The Jackson County War Blog

How Many Jackson County Men Died in the Civil War? The Answer (sort of) Below

2012-02-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

How many Jackson County men served in the Civil War? How many died in service of the Confederacy or, for a few, in service of the Union? These are great questions and the wealth of Jackson County data available makes the answers approachable, although ultimately impossible to firmly ascertain.

Who served? A lot of men and boys volunteered at the war’s outset. At first the age ranges were relatively narrow as confirmed by the CSA’s first conscription act in 4/1862 which, in addition to extending the enlistments of all twelve month volunteers to 3 years, required all white males between 18 and 35 to enlist. A second act in 10/62 extended the age limit to 45 and a third act in 2/64 drew in all men from 17 to 50 (17s and over 45s serving in reserve corps). A number of categories of exemptions applied, including planters who owned twenty or more slaves: at least 33 Jackson Co. men fell under this exemption, but most of these served, at least in home guard units. We'll look at the actual service numbers at later date.

For purposes of these preliminary numbers, we’ll use a few assumptions. First regarding age: the 1860 census gives ages for that summer. Examination of previous and subsequent census numbers shows that a lot of these ages are estimates, but presumably with more than a thousand names, this problem should average out (any statisticians object?). A boy of 17 in the spring of 1864 would likely have been 13 in 1860. Men of 50 in the spring of 1864 would have been 46 in the 1860 Census. There are many outliers: children as young as 9 in the 1860 census are credited as serving in Home Guard units (hello Frank Baltzell!) as well as some men in their 60s and 70s, up to the oldest war death of Francis Allen (about 75 when killed at Marianna), but there are exceptions.

Here is the basic number: there are about 1365 white males in the 1860 census within the draftable age range. About 240 can be reasonably confirmed as dying as a direct consequence of military service or the war from 1861 through mid-1865. The ultimate fate of 254 is unknown. The remaining 871 are documented in some form or another as surviving the war, whether for a few months or decades. Therefore, for the broadest age range (13 to 46 year olds in the 1860 census): 63% survived the War, 17.58% perished and 18.6% are unknown. If we restrict the numbers just to those whose fates are known, the death rate rises to 21.6%.

Looking at the unknowns, we have service information for about 75. For purposes of discussion, we’ll assume that the reason that half these men are unknown is that they were killed and missing in action. This assumption will place the death stat at exactly 20%.

But, you say, these numbers are misleading. True, only about 1/3 of 13 year olds have service records, even for home guard units. Two-thirds of 1860 fourteens, on other hand, served. So we’ll put aside the 80 thirteen year olds including 4 deaths and 19 knowns. And on the upper range, if we scan down to find an age cohort where we know that more than 50% served in units, we have to go down to age 42. Cutting off this top range excludes another 80 including 9 deaths and 16 unknowns. The symmetry of 80 is a coincidence.

So, removing the 13s and the 43 -46ers:

1205 males 14 through 42: 227 deaths (18.84%); 219 known (18.17%), leaving 63% surviving the war. Putting aside the unknowns, the death rate is 23%. Playing the 50% game from above for unknowns who served, we are again left with about a 20% death rate of males within the conscription age range. It is crucial to emphasize this last point because these death rates do not deal with the actual numbers who served. Those death rates will be much higher. But a simplistic, preliminary examination indicates that Jackson County was certainly within the Confederacy’s average range (perhaps on the lower end of average) for war death rates.

Next steps include looking at the rates of death for actual service. It would also be interesting to explore the “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” theory by examining service and death rates by wealth and slave ownership (Joseph Glathaar’s research on Lee’s army shows this to be a myth: the wealthy were more motivated and served and died at higher rates). We can also look closer at the 240 dead and break those numbers down as far as KIAs, deaths from diseases, eastern and western theaters, etc.

Notes:

This numbers do not in any way address the wounded and maimed. We know from pension records, for example, that there were many amputees. Certainly hundreds of men suffered from physical impairment and what is known today as PTSD.

A subject not addressed, but might be the most elusive research topic is the service, in whatever form it may have taken, of Jackson County’s African Americans in the Confederate armies.

There’s obviously a ton of more work that can be done with this data (as well as more data to retrieve and verify) that I don’t have much time for. Any volunteers?

Catawba Tribe

2012-01-31T11:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to "Patriot Chiefs and Loyal Braves" by Mr. Steven Pony Hill. It's a fascinating history of the Catawba Indians of the Apalachicola Valley, with emphasis on Jackson and Calhoun counties. (I had no idea that most "mulattos" listed in the 1860 Jackson County census were Catawbas). The section on navigating the color line in the late 19th and early 20th century is especially poignant. It's all worth a read:
http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/NativeAmericans.html

Confederate Monument and Cemetery ....in Westchester County, NY!

2012-01-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

I was amazed to learn recently that there is a large Confederate monument, surrounded by a ring of graves of Confederate army veterans, located only about ten minutes from my house in suburban Westchester County, New York. The granite obelisk in the picture above is quite large, maybe 50 feet tall (one newspaper says 60 feet on top of a top foot base), and stand in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. It is quite prominent - by far the largest and tallest monument in the hillside cemetery and plainly visible from Saw Mill River Road below. It is certainly congruous enough not to attract the attention of passing drivers. I've been by it many times and never noticed it. On inspection, however, it is impressive, very well maintainted and the surrounding circle of graves are well marked, most with unit names, and well preserved. Interestingly, on my visit, the graves were each flanked by a small United States flag.
The monument was erected in 1897 and reads on one side: "Sacred to the Memory of the Heroic Dead of the Confederate Veterans Camp of New York." Supposedly, this is the only such monument and dedicated cemetery section north of the Mason-Dixon line, excluding, I suppose the prison camp cemeteries.
I plan to research and perhaps write about the story behind this monument, its dedication (that drew some opposition, but not much), the individuals buried around it and its preservation.

Remembering author Caroline Hentz - in 1892

2011-12-18T17:10:00.000-08:00

Caroline Lee Hentz was a popular American writer of the ante-bellum era. A Massachusetts native, she married a Southerner and lived the last few years of her life in Marianna. Although she wrote several successful novels, today she is remembered mostly in academic circles for The Northern Planter's Bride, her rebuttal to Uncle Tom's Cabin. The following 1892 piece from a Thomasville, GA newspaper shows, however, that decades after the war, Mrs. Hentz was still remembered with great affection.

FROM: (Thomasville, GA) Daily Times-Enterprise, Jan. 20, 1892

John Quincy Dickinson and Civil War and Reconstruction Memory

2011-11-22T12:57:00.000-08:00

The regimental history of the 7th Vermont Vols., written by William C. Holbrook, contains some pages remembering John Q. Dickinson. The description of Dickinson's time in Florida is not attributed to any witness or first person source and, consequently, is more significant for the impressions it conveys, rather than any factual information contained. First the excerpt with my comments following:

FROM: A NARRATIVE OF THE SERVICES OF THE OFFICERS AND ENLISTED MEN OF THE 7TH REGIMENT OF VERMONT VOLUNTEERS (VETERANS) FROM 1862 TO 1866
by William C. Holbrook (New York, 1882)

[151] CAPT. JOHN Q. DICKINSON
On September 13th, [1864] Lieut. John Q. Dickinson, who for some time had acted as regimental Quartermaster, was commissioned as such. He discharged the duties of that office, which were by no means light, very acceptably to the regiment and with much fidelity and ability. He was subsequently made Captain of Company F, and was honorably discharged for disability October 10th, 1865. Upon leaving the service, like many other of the Union soldiers, he elected to cast his lot with the people of the South. For a time he was engaged in the lumber business in Florida in partnership with Col. D.. B. Peck. But after a little they relinquished that business and Col. Peck returned to the North. Capt. Dickinson, however, remained in Florida, and entered somewhat into politics, and finally secured a public office at Mariana, I believe. He was an educated gentleman, and a facile and pleasing writer. In disposition he was as agreeable as he was amiable, and was the last against whom it would be expected that any one would harbor harsh or hostile feelings. Nevertheless, it seems that his superior attainments did occasion much hatred and jealousy on the part of the Floridians of the neighborhood, who wanted no "Yankees" to administer their affairs, or to hold office in their State. A trifling newspaper article, or something of the kind, was seized upon as a pretext to inform Mr. Dickinson that his presence was not wanted at Mariana, and accordingly a notice, emanating from that most fiendish and hellish of all organizations, the Ku Klux Klan, was served upon him in due form, whereby he was warned to depart under the penalty of death. To this threat he paid no attention.

[152]
TRAGIC DEATH OF CAPT. DICKINSON.

His friends, however, were so apprehensive of the great danger he incurred, that they entreated him not to let it pass unheeded, and urged him to return home. But he was not willing to retire, as he expressed it, "in the face of the enemy," and would not have it said that he had been driven from his post by any such menaces, and he determined to remain where he was, notwithstanding he received two or three subsequent warnings that his life would surely be taken if he did not depart. Finally, one evening, after he had closed his office, a message was sent to his house that he was wanted there on important business. Not suspecting danger he started to comply with this request. It was then dark. Shortly the report of guns was- heard. Either that evening, or the following morning, his dead body was found beside the road riddled with bullets. He was murdered by the Ku Klux. His remains were sent home, and on their arrival at New York a meeting of a few of his old comrades and friends was held, at which appropriate resolutions were passed. Although he escaped the rebel balls on more than one battle field, he at last fell a victim to rebel hate, which was as unrelenting for years after the war as it was during its progress. He believed that every man was privileged to reside where he pleased, and that, in the South as well as at the North, the right of free speech was not to be abridged or taken away. In seeking to maintain these principles of liberty he died. He was as much a martyr as though he had fallen in full armor, and in the thickest of the fray."
[http://books.google.com/books?id=Mx9CAAAAIAAJ&ots=kxgiYeVtCb&vq=dickinson&dq=%22john%20q.%20dickinson%22%20florida&pg=PA151#v=onepage&q&f=false]

Holbrook, a colonel in the 7th VT, likely knew his brother officer well, and the description of JQD’s ability as an officer and general observations about his personality suggest they derive from personal acquaintance. Certainly, the recollection of JQD’s education and amiability are consistent with the accounts of his friends. Holbrook does not state the source for his account of JQD's post-war career, but a clue is found in his introduction where he thanks the comrades who assisted him in his research. First on his list of acknowledgements is Col. David B. Peck, one of JQD’s closest friends and post-war business partner. Peck’s condolence letter to JQD’s parents suggests that the two men were frequent correspondents. For example, the details about the warning notes must have come from JQD’s letters to Peck.

Holbrook’s reference to the newspaper article is puzzling. JQD wrote sporadically for the Republican Tallahassee Sentinel about politics, usually under a pseudonym. The “article” is probably not an allusion to property auction notices, since I doubt JQD would report to his friends that his role in tax lien sales precipitated threats against him. Nor do we have records of the specific written warnings to JQD to depart to save his life that Holbrook mentions. JQD’s receiving such notes, however, makes sense: Purman reported receiving a warning signed “Ku Klux” as early as the April 1868 and Malachi Martin in Gadsden Co. received similar notices shortly after JQD’s murder.

The assertion that JQD refused to leave Florida in the face of threats, despite the urging of his friends, is entirely consistent with existing correspondence. The detail, however, that on the evening of his death JQD received a note stating he was wanted on important business is startling and confusing. None of the other accounts, including extensive grand jury testimony, mentions such a note. Since JQD was departing his office and was reportedly murdered close to his home, why was this note sent to his house? Could he have arrived home safely and been called out? Frank Bryan, a freedman from Greenwood, was supposedly involved in the murder plot. Could he have been a decoy, delivering such a note to draw Dickinson outside within range of the assassins? (BTW, according to NASA at http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phases1801.html the moon was nearly full that night). There is no eyewitness report to account for JQD’s whereabouts between the time he left his office and the discovery of his body, so these possibilities can be entertained, although they change nothing substantive.

And who would have conveyed to Peck the detail about the note on the night of the murder? Maybe A. J. Dickinson, when arriving in Marianna the month after his brother’s death, heard such a rumor and reported it to his family and Peck? Holbrook wrote his account about a decade after JQD’s death, not many years later, so the story of the note may have some basis in reality and not just stem from invented memory. This detail can only be speculated on.

If, for the sake of argument, we believe in the note and accept the implication that the assassination was connected to KKK threats, then John R. Ely is arguably removed as a prime suspect in the murder. The allegation, common in the Jackson Co. black community, that Ely was the murderer stemmed from Ely’s fury over impending auctions of his family’s property. These reports of notes and threats suggest a planned plot, not an impulsive slaying. In fact, Ely vigorously denied (in a remarkably contemptuous and condescending letter to the Tallahassee Floridian) having a hand in JQD’s death. Also, the illiteracy of the Ku Klux note that Malachi Martin received from Jackson County in early 1871 precludes that anyone as eloquent as Ely was involved in such threats. Again all this is idle speculation.

One additional interesting aspect of Holbrook’s account is its decidedly non-reconciliationist tone. In Race and Reunion, David Blight argued that the opposing sides in the war put aside their differences over the war’s causes and emancipation, to fuse a unified American identity (at the expense of African American rights). One aspect of this reconciliation, according to Blight, was northerners conceding to the southern narrative of a cruel and misguided Reconstruction. Holbrook will have none of this. Fifteen years after the close of the war, Holbrook still wrote of “rebels” not former Confederates brother soldiers. Holbrook saw “rebel hate” as “unrelenting” for years after the war as during the conflict itself. Rather remarkably Holbrook portrayed JQD as championing, and the “rebels” as opposing, free speech, the right to live wherever one chose, and the “principles of liberty.” And most stridently, Holbrook declared that JQD’s death in the service of Reconstruction made him just as much a martyr as though he had fallen in the war itself. Granted Holbrook was writing early in the Reconciliation process and this tone would have been more startling years later, but it is noteworthy that Holbrook defied the Reconstruction memory narrative that prevailed for nearly eighty years.

Marianna High - Class of 1860

2011-10-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve mentioned to a few readers that I’ve been compiling a database derived from the 1860 and 1870 Jackson County censuses. So far, I’ve included every adult white male as well as female property owners and some prominent African Americans. Along with each name, I’m tracking a number of categories: profession, property valuations, acreage owned, slaves owned, etc. My first goal is to get a sense of the impact of the War on this community which, I think, is in many ways representative of a cotton belt Southern county.

To show the war's impact on this small community, let’s examine one group: white 18 year olds males in 1860, or what I think of as Marianna H.S. Class of 1860. (I’m not including African Americans because only the two dozen or so free black or “mulatto” males living in Jackson Co. were listed by name in the 1860 census.) Now, of course, most of these young men didn’t attend the local academy or any school for that matter. The sad truth is that public education barely existed in the ante-bellum South and many whites, perhaps most from poor families, grew up illiterate, even unable to sign their own names. For the sake of trying to make sense of the War, let’s suspend our skepticism and imagine the all the young, white men the census taker recorded as 18 years old when he knocked on their parents’ doors in the summer of 1860 as a high school seniors about to go out to begin their lives, working on daddy’s farm, venturing out West or even for a select few, going to college. Marianna High “graduated” about 66 men that last peaceful spring before the cataclysm. I say “about” because I don’t entirely trust the census takers’ reliability, and, truthfully, many poor homesteaders weren’t completely sure about their own ages as evidenced by variations from census to census.

What became of these 66 boys? Well, for 12 (18%), I’m not sure what happened. Several of these 12 served in the Confederate Armies, so there is the possibility that some never returned. Of the remaining 54 young men, 17 (26% of the total; or 31% of the 54 verified names) died in the war. Like most Civil War soldiers, most died in hospitals from disease. Several, however, died in battles, including Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge. Of the remaining 37? Only 11 show up in the 1870 Jackson Co. census. Another boy died in 1869 and one more moved to Brazil with his family. The remaining 26 can be verified through ancestry or other databases or genealogy lists as suriving the war. Interestingly, as many as 4 young men served in the Union army.

So we know that at least 26% of the male 1860 18 year olds died in the Civil War. The percentage is probably higher as it is not a stretch to assume that an even greater rate of the unaccounted for died in the war. For example, if we guess that half of the unknown 12 died in the war, which is certainly plausible, that would bring the death rate up to an astounding 35%. Of course, I'm not even listing those survivors whose lives were marred by war wounds, physical or mental. This is just intended to give a sense of my preliminary findings from the database.

Pre-judging a book by its cover

2011-10-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

The Jackson County War book won't be out for a few more months, but here's the cover. I worked on the concept with Mira who designed the image. Isn't she a talented artist? Univ. of Alabama pretty much recreated her work. This is one situation where I hope the book proves worthy of its cover.

Jews of Jackson County: Part VII - Simon Straus's War

2011-10-05T14:27:00.000-07:00

During the taking of the 1860 census in the summer of 1860, the only Jewish residents established in Jackson Co. were the Fleishman family. Five young German-born men of likely Jewish backgrounds also lived in the county, but these salesmen and merchants were probably peddlers temporarily settling in Marianna which served as a base for their routes into the countryside. Consistent with their peripatetic lives most of these men had moved on from the Panhandle by the time war broke out in the spring of 1861. Samuel Fleishman was in his early forties at the war’s beginning and not required to serve in the military. When the age for compulsory service was extended in 1863 to 45 which included Fleishman’s age, he left for New York to work with his in-laws. Prussian native Aaron Davis joined the Company E of the 5th Florida Cavalry Regiment late in the war when he was 22 years old but he soon departed and was reported in his service file as deserting in Dec. 1864. Simon Straus, listed in the 1860 census as a 23 year old German-born watchmaker also stayed in the Jackson County area but had a very different war-time experience.

Described as having a “fresh complexion” with auburn hair and grey eyes, Simon stood five foot five and a half inches. He joined Capt. Lawrence Attaway’s Company F of the 6th Florida Regiment at the Apalachicola Arsenal on May 21, 1862 (Attaway, a Jackson County native, would be dead of illness within two months at Columbus Georgia – his widow Catherine operated Marianna’s hotel where Maggie McClellan was murdered in 1869). The 6th Florida operated in the Tennessee theater and in December Straus was detailed to the Knoxville, TN police force. By May 1863, Straus returned to his unit, but in July was listed as sick in an Atlanta hospital. Unlike many of his comrades, Straus did not succumb to illness and he returned to police and jail guard duty in Knoxville in August. Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner, however, shortly abandoned Knoxville which was taken in September by Union troops under General Ambrose Burnside. Straus’s war ended shortly afterwards when he was wounded and captured on Nov. 25, 1863 during the battle at Missionary Ridge near Chattanooga.

Upon being taken prisoner by Union forces, Straus was initially placed in a military hospital at Chattanooga. In early January he was dispatched to the military prison at Louisville KY, but a few days later was forwarded to the prison at Rock Island, Illinois where he arrived on January 17, 1864 and where he spent the rest of the war. At some point during his captivity, Straus contemplated taking an oath of allegiance to the Union as a route to get out of prison. His service file notes that his home was in the North and that he was the “only support of [his] widowed mother.” (I particularly like Straus getting his mother involved!). But for whatever reason, Straus remained in prison at Rock Island and was released only after taking the oath of allegiance after the close of the war on May 9, 1865. Straus, then 28 years old, apparently remained in the North and took up residence in Chicago.

New Reconstruction Era Blog

2011-09-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

I recently asked if there were any other blogs primarily oriented toward Reconstruction. In fact there is an excellent new blog from Dr. Al Hester focusing on the Athens, Georgia area during Reconstruction, found at http://www.alhesterauthor.com/blog.html . In addition to his blog, Al's website is both aesthetically appealing (as opposed to this blog's lame google "blogger" template) and interesting to explore. I look forward to checking back in with Al's posts and encourage others to do so.

I believe that as the sesquicentennial progresses, more people will realize that the Civil War's issues weren't neatly wrapped up at Appomattox and will start asking questions, exploring, and inevitably turn toward Reconstruction. The fact is that almost no Americans, even college history majors, have more than the slightest knowledge about Reconstruction. The field desperately needs narrative type works that are accessible to the educated, history audience - the kind of person who will pick up books by Goodwin or McCullough. There isn't yet a popularly accessible grand narrative for the Reconstruction Era similar to the works of Bruce Catton or Shelby Foote. The handful of excellent, modern (i.e., post-Dunning) histories (Foner's Reconstruction, of course, is the unparalleled, giant and may have intimidated other scholars into looking for other fields) are scholarly and thematically organized, and will not be read by the general, non-academic reader with an interest in history - unless assigned in class. The major exception I can think of is probably Nicholas Lemann's Redemption , which, however, deals only with Mississippi and Louisiana and, considering the subsequent absence of Reconstruction books being issued by major publishers, may not have sold that well and definitely did not start a trend. A lot of the great, popular narrative Civil War work in recent years has focused on specific battle or campaign studies (there are a lot of superb examples such as Stephen Sears and our own Dale Cox). Supplementing good, scholarly, state Reconstruction survey books (e.g., Cimbala, Shofner), I expect to start seeing accessible work focused on the experiences of communities, similar to the "battle books." Lane and Keith's separate "Colfax Massacre" books are examples. Al Hester's Enduring Legacy - I admit I haven't read his book yet - points in the same direction as does The Jackson County War. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of Southern communities with dramatic and fascinating experiences during the Reconstruction years that are untold. I hope, and expect, that other researchers will be writing and publishing those stories soon.

770 Miles From Home: Jackson County men at Gettysburg

2011-08-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

Googlemaps show that a straight line from Marianna to Gettysburg is 770 miles. Surprisingly, Gettysburg is slightly further than even Chambersburg, making Seminary Ridge the greatest distance Marianna men in the 2nd and 8th Florida regiments traveled from home during the War. After spending the first day marching east along the Chambersburg Pike, the Florida brigade was not involved in that day's action. They were deployed to an area along Seminary Ridge around the Spangler farm.

Looking north along Seminary Ridge from the Spangler farmhouse where the Florida brigade was initially positioned.

The view east toward Cemetery Ridge from the fields just north of the Spangler Farmhouse. The Florida Brigade more or less traveled this route toward objectives on the right portion of this image (toward the Pennsylvania monument's whose white dome if just visible on the right).

View from the Emmitsburg road toward Cemetery Ridge where the Florida Brigade drove back the 1st & 11th MA and 26 PA regiments on the 2nd Day. In the middle, stretching to the right, are the trees of the Codori Thicket shading Plum Run, where the Floridians were repulsed on the 3rd Day

View from Cemetery Ridge toward the Codori Thicket where Vermont troops drove back the Floridians .

View from Cemetery Ridge toward Seminary Ridge

Looking south west from Cemetery Ridge toward the Codori Thicket in the direction of the route taken by the 14th and 16th VT in driving into the Floridians' left.

View across fields from swale east of Seminary Ridge with the Codori farmhouse's cupolas barely visible. The Floridians approached Cemetery Ridge by moving to the right (south) of the Corodi farmhouse on both the 2nd and 3rd day.

View from Seminary Ridge toward Cemetery Ridge

Looking back toward the launching point near at Seminary Ridge around the Spangler Farm.

I was intending to walk the route of both days' advances, but rapidly approaching thunder clouds dissuaded me from risking lighting and becoming the last casualty of Pickett's charge. Hopefully I'll have better weather (and better maps) for the next visit to complete this exploration.

More Letterheads and Stationery

2011-08-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

More Letterheads and Stationery

2011-08-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

[Coker invoice courtesy of Joe Rubinfine]

Old Jackson County Stationery and Letterheads...

2011-08-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

From the Florida Confederate Pension Files. I'll be adding more as I find these.

Jews of Jackson County: Part VI (the last) - Julius Solomon and the Jacoby Family

2011-07-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

      In addition to the Fleishman, Brash and Edrehi families, two more Jewish families settled in Jackson County during the 19th century. Julius Solomon, German born, first appears in the 1880 listed as a 23 year old retailer living with a brother G. Solomon, about five years younger, next door to James P. Coker, of all people. Five years later, Julius is living alone. At the same time, at least two more Solomon families appear in Jackson County, both headed by men claiming German born fathers, although with American born mothers and spouses. There is no indication that these Solomon families are Jewish. In fact, C. Davis Turner does not mention any Solomons, including Julius, in his chronology of the panhandle Jewish presence. [“JG Solomon,” a farmer, also lived with a German-born sister, Molly. Molly and JG’s American-born widow, Eva, still lived in Jackson County in the same household twenty year later with Eva’s four children.] Shofner mentions Julius Solomon as operating a dry goods store in Marianna in the 1880s. Evidence of Solomon’s connection with Marianna’s Jews, admittedly scanty, includes a newspaper item that finds him traveling with Henry Brash to Columbus, Georgia [Columbus Daily Enquirer, Jan. 28, 1880]. Julius left Marianna around the turn of the century after about twenty years in the community. He was a well-known and affable traveling salesman, known throughout the Panhandle and gained a reputation as a political pundit.

       The last of Jackson County’s 19th century Jewish families, were the Jacoby’s. Mitch Jacoby (b. 1855), his wife Bertha (b. 1862), both born in America of German born fathers, and daughter Liliian (b. 1892) arrived in Jackson County in the mid-1890s. Jacoby operated a tavern, sold liquor in various places in the county, and advertised widely in the newspapers with good-humored ads. His congeniality is hinted at in the following passage: “Mr Mitch Jacoby of Marianna was a pleasant caller at our office last Friday, he was full of politics and good natured as always ” [Chipley Banner April 15, 1900]. About 1902, Jacoby was elected as a Jackson County representative to the state legislature where he served one term. The Jacoby family, however, did not stay long in Jackson County, moving to Pensacola around 1905, where he was described as a “well known and popular citizen.” Mitch died in 1913 and Bertha in 1927. Upon Mitch Jacoby’s death a Pensacola newspaper recalled that “his jovial and kindly nature caused him to be liked by everyone with whom he was acquainted. He was popular with the masses and took a great interest in politics, working in every campaign for the election of his friends and never giving up hope until the last ballot was counted.” [Pensacola Journal , Aug. 13, 1913 from http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/j/a/c/Henry-Jacoby/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0041.html ].

      The departure of Mitch, Bertha and Lillian Jacoby ended the continuous presence of Jewish families in Jackson County that began nearly fifty years earlier when Samuel Fleishman brought his bride, Sophia, to Marianna. The only long-time Jewish residents remaining in Jackson County after 1905 were widower Solomon Brash and Estelle (Edrehi) Alderman, who had embraced Christianity by this time. According to C. Davis Turner, no more Jewish families took root into Jackson County until the 1920s. This posting also ends this examination of the story of the nineteenth century Jewish community in Jackson County, Florida.

Jews of Jackson County: Part V: The Brash Family

2011-07-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in the previous post, the 1870 census listed teenage David Edrehi living with a young man, Benjamin Brash. Benjamin Brash does not appear in the census a decade later, but the Brash family was well established in the Marianna before 1880 (the Florida Memory website of the Florida State Archives cites the Project Mosaic to state that the Brash family arrived in Jackson County in 1874). Solomon Brash, born in Germany in 1828 was married to Henrietta, born about 1833, also in Germany or, more specifically, Prussia. The 1880 census shows Solomon and Henrietta living with two sons, Henry, born 1857 (Florida Memory), and James born about 1860, both in Prussia. There was possibly a third son, Isaac, who died in 1880 at the age 20, and is buried in Bainbridge, GA (unless “James” is an Anglicization of mistaken transcription of “Isaac” and, in fact, Isaac and James are the same person).

To make matters more confusing, C. Davis Turner, writing in the 1940s recalled that Solomon Brash had two sons that lived with him in Marianna: Henry and Mannie (or Marnie). Turner wrote that this Mannie moved to Jacksonville, but I can’t find any other record of this Mannie Brash. There was also a Brash daughter not mentioned by Turner or listed in the census, Bertha, who married Isadore Kwilecki of Bainbridge, GA in Feb. 1880. The ceremony was conducted at the Brash family home by P. Dzialynski. [Columbus Enquirer, 2/26/80]. This must have been Philip Dzialynski, who is profiled in Canter Brown’s article “Philip and Morris Dzialynski: Jewish Contributions to the Rebuilding of the South,” American Jewish Archives 1992). C. Davis Turner wrote in his Temple Beth El notes that a wedding held at the Marianna Air Field during World War II was the first Jewish wedding ever conducted in Marianna, but the Kwilecki-Brash ceremony was certainly the first, and for more than sixty years, the only Jewish wedding held in Jackson County.

Solomon Brash was a dry goods merchant , operating the firm of “S. Brash and Son.” In addition, H. Robert, a young man described as a nephew to Solomon Brash, also born in Prussia, worked as Brash’s clerk and lived with the family in 1885 (Turner also wrote that Brash had a second young Jewish clerk named Newmark). Solomon’s son Henry (not to be confused with a cousin also named Henry Brash who was a Confederate veteran and established merchant in Apalachicola, where the “Henry Brash house” stands to this day – Robert Rosen mixes up the two men in his excellent Jewish Confederates) clearly integrated into his new community with great speed and success. Marianna elected Brash mayor three times in the 1880s – Rachel Heimovics has written that Brash was the first Jew elected major Florida. I have not confirmed the dates of Brash’s terms. If anyone in Marianna would check out the courthouse records, I would be grateful.

Henry married Sarah Zellnicker of Mobile in November 1887. The couple moved to Tampa in 1894 where, according to Rachel Heimovics “they opened a haberdashery, raised five children, and helped found a congregation.” Henry and Sarah Brash were pillars of the Tampa community for decades where Sarah was deeply involved in the United Jewish Relief Society and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (a juxtaposition you don't see every day). Back in Marianna, Henrietta Brash died in 1903 and her husband Solomon followed in 1914. It appears that they continued to live in Marianna until their deaths, but I have not been able to confirm this. Both were buried in Bainbridge, bringing to a close the forty year connection of the Brash family with Jackson County.

The Jews of Jackson County, Part IV: The Edrehi Family

2011-06-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

In the 1870 Jackson County census, we find the first mention of the Edrehi and Brash families. The Edrehi’s had the longest residency in Jackson County of any of the 19th century Jewish families. Some descendants, far removed from their ancestral heritage, and perhaps not aware of their Jewish origins, live in the region today. The Edrehi name is usually comically and almost unrecognizably misspelled in various transcriptions and records. Joseph Edrehi, the patriarch, of the Jackson County Edrehi family, was born in 1826 in Hamburg, Germany. The name “Edrehi,” and Joseph’s mother’s name, “Barzilay,” are traditionally Sephardic names: Joseph’s family was probably part of the Portuguese Jewish community which had migrated to Hamburg starting in the early 1600s (likely via Holland) where it continued to maintain a separate identity from Ashkenazic Jews (there is great Wikipedia article about the nearly 350 year history of Hamburg’s Portuguese Jews: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Jewish_community_in_Hamburg) . [Note: Sephardic literally means Spain and refers to descendants of Jews who lived in the Iberian peninsula prior to the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1498].

Joseph and his wife, Betty, moved to London where they gave birth to two children: Estelle, born in March 1854 (according to the 1890 census) and David, born in 1857. The next record of the Edrehi family locates them in Marianna in the 1870 census. We have no explanation for their departure from London and choice of Jackson County. C. Davis Turner’s chronicle of Temple Emanu-El claims that the Edrehi’s came from Jacksonville and that Joseph purchased a plantation in Jackson County. In any event, the murder of Samuel Fleishman and the subsequent flight of the Fleishman family in late 1869 did not stymie the Edrehi’s from settling in Jackson County. Joseph is listed in the 1870 census as a merchant and, for some reason, his son David is listed as living separately, but nearby, with Benjamin Brash, a 27 year old Jewish merchant born in Prussia. Both households were neighbors of Benjamin G. Alderman’s family.

In the 1880 census, Joseph is not listed – perhaps he was working elsewhere at the time of the census taking? David is listed as a “retailer/general merchant” living on his own (his age is in the transcription is mistakenly 35, when he is actually about 23). Estelle is listed as living with her husband, “the boy next door,” Benjamin F. Alderman (the rootsweb census transcription mistakenly calls them “Anderson), the son of prominent Marianna merchant, Benjamin G. Alderman. In the 1880 census, Benjamin F. and Estelle are listed with two children, a girl of 3 Florie or Flora (b. 1877 in the 1890 census) and a baby boy, Frank . Presumably Benjamin and Estelle married about 1876 when she was 22. Benjamin is listed as 9 years older. Betty Edrehi, then in her mid-50s, is listed as living with the young family. By 1885, the Alderman family had grown to include two more young girls: Maggie (b. 1882) and Mable (b. 1884) and a fourth daughter, Lucille was born in 1894. By 1885, Bettie is listed as living once again with her husband Joseph. Strangely, Joseph lists his parents’ birth places in the 1885 census as Spain and Holland. This shows his awareness of his Sephardic heritage but confusion about the dates since the Sephardim left Iberia for Holland around the time of the expulsions, not in the 18th century. Joseph died in Marianna in 1886 at the age of 60 and is buried at Jewish section of the Oak Hill cemetery in Bainbridge, GA cemetery (I haven’t seen any records of any Jewish burials in Marianna).

David Edrehi remained in Marianna and in March 1896, at the age of 39, married 21 year old Ida Levy of Pensacola . The ceremony was conducted by Rabbi Rosenberg at the Pensacola YMCA, being used temporarily by Congregation Beth El after their temple burned down. [American Israelite, March 19, 1896]. Ida Levy Edrehi was apparently very close with her sisters in Pensacola and the American Israelite newspaper records many visits exchanged between sisters Hannah Levy and Mrs. S. Friedman of Pensacola and Mrs. Edrehi of Marianna in the late 1890s. Flora Alderman, who was about the same age as her aunt and her sisters, also shared in some of these visits

Shortly after 1900, perhaps timed with the birth of their son, J. (Joseph after the grandfather?) Montrose, David Edrehi left Marianna after thirty years residence and moved his family to Pensacola. He built a successful insurance firm and is very often mentioned in the Pensacola newspapers.

Joseph’s widow, Betty (or Bettie) lived until 1903 and is buried in Pensacola’s Temple Beth-El cemetery. She is also listed as dying in Pensacola which suggests that she eventually left Estelle’s home and moved in with her son David’s family. The cemetery website (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~flwfgs/escambiacountyfl/cemeteries/templebeth-el.htm ) lists her as 86, but earlier records suggest she couldn’t have been more than 80. She is also listed as born in Bavaria which is strange since other records indicate Hamburg, but may result from the confusion of other Panhandle Jews who were mostly from Bavaria themselves ( did they assume that because she was German-Jewish in origin she was also from Bavaria?).

Estelle Alderman died in 1921 and is buried in Marianna’s St. Luke’s Episcopal cemetery where her inscription reads, interestingly, “in christ I glory.” I did not track down the fate of her five children.

David died in 1930 and Ida died in 1927. They had only one child that I am aware of: J. Montrose Edrehi, born in 1900, a Pensacola attorney who passed away in 1964. David, Ida and J. Montrose are buried with Bettie in the Edrehi plot at Beth El, together with Jeannette Nathan Edrehi, presumably J. Montrose's wife. Edrehi family Yahrzeits (the Hebrew calendar anniversary of death) are still remembered at Pensacola's Temple Beth El.

Trivia: There is an Edrehi Ave. that intersects with Montrose Dr. in Niceville, FL!

Hamilton article now available for free viewing and download

2011-06-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

The Florida Historical Quarterly is uploading issues for free viewing and download five years after publication. Here's a link to my Spring 2006 article "'More Courage Than Discretion': Charles M. Hamilton in Reconstruction-Era Florida."
http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?application=DIGITOOL-3&owner=resourcediscovery&custom_att_2=simple_viewer&pid=3170514

The Jews of Jackson County Part III: the War and Reconstruction

2011-06-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

The fate of the Jackson and Gadsden County Fleishmans is recounted in detail in my article "Samuel Fleishman: Tragedy in Reconstruction –Era Florida," Southern Jewish History 8 (2005), pp. 32-75. In brief, Samuel Fleishman left Jackson County in the middle of the war after the Confederate army draft was extended to cover men up to the age of 45. He made his way to New York where he worked with his in-laws, the Altmans. Samuel returned to his family after the war and established the Altman Bros. store in Marianna. During the Reconstruction era, Fleishman affiliated with the Republicans and was murdered at the height of Jackson County violence in October 1869. Almost immediately after Samuel’s murder, his widow Sophia and their six children departed for New York City where they were looked after by Sophia’s increasingly successful brother, Benjamin – later famous at department store magnate “B. Altman.” The Marianna store was immediately closed, although Altman continued to maintain some property interests in Jackson County for a couple of decades.

Philip Fleishman, who was regularly moving between Gadsden and Jackson, left Florida for New York City around the same time as Sophia. Ferdinand, who together with Philip had taken over Samuel’s store in Quincy, too met a sad fate. He left Florida during the war, but ended up committing suicide in Cincinnati. His widow, Fannie Davis, married Morris Warendolff, a native of Prussia who also lived in Gadsden County. The couple and their children too left for New York. Both Benjamin and Simon served in the 6 FL Inf. Simon was captured at Missionary Ridge, while Benjamin was wounded and captured at Chickamauga. After the war, Benjamin continued to have business interests in Jackson County but died in the mid-1870s. Simon was the only Fleishman male left in Florida by the late 1870s. He was a well-noted and respected businessman in Quincy, living there into the twentieth century.

The Fleishmans were the only Jewish family to settle in Jackson County from the time of Sophia’s arrival in the mid-1850s until close to their departure in late 1869. In addition to the Fleishman men of Gadsden County, a few other Jews had business interests in Marianna, including “B. Cohn” and “D. Cohn” who appear in the 1867 tax rolls only. In the late 1860s, however, maybe even as late as the eve of census taking in the summer of 1870, the next generation of Jackson County Jews had started to arrive.

Part II: The Jews of Jackson County - the 1850s

2011-05-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

During the 1850s, five, single, young adult men with the last name of Fleishman, all with the occupation of merchant or peddler, settled in Jackson County. Samuel, Philip, Benjamin, Ferdinand and Simon, all immigrants from Bavaria, were presumably brothers and cousins. Samuel, the eldest of this group, recognized opportunity across the river and purchased property in Jackson County by 1853. Small town merchants made frequent trips back and forth to New York to resupply their stock and Samuel returned from one of these excursions with a bride. Just as Samuel Fleishman is the first known Jew to take up residence in Jackson County, Sophia Altman was certainly the first Jewish woman to live there. Sophia was about ten years younger than Samuel and born in the United States, but her background was similar as she was the daughter of German-Jewish immigrants who operated a dry goods store in New York City with her two brothers, Benjamin and Morris. Benjamin Altman would later play an important role in the lives of the Fleishman family as well as in American merchandizing history.

In the years before the war, the Fleishmans were busy. In addition to the Marianna property, Samuel purchased two acres to set up a store in Campbellton. He also operated a seasonal tavern in St. Andrews. The couple enjoyed the birth of three sons, William in 1857, Benjamin in 1859 and Albert in 1861. Brother Philip seems to have had an active presence in their lives and Benjamin Fleishman from Quincy developed some business interests in Jackson County. By 1860, in addition to the Fleishmans, or perhaps because of their presence and the booming economy, several young Jewish men moved into Jackson County. The census lists Samuel Hofheimer, a 25 years old salesman from Bavaria, and Edward Oppenheimer, 23 years old from Hesse, as living together. Another two young men, A. Barnett, a 27 year old merchant, and Aaron Davis, 18, both Prussians, may also have been Jews. Finally there was Simon Straus, a 23 year old watchmaker from Germany (Simon lived with an older man, Moses Morce, a 44 year old tanner born in France). Unlike the Fleishmans, however, none of these other men established a lasting presence in Jackson County.

The Story of the Jews of Jackson County, Florida - Part I: Origins

2011-05-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

This account of the history of the Jewish community in Jackson County, Florida is a work in progress. Suggestions and input are encouraged and information will be updated or corrected as necessary.

Part I: Origins

Ante-bellum Florida’s Jewish population was miniscule. At the time Florida achieved statehood in 1845, about fifty Jews lived within its boundaries, spread across the northern tier. The most prominent Jew in territorial Florida was Moses Levy, a land developer and plantation owner, even something of an abolitionist sympathizer, who tried to create a refuge for persecuted European Jewry in Florida. [For the definitive account of Levy's fascinating life, refer to Chris Monaco's Moses Levy of Florida, 2005.]. While Levy was ritually observant, his sons abandoned the faith of their father, converting to Christianity. One son, David, appended “Yulee” to his last name, derived from Moses Levy's father's name. This David L. Yulee was elected one of Florida’s initial senators upon statehood in 1845, making him the first U.S. Senator of Jewish descent. Yulee remained a fixture in Florida politics for decades.

Moses Levy was Sephardic, born in Morocco, but the small wave of Jews that migrated to Florida in the years between statehood and the Civil war, maybe two hundred in total, were mostly of German origin. These newcomers from Bavaria, the Rhineland and Alsace sought escape from oppressive government policies toward Jews. By the late 1840s, a pattern was established: young men, in their early twenties, or even late teens, came to New York where they obtained merchandise small enough to carry on their backs, and then set out to peddle their wares across the American countryside. Many found welcome in the South where farmers appreciated their useful merchandize and the novelty of their appearance to break the monotony of rural life. Once a peddler built up enough capital, he typically sought to establish a store in some underserved community with stock replenished on trips back and forth to New York.

By 1850, Marianna still had no permanent Jewish presence. But in nearby Quincy about five young German-Jewish men resided, or at least rested between peddling excursions. One of these men, Samuel Fleishman, was born in Bavaria and had arrived in New York in late 1845. It is not known why he chose Quincy, but Samuel appears there in the 1850 census with another, younger man, Philip Fleishman, presumably a brother. Unlike David and Jacob Strauss and Solomon Levi, all listed as peddlers in the Gadsden County census, the Fleishmans had already risen by 1850 from to the status of merchants. By 1853, Fleishman had purchased property in Marianna.

Next - Part II: Jackson County's first Jewish family

Edwin W. Mooring is tried for murder and walks...and then runs!

2011-04-15T23:02:00.000-07:00

Great excitement built in Jackson County in anticipation of the trial of E. W. Mooring for murdering his brother-in-law, young Charley Nickels. Mooring’s wife and children returned from Germany and an imposing defense team was assembled on his behalf, including former state’s attorney and county judge William H. Milton and James F. McClellan, a frequent litigator before Florida’s state supreme court and a future circuit court judge. The phalanx of lawyers including T. W. Bernard of Tallahasee and Capt. W. Young of Vicksburg, Miss. The state, however, convened its own star-powered attorneys to prosecute the case, including former congressman and state supreme court justice George S. Hawkins, former circuit court judge Allen H. Bush and a Mr. McKenzie.

After some trouble picking the jury, the trial commenced in early December 1874. After three weeks, the defense strategy first debated by newspapers months earlier proved correct when the jury, comprised of six whites and six blacks, delivered a verdict of not guilty for reason of insanity “at the time of the homicide was perpetrated.”

According to the report carried in the Columbus Enquirer, Florida law required that such a verdict mandated the defendant’s commitment to an asylum, to jail, or release on bond. After the verdict was read Saturday, Mooring was remanded to confinement until sentencing on Monday. That Saturday night, however, the bailiff reported that Mooring was liberated by armed friends and got in a waiting buggy to drive away. On Monday, Mooring was identified in Alabama, but refused to return and remained at large. The newspaper’s editor repeated the report of a Jackson County correspondent that the court had not held night sessions “on account of a physician’s certificate” that Mooring “was in exceedingly delicate health” The editor remarked with a wink that Mooring’s health ‘must have been restored very speedily.” In the ensuing months Mooring continued to move about freely and he was seen visiting Columba, Georgia several times. [CE: 12/25/74; 1/10/74]

140 Years Ago: John Quincy Dickinson is assassinated

2011-04-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

On the evening of April 3, 1871, at about 9 P.M., John Quincy Dickinson was shot down by a concealed gunman lying in wait outside Dickinson's Marianna home. Dickinson is one of the central figures of "The Jackson County War" story. A former Captain in the 7th Vermont Infantry, Freedmen's Bureau agent and clerk of court for Jackson County. Dickinson was thirty four years old. Dickinson was hit on his right side by thirteen or fourteen buckshot, then as Dickinson lay on the ground, the assassin approached and shot him through the heart, ending the life of this brave and devoted public servant. Dale Cox hIs posted a tribute on has Jackson County history blog at http://twoegg.blogspot.com/2011/04/140-years-ago-today-assassination-of.html

JOHN QUINCY DICKINSON (NOV. 25 1836 - APRIL 3, 1871)

140 Years Ago: John Quincy Dickinson's last week alive

2011-03-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

Through the 1870 election, Jackson County African Americans and their few white Republican allies had faced political violence with surprising resiliency. In early 1871, however, the weight of the relentless pressure began to show. Jackson County’s Regulators, undeterred, even spurred by the disappointment in the 1870 election, were plotting even more audacious crimes. Rumors of their plots reached alleged targets in neighboring Gadsden County and even the governor’s office.

White Republicans began falling out of the ranks. John Barfield resigned his seat in the state assembly shortly after it convened in January 1871. Sheriff Thomas West, beaten on a Marianna street in early February "by a crowd of scoundrels," abandoned his post and Jackson County. In March, James W. Yearty, a state assemblyman from adjacent Calhoun County was murdered, allegedly by outlaw Luke Lott. Yearty's offense was that he "acted with the Republicans.”

John Quincy Dickinson, the highest Republican county official, was depressed by these events, believing his assassination was inevitable. He confessed his despondency to his friends, who received each communication from Dickinson as though it might be his last. Regulators’ defiance and abuse of freedmen was brazen. “Everyone seems inclined to take advantage of the absence" of Sheriff West, Dickinson wrote, and "[i]t just seems as if the devil had possessed the whole community." Dickinson’s pessimism in late March was well placed. He was fated to join the victims soon enough.

Mooring establishes a defense: temporary insanity

2011-03-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

[Sources: Columbus Daily Enquirer, 7/31/74, 8/1/74, 8/2/74, 8/4/74, 8/21/74, 9/2/74, ; Atlanta Daily Herald 8/9/74]

How could a successful businessman, known for his refinement and poetic sensitivity, coldly shoot down his brother-in-law without provocation? To answer this question, two newspapers pondered Mooring’s state of mind. Tellingly, these Democratic journals ignored Mooring’s reputation for violent outbursts, probably because his targets had typically been Republicans and African Americans. Instead, scrutiny focused immediately on convenient explanations: temporary insanity and heavy drinking.

As news of the murder spread, some Mooring ally began laying the groundwork for an insanity defense. The Columbus (GA) Enquirer learned from “a gentleman living in Florida” that Mooring had previously been “put into an insane asylum in North Carolina, but becoming better was released.” Re-enforcing the supposition that Mooring had temporarily lost his senses, at least two anecdotes circulated describing Mooring’s utter shock when informed he had killed Charley Nickels. The Enquirer provides a graphic depiction of the pathetic scene: “after his arrest a friend approached Mooring, who was wrapped in a sheet and had a wet towel on his head, and asked him why he had killed Charles Nickels. Mooring burst out in a laugh, and regarded the question as absurd. He pretended to believe (or really did so) that he knew nothing of such an act, and had not done it. He asked, “What should I kill Charley Nickels for?” The Courier presented the scene quite differently: “When told by a lady friend who was visiting him of the crime he had committed, he fainted and fell from his chair.” Presumably one story and not both are accurate: it would be remarkable were Mooring stunned when hearing on two separate occasions that he had slain his wife’s young brother. Whatever Mooring’s reaction, fainting or incredulity, the examining justices of the peace found Mooring “to be in a condition neither mentally nor physically able to undergo an investigation.”

The Enquirer, in fact, initially voiced some skepticism about Mooring's purported insanity when employing the word “pretend.” In its first reports of the murder, the Enquirer’s editor considered whether Mooring “affected insanity or had really lost his mind.” In these early reports, the Enquirer mentioned Mooring alleged drinking in the days before the murder. The Courier, presumably more reliable, did not mention intoxication and the Enquirer quickly dropped that theory. Is this because drunkenness might have prevented pleading insanity as a defense?

Mooring’s conduct in while in custody began to sway the doubters. He did not partake of food for several days, and became “the picture of emaciation and despair.” He was “so prostrated from extreme nervous excitability and want of food, (which he rejects) that he has been given quarters in a room at the jail under guard, and fears are entertained of his recovery.” While the implication is left that Mooring was horrified at his deed, this is not explicitly stated and there is left room to surmise his distress might actually be over his forthcoming trial and punishment. In any event, the Enquirer shortly was convinced to drop its doubt about Mooring’s insanity. The editor reported receiving a letter from “a gentleman of undoubted veracity who knew Mooring, and he has solved the inexplicable problem by giving us evidence most conclusive of the insanity of Mooring, and this misfortune has tainted his family and comes to him as an inheritance.”

Next: the trial.

Mooring establishes a defense: temporary insanity

2011-03-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

As news of the murder spread, some Mooring ally began laying the groundwork for an insanity defense. The Columbus (GA) Enquirer learned from “a gentleman living in Florida” that Mooring had previously been “put into an insane asylum in North Carolina, but becoming better was released.” Re-enforcing the supposition that Mooring had temporarily lost his senses, at least two anecdotes circulated describing Mooring’s utter shock when informed he had killed Charley Nichols. The Enquirer provides a graphic depiction of the pathetic scene: “after his arrest a friend approached Mooring, who was wrapped in a sheet and had a wet towel on his head, and asked him why he had killed Charles Nickols. Mooring burst out in a laugh, and regarded the question as absurd. He pretended to believe (or really did so) that he knew nothing of such an act, and had not done it. He asked, “What should I kill Charley Nickols for?” The Courier presented the scene quite differently: “When told by a lady friend who was visiting him of the crime he had committed, he fainted and fell from his chair.” Presumably one story and not both are accurate: it would be remarkable were Mooring stunned when hearing on two separate occasions that he had slain his wife’s young brother. Whatever Mooring’s reaction, fainting or incredulity, the examining justices of the peace found Mooring “to be in a condition neither mentally nor physically able to undergo an investigation.”

Next: the trial.

[Sources: Columbus Daily Enquirer, 7/31/74, 8/1/74, 8/2/74, 8/4/74, 8/21/74, 9/2/74, ; Atlanta Daily Herald 8/9/74]

Edwin W. Mooring murders his brother-in-law, Charley Nickels, in cold blood

2011-03-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 1874, the contradictions of Edwin W. Mooring, a man of great refinement subject to bouts of uncontrollable fury, are shown most dramatically. Mooring, now about 45 years old, could compose and publish a lovely, pastoral poem, but was also capable of the most outrageous violence. We’ll let the Marianna Courier tell the story of Edwin W. Mooring’s heinous conduct on July 24, 1874: “On Saturday last, about 5 o’clock P.M., while our young townsman and merchant Charles Nickels was attending the wants of one of his customers, and no doubt little expecting his time of earth so near its close, Mr. E. W. Mooring, formerly of this place but now of New York City, and brother-in-law of Mr. Nickels entered the rear door of the store fronting on the street north of the main business street, armed with a double barrel gun, got within a few feet of Mr. N., and fired, three shots striking him, one passing obliquely through the bowels from which he died in about six hours.” [Marianna Courier in Atlanta Sunday Herald, Aug. 9, 1874]

The Columbus Enquirer, which took great interest in the matter, adds further details, informing us that Mooring then set out kill his father-in-law, William Nickels, “but could not find him as he was behind a door in the store.” According to the Enquirer, “Mooring then proceeded to Mr. Nickols’ [sic] house, where his own sister was spending a vacation, and cursed and abused her terribly, and threatened to kill her.” [Columbus Enquirer, July 31, Aug. 1, 1874].

Mooring was then arrested by the sheriff (probably young James A. Finlayson at this point). There is no indication that he resisted in any way.

Who was the victim, Charles Nickels? Nickels was about twenty three at the time Mooring killed him. As an adolescent, Charley had already made a name for himself, participating in the Battle of Marianna where he was seized by the federal troops and then released in Vernon during the column's withdrawal to Pensacola. [Dale Cox, Battle of Marianna, 127]. At the time of his death, Nickels was following in his father's footsteps in entering into the mercantile trade. According to the Courier, he had been in business for nearly two years "and having been an active and energetic young man acquired a good trade, continually increasing and was making rapid strides to being the first merchant of our town." [Atlanta Sunday Herald, Aug. 9, 1874].

Next, we'll review the reaction to the murder, including Mooring's defense.

Edwin W. Mooring, poet

2011-03-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

Edwin W. Mooring wrote the following poem for the Columbus (Georgia) Daily Enquirer-Sun, published on July 4, 1874. [From the Digital Library of Georgia: http://enquirer.galileo.usg.edu/enquirer/about].

July would turn out to be a very fateful month for Mr. Mooring.

E. W. Mooring continued: troubles with the in-laws

2011-03-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

In 1852, Mooring, about 24 years old, married his 19 year old first cousin, Willie Ann Nickels (their mothers were sisters with the last name of Lawrence). According to J. Randall Stanley, the couple eloped. Later accounts report that Wille Ann's family had opposed the marriage, leading to a "feud..among the opposing elements." Later, the families reconciled "after a fashion" to the extent that the 1860 Census lists the Moorings and their children living in the Nickels household. Willie Ann’s father, William Nickels Jr., was born about 1800 into a wealthy mercantile family in Maine, but had left for North Carolina for his health, marrying there and settling in Marianna in the 1830s. Nickels became a prosperous merchant and tavern keeper - the Nickels family ranked 14th in wealth among Jackson County families in the 1860 census.

Nickels operated a store in Marianna with his partner, Thomas Gautier (whose children make an appearance throwing rocks in T. Thomas Fortune’s After War Times). Mooring had a credit account at his father-in-law's store where he purchased provisions. Nickels also informally served as Mooring’s agent, presumably taking care of his daughter’s finances when Mooring was traveling. When Mooring was seized by the Union column after the Battle of Marianna in late 1864 and imprisoned in Elmira, Nickels again took control of Mooring’s finances on behalf of Willie Ann. Mooring later claimed he had left a large sum of money, perhaps $30,000, in Nickels’ control.

Even though Nickels continued to represent Mooring intermittently after Mooring’s return to Marianna in mid-1865, Nickels’ conduct as agent for his son-in-law apparently was the source of some tension between the two men whom, we can suppose, were predisposed to view each other warily. Nickels’ own statement about the arrangement suggests his casual approach: “I was agent for Mooring for part of the time the accounts were kept, can’t designate the time. I had some Confederate money of Mooring’s in hand; can’t state that amount. I suppose I have of his in hand two or three thousand dollars. I was agent for him at different times. Sometimes could not satisfy him, and I would cease. Can’t say when agencies commenced or closed; have nothing to show this.” Nickels’ informality toward Mooring’s affairs strikingly contrasts with his careful accounting of Mooring’s debts to the Nickels & Gautier firm. Mooring stopped his account with the firm in July 1867, probably about the time William Nickels and Thomas Gautier dissolved their partnership.

The dissolution of Nickels & Gautier was announced in the Marianna Courier in January 1868, along with a notification that William Nickels would settle the firm’s business and accounts.

The Nickels family's standing seems to have fallen in the wake of the war. William Nickels, now in his 70s, had fallen far in relative wealth compared to his peers, which was typical for planters, but not merchants after the upheaval of defeat and Emancipation. Nickels still managed to buy the enormous Bellamy mansion from Gautier at a steep discount, probably as a result of the same financial distress that led to the end of their partnership. [For information and pictures of the "Bellamy Nickels mansion, See http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fljackso/Bellamy/Nickels.html ].

At the same time, it seems that a wide rift had opened up between Mooring and Nickels. In January 1872, Nickels sued his son-in-law in the Florida circuit court for $1,388 for “goods, wares and merchandise sold and delivered” to Mooring by the now long defunct Nickels & Gautier firm. Lawsuits among neighbors and even friends were common in Jackson County at this time when litigation was a favorite participatory sport. Nickels, however, pursued this claim with particular vehemence.

Mooring apparently argued that the claim had already been paid by Nickels out of Mooring’s finances that he controlled. Nevertheless, prior to trial, Mooring approached Gautier and delivered to him a check drawn on a New York bank for $600. In return, Gautier gave Mooring a receipt on behalf of Nickels & Gautier confirming that this payment settled “all demands” by the firm against Mooring.

Learning from Mooring’s lawyer, D. L. McKinnon, about the settlement with Gautier, Nickels was initially befuddled, then livid. Approached by McKinnon to learn about his intentions regarding the pending litigation, Nickels insisted that he would “fight it out.” Claiming that his son-in-law and former partner had colluded to defraud him, Nickels proceeded with the lawsuit against Mooring. The jury found for Mooring, concluding that Gautier as a partner to the Nickels & Gautier, had the authority to settle the debt owed the firm.

This defeat outraged Nickels. After the circuit court denied his demand for a new trial, Nickels appealed to Florida’s Supreme Court. Here he was represented by powerhouse attorneys: George S. Hawkins, a former congressman and Florida Supreme Court justice, and William H. Milton, a former state solicitor. Eventually, only in January 1877, the court heard the case of Nickels and Gautier v. Mooring. The Supreme Court upheld the circuit court’s ruling in favor of Mooring. [Nickels and Gautier v. Mooring, 16 FL 76 (Jan. 1877 term].

A later newspaper account surmised that the lawsuit had "aroused the old feeling" of hostility between Mooring and William Nickels. It might also be guessed that the lawsuit was the result of shattered relations. The same 1874 newspaper reported that "some three years ago from a private difficulty Mooring endeavored" to shoot his young brother-in-law, Charles Nickels. According to the same account, Nickels' sister interfered and "Mooring received the pistol ball in his own arm." [Columbus Enquirer, Aug. 1, 1874]. This 1871 time period coincided with Mooring's taking his family from Marianna to Europe. The sequence of events (the lawsuit, the shooting, the departure) is impossible to know, but it seems reasonable to conclude that that they were all connected. In any event, by the time the Florida Supreme Court heard William Nickels' appeal and issued its ruling, relations between Mooring and his in-laws had deteriorated tragically.

More Lives of the Regulators: Edwin W. Mooring

2011-02-16T21:02:00.000-08:00

If ever there were a man with anger management issues, it was Edwin W. Mooring. Strictly speaking, Mooring was not a Jackson County Regulator: there is no record of his engaging in night riding or acting in consort with the Coker organization during the escalation of violence beginning in 1869. Nevertheless, he was an early and eager proponent of violent opposition to the Bureau and had little regard for racial reconciliation.

Mooring was born around 1828 in North Carolina, but came to Marianna as a young man, probably first to visit his mother's sister and her family. He was an educated and interesting individual. J. Randall Stanley described his multiple careers: he was a “lawyer, southern representative of a New York wine and liquor house, and … special agent for the New York Life Insurance Co. in Tennessee.” [Stanley, History of Jackson County, 152]. One observer wrote that Mooring was "gentleman of high social position, of more than ordinary ability, intelligence and varied culture." The Marianna newspaper described him as "a gentleman of fine manners and cultivated mind." [Atlanta Sunday Herald, Aug. 9, 1874]. He dabbled in poetry and impressed the editor of the Columbus (GA) Enquirer who considered him "a gentleman of culture" and "man of excellent address and a fluent talker." According to one account, Mooring had profited greatly during the war and around 1871, he moved his wife and children (at least 5) to Germany "for education advantages of his children." Mooring established his own residence in New York City, although his business continued to bring him regularly to Georgia and Florida.

His military record, if any, is unclear. Although Mooring was certainly within the extended age range of the Confederate army draft, Shofner reports Mooring contracting with a commissary agent to deliver 1,000 gallons of alcohol at $6/gallon to Columbus, GA in the spring of 1864 [Shofner, Jackson County – A History, p. 234]. The war eventually found Mooring. Dale Cox lists him on the roster of the “Cradle to Grave” home guard that assembled to defend Marianna against the invading Union column in late September 1864. Mooring, along with 40 or so other Marianna men, was seized by the withdrawing Union troops and sent North to endure the 1864-65 winter under the miserable conditions at Elmira prison. [Cox, Battle of Marianna, 126]. Eight months later, after his release, Mooring returned to Marianna.

Perhaps ironic, considering his occupation as a liquor tradesman, Mooring could display deep religious faith. Dr. Charles Hentz reported an encounter with Mooring in 1856 outside the town hotel. At the time, Hentz wrote, the preacher Simon Peter Richardson, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was visiting Marianna and inspiring its people. Mooring stood outside the town hotel owned by Mooring's father-in-law, William Nickels, talking with other men. Mooring saw Hentz pass by and Mooring called out "Hentz, are you a Christian?" Hentz responded as "almost every one does when asked the same question – ‘I hope I am’" Mooring retorted that "hoping does no good" and proceeded to ask "what do you know upon the subject – are you a Christian?” This encounter moved Hentz deeply, inspiring him to examine his own casual approach to faith and to rededicate his life toward religion. [Charles A. Hentz, A Southern Practice, 570].

Despite his sophistication and faith, Mooring could be a menacing presence, notorious for his rages. Bureau agent Charles Hamilton considered him a “violent and dangerous character.” Purman described him as “hot and rebellious.” Even an acquaintance sympathetic to Mooring admitted that he was "an excitable man, impulsive, vehement in speech, and of an almost ungovernable temper when aroused.” Mooring was determined to antagonize the Bureau agents whom he habitually and publicly denounced. Certainly Charles M. Hamilton, no shrinking violet himself, felt threatened when Mooring openly carried a weapon to a Bureau organized voter registration rally in Campbellton in the summer of 1867. Mooring was convicted and fined $5 for this offense. On another occasion, Hamilton was so upset by Mooring's "severe abusive language" on the streets of Marianna that he sought to have Mooring charged with "incendryism."

In May 1868, Purman reported a violent assault by Mooring, whom he sarcastically called “a limb of the ‘chivalry’”, on an African American woman whose hoop skirt accidentally brushed Mooring’s knee on a public sidewalk. Mooring struck two severe blows on the woman’s face, and “raved about like a madman.” Mooring’s attack produced “high excitement” in the Marianna black community and a Justice of the Peace had Mooring arrested for assault and battery. These incidents were a prelude to Mooring’s involvement in one of the most bizarre and infamous murders in Jackson County history, which will be described in subsequent postings.

Reconstruction Era Blogs: Is this it?

2011-02-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

There are hundreds of Civil War blogs, but are there any other blogs devoted primarily to Reconstruction matters? I haven't found any. Has anyone else? I would like to link to them if they exist.

A Regulator's Miserable End

2011-01-27T22:15:00.000-08:00

According to John Q. Dickinson, James A. Chastain of Marianna led the group of night riders who approached the house of Henry Reed in the middle of one night during the chaos of October 1869. Reed, a free born African American carpenter, barely escaped with his life, evading his persecutors in the darkness and hiding under the Ely house. His son was wounded while attempting similarly to escape. The Reed family went into hiding and were spirited out of Jackson County by unidentified sympathizers, possibly the Chapmans. Samuel Fleishman also reported that Chastain joined the town "committee" at the meeting where James P. Coker instructed Fleishman to leave Jackson Co. immediately or risk losing his life.
Chastain's life did not turn out, or end, happily. A Georgia newspaper reported in 1881 that Chastain “a noted burglar and penitentiary convict, who bore the alias of Sutton, and while under arrest and being conducted to the barracks by Capt. Martin and officer Jones, attempting to break from custody, was shot twice, from the effect of which he died.... Chastaine, the dead burglar, was well connected, well educated and a man of the world. He married a Miss Myrick, of Mariana, Florida, some ten or twelve years since, a daughter of John T. Myrick, a prominent merchant of that place, and one of the best families in Florida. He is said to have been born and raised in Lee county, Georgia, but it not known certainly where the place of his nativity is.”

[Georgia Weekly Telegraph, April 4, 1881]

UPDATE: May 24, 2011
Chastaine and Huldah Myrick married on May 1, 1867. [http://files.usgwarchives.net/fl/jackson/vitals/marriages/184800g2.txt ]
Lots more about James Chastain from Elsa Vorwerk's family genealogical website. Chastain's career in thieving made the news several years earlier than his death:

"The fact transpired more than three weeks since that James A. Chastaine, for several years past cashier for Ely, Harvey & Richardson, had been systematically robbing his employers, but for satisfactory reasons the newspapers consented to temporarily withhold the details from the public. The sums stolen, directly or indirectly, aggregated about $10,000, the greater portion of which it is understood has been secured to the firm through assignment of property owned by Chastaine here and elsewhere. On the 6th instant Chastaine left, ostensibly for Georgia, where he has relatives, but he took the early morning train on the Little Rock Railroad, and was soon heard of in Little Rock and Hot Springs. Meanwhile, it came to light that he had forged the signatureof Mr. Thad. S. Ely, of the firm, to a note or acceptance for $500, and endeavored to sell it to one of his (Chastaine's) most intimate friends; who, however, suspecting that all was not right, declined to purchase. This fact determined the firm to arrest Chastaine. He was overhawled in Hot Springs, a few days since, but before a requisition could reach Governor Garland he was released on a writ of habeas corpus. His first act thereafter was to ship his trunk to St. Louis; his next to "break" for the woods, the better to avoid another arrest. At last accounts he had not been rearrested. Chastaine is a Georgian by birth, and what is known as a "fast man," spending money on himself and friends lavishly, and has been generally esteemed by his friends a "good fellow." It is said that this is not his first crime, but that he stole several thousand dollars from a former employer in Georgia some years ago, but his relatives made up the deficit and stopped the prosecution."
Augusta Daily Chronicle & Sentinel June 19, 1875: [Memphis Avalanche, June 15, 1875]
From http://woodvorwerk.com/wood/p17987.htm

A Jackson County Reconstruction-era Christmas Story: "The Graveyard 'Possum"

2010-12-28T13:42:00.000-08:00

T. Thomas Fortune was born into slavery in Jackson County, growing up with his mother, Sarah Jane, in the Marianna home of merchant Eli P. Moore. After Emancipation, Fortune's father, Emanuel, became the first African American appointed and then elected to public office in Jackson County. As an old man, at the end of a long career in the North, culminating in his recognition as the “dean” of African American journalists, Fortune remembered his Florida youth and wrote a series of autobiographical articles he titled “After War Times.” Fortune vividly described Emancipation and the Reconstruction years in Jackson County and, after his family fled violence in 1869, later Jacksonville and Tallahassee. I have been collaborating with Prof. Dawn Herd-Clerk of Fort Valley State Univ. to compile and present Fortune’s “After War Times” series for eventual publication. In the meantime, I thought this delightful extract describing Christmas traditions and relating a wonderful story from the mid-1860s was an appropriate holiday entry for this blog.
[Note: Fortune refers to his ten-year-old self in the third-person as "Timothy."]

“The Graveyard 'Possum

The Christmas holidays had always been among the most gala for the young and old folks of the country districts of the county, as it was the time of year when the sugarcane was ground and the animals were slaughtered for the year. “Cane grinding time” appealed to the youngsters as a holiday full of sweets, and the older ones also took part and rejoiced in the hunting of the opossum and other wild game, mostly at night, and fishing. Many of the youngsters of the village had been allowed to go up-country and spend the Christmas holidays with relatives on the plantations but Timothy had never been allowed to do so, as he was too young. The second Christmas week after freedom he was allowed to do so. He had grown to be a very wide-a-wake youngster, very much alive to country life and its many pastimes, which he had watched with his developing years and yearned to share to the full.

He went to the Russ plantation, where he had a lot of kinfolks and where he was very much at home. He stopped with Uncle John and there were plenty of children with whom he could make merry. The country eating was the best possible, with plenty of fish and wild game, and he never got his full of chewing cane and drinking hot syrup, - raw brown sugar, the only sort in common use in those days,- and what youngster did get his fill of such! Fishing in the many ponds and small streams was great sport, but the thing Timothy yearned most for was to go 'possum hunting. He had always heard that that was the greatest of things that go along with Christmas holidays.

'Possum hunts usually got underway about the midnight hour. Uncle John made up his party of six, including Timothy, the night after Timothy reached the plantation, and Timothy’s first experience in hunting 'possum was begun. He was all excitement and enthusiasm and felt as frolicsome as the dogs, who do know what the sport is and take a human interest in it. Dogs have lots of sense, with no instinct about it, just as some folks have, and I have often thought that dogs may be folks but can’t tell us they are, except by their actions, which are often very human.

We had not gone far from the plantation before the dogs gave the signal that they had struck a trail. It led straight to the plantation graveyard. The 'possum took to a small oak. When routed from this he took to a larger one, and then routed, he made for the largest tree in the graveyard. Uncle John decided to cut the tree down. Meanwhile the men and the dogs showed that they felt funny about the whole business from the beginning, a graveyard 'possum being regarded as a spirit and hard to capture. The dogs stood off in the direction the tree should fall, and when it fell they rushed for the prey, howling and whining in a most piteous way, but the 'possum eluded them for the third time, and Uncle John decided that was enough. His superstition took charge of him, and he was for giving up the hunt but was overruled by the others.

“Yoo cain’t have no luck when you start off wid a graveyard 'possum foolin’ yoo,” he said, with a shake of the head.

We got up into the persimmon district of the plantation where there were plenty of opossum. The dogs jumped one of the finest which made for a clump of trees and rock, and was grabbed just as he was going into his hole. Then we had no luck for a long time, when we reached the extreme limits of the farm, and were thinking of giving up the hunt. A big one was captured at this point, and, with his tail in a split white oak limb, he was turned over to Timothy to lug. We had to cross a small stream on logs, at this point. Timothy followed the others and the dogs followed him, and kept up a constant snapping at the 'possum. Timothy struck at the dogs behind him to make them desist and the 'possum drove his teeth through the third finger and second joint of the right hand, making him turn loose the limb and 'possum. They all fell into the creek, some on one side and some on the other of the log fence. All were thoroughly drenched, and it had turned freezing cold.

We got on the other side the creek and cut a big dead pine log resin fat, into sections and built a rousing fire and after awhile were dried and thawed out. Timothy’s finger was very painful, and he has yet a deformity of that finger because of the bite of the opossum.

“We ain’t goin’ to hunt no more tonight,” said Uncle John. “That graveyard 'possum done hoodoo the whole business.”

He had. Although Uncle John and the others were born and reared in that part of the county, they lost their way and did not reach their plantation until broad daylight.”

[Sources: Norfolk (VA) Journal and Guide, August 27, 1927; Philadelphia Tribune, September 1, 1927]

Why all the sudden interest? (not complaining)

2010-12-16T21:52:00.000-08:00

This blog, which typically has one or two unique hits each day, has smashed all its (admittedly meager) records over the last two days with more than 80 visitors. Almost all of these hits entered on the Marianna Day posting from September. I'm very curious: can anyone offer an explanation for the sudden popularity of thejacksoncountywar.com?

The Frustration of Limited Sources

2010-12-14T11:09:00.000-08:00

While there is extensive documentation of the Jackson County War, most of it comes from limited primary sources. Most contemporary information comes from the extensive Congressional KKK Hearings testimony, numerous newspaper reports, and dozens of private letters among the Republican leaders, Hamilton, Purman, and Dickinson. The words of many African Americans are found in the KKK testimony and the later Walls-Niblack hearings testimony. The missing element, ironically, are the words of the native, Jackson County white community, paricularly the Regulators. The views of their sympathizers are presented in Frank Baltzell's Marianna Courier editorials and several anonymous "letters to the editor" reprinted in the Florida Democratic press. I could not find records from James Coker and only a handful of letters from James McClellan