rapidly promoted from one grade to another, having been chief of artillery ofthe second division of the second corps, under General Berry, with the rankof major; in 1863 he was promoted to the command of the second brigade of thevolunteer artillery of the Army of the Potomac; and in June, 1863, was madechief of artillery of the second corps, under General Howard, in whichcapacity he went through with the battle of Chancellorsville. In 1864 he was transferred to the Army of the Cumberland, and was chief of artillery of thefourth corps of that army; and while thus employed was seriously wounded.While in command of the recruiting barracks at Louisville, Ky., he organizedthe 106th, 107th and 108th regiments of colored troops. Returning to thefront as soon as convalescent, on the 28th of July, 1864, he was assigned, byGeneral Sherman, as chief of artillery of the Army and Department of theTennessee, commanded by General Howard. This assignment gave Major Osbornthe largest artillery command held by any officer during the war, with theone exception of Major-General Barry, who was General Sherman's chief of artillery. November 1, 1865, upon the organization of Sherman's army for the Savannah campaign, Major Osborn was relieved from the command of theartillery of the department, and retained that of the moving army. December 21, 1864, in addition to his other duties, he was put in command and hadcharge of all the artillery, light and heavy, captured at Savannah; January 9, 1865, he received his previous command of the artillery only with themoving army and entered upon the Carolina campaign. This he retained untilMay 10, 1865, when he was relieved by the Secretary of War and assigned to other duty.
From: The Growth of a Century: As Illustrated in the History of Jefferson, County, New York, from 1793 to 1894, John A. Haddock, Philadelphia, Sherman & Co., 1894. Page 822.
Found at http://home.att.net/~osborne-origins/biograph/bio25.htm

Yet another Hamilton portrait

This photo is from the Florida State Archives (Florida Memory Photographic Collection) http://www.floridamemory.com/PhotographicCollection

This photo is also available at the private collection website: Picture History: http://www.picturehistory.com/find/p/5739/mcms.html

John Quincy Dickinson Letters

I am not sure what to do with the John Q. Dickinson material I have gathered. In any event, here's a list of writings and letters which I have found:

J.Q. Dickinson to "Dear Mother," Tallahassee, FL., Aug. 13, 1868 (UVT Library)

A.H. Jackson to J.Q. Dickinson, ___, Sept. _, 1868 (Freedmen's Bureau Records)

J.Q. Dickinson to A.H. Jackson, Marianna, Fl., Sept. 15, 1868 (FB Records)

J.Q. Dickinson to A.H. Jackson, Marianna, Fl., Sept. 17, 1868 (FB Records)

J.Q. Dickinson to A.H. Jackson, Marianna, Fl., Oct. 1, 1868 (FB Records)

J.Q. Dickinson to Rutland Herald (pub. 4/15/69) - titled "A Letter from Florida" subtitled "The Murder of Dr. Finlayson, dated Marianna, Jackson Co. , Florida April 5, 1869.

J.Q.D. to "Dear Father", Marianna, Fla, April 11, 1869 (UVT Library)

Malachi Martin to J.Q. Dickinson, State Penitentiary, Fla. Aug. 10, 1869 (fr. Benson, VT. Historical Society)

JQD "Memoranda and Occurences": Sept. 28 - Oct. 26, 1869 (Kaplan Collection)

J.Q. Dickinson to C.M. Hamilton, Marianna, Sept. 30, 1869 (Congress Hearings)

J.Q. Dickinson to C.M. Hamilton, Marianna, Oct. 3, 1869 (Congress Hearings)

JQD: Fleishman Affadivits, Oct. 4, 1869 (Kaplan Collection)

J.Q. Dickinson to C.M. Hamilton, Marianna, Oct. 7, 1869 (Congress Hearings)

J.Q. Dickinson to C.M. Hamilton, Marianna, Oct. 11, 1869 (Congress Hearings)

C.M. Hamiton to J.Q. Dickinson, Washington, Dec. 29, 1869 or 1870 (Kaplan Collection)

J.Q. Dickinson to G. Gile, Marianna, Florida, Feb. 24, 1870 (FB Records)

W.J. Purman to J.Q. Dickinson, Tallahassee, Fla. Oct. 5, 1870 (UVT Library).

J.M. Hawks to J.Q. Dickinson , Pensacola, Fl., Nov. 25, 1870 (UVT Library)

Benj. Thompson to J.Q. Dickinson, Ship Peruvian, Savannah, Dec. 2, 1870 (UVT Library)

Laurie (?) Thompson to J.Q. Dickinson "

Hart Collins (?) to J.Q. Dickinson, Orange Hill (?), Fl, Dec. 9, 1870 (UVT Library)

Benj. Thompson to J.Q. Dickinson, Ship Peruvian, Savannah, Dec. 25, 1870 (UVT Library)

J.C. Gibbs to J.Q. Dickinson, Tallahassee, Feb. 14, 1871 (UVT Library)

J.Q. Dickinson to J.C. Gibbs, Marianna, Feb. 23, 1871 (Congress. Hearings)

W.J. Purman to J.Q. Dickinson, Tallahassee, Fla., March 10, 1871 (UVT Libary)



OTHER RELATED LETTERS
A.J. Dickinson to "Dear Mother," Marianna Post Office, April 4, 1871 (UVT Library)

W.J. Purman to Isaac Dickinson, Tallahassee, April 17, 1871 (UVT Library)

D.B. Peck to Isaac Dickinson & Family, Washington DC, April 17, 1871 (UVT Library)

W. Chapman to I. Dickinson, Marianna, Jackson Co., Florida, April 29, 1871 (UVT Library)

P.R. Sherwood to Mrs. Dickinson, Knox Co. Ohio, April 2_, 1871 (UVT Library)

Isaac Dickinson to W.H. Milton, Benson, Vt., Sept. __, 1874 (UVT Library)

Isaac Dickison to Mr. Chapman, Benson, Vt., Feb. 13, 1875 (UVT Library)

W.H. Milton to Isaac Dickinson, Marianna, Fl., April 15, 1879 (UVT Library)

SEE ALSO: Wartime letters from JQD to Rutland Herald dated March 13, April 5, April 27, May 1, July 15, 1862; July 4, 1863; Aug. 20, 1864 reprinted in Donald H. Wickman, Letters to Vermont from her Civil War soldier correspondents to home press (Bennington, Vt., 1998), vol. II;

manuscript diary, 88 pages, March 10 - May 6, 1862 in possession of UVT Library;

J.Q. Dickinson to "Dear Uncle", Baton Rouge, LA, Aug. 10, 1862 (Navarro College, Texas).

J.Q. Dickinson to "Dear Mother," Metropolitan Hotel, NY, March 11, 1862 (BensonHS)

J.Q. Dickinson to "Dear Mother," Ship Island, April 4, 1862 (BHS)

J.Q. Dickinson to Dugald Stewart, Near Carrollton, La., Sept. 1, 1862 (Jeffrey D. Marshall, ed., A War of the People: Vermont Civil War Letters.)

J.Q. Dickinson to "Dear Father," Fort Pickens, La., Dec. 3, 1863 (BHS)

J.Q. Dickinson to "Dear Father," Barnacas, La. May 17, 1864 (BHS)

J.Q. Dickinson to "Dear Father," New Orleans, Jan. 14, 1865 (BHS)

J.Q. Dickinson to "Dear Father," New Orleans, Oct. 18, 1865 (UVT Library)



[photo: http://www.vermontcivilwar.org/units/7/jqd.php ]

Another Hamilton Congressional Portrait (with longer beard!)

Here is "Handsome Charley" - the youngest member of the 40th Congress - no more than thirty, impressively goateed, poised and at the peak of his career. No foreboding of the pathetic end he would find in just another half-dozen years (Photo from Library of Congress).

Grave Inscriptions

East:
Col. Charles M. Hamilton
_____ son of
John & Hannah Hamilton
Died Oct. 22, 1875
In the 35th year
of his age

North:
Commissioner Freedmen
Bureau for Florida 1865
Represented Fla in the
40th and 41st Congress

West:
An officer in ____
________ _________1861
_________ Penn.
Reserves

South:
Post Master Jacksonville
Fla. ______
Collector Customs ___Key
West, Fla. 1873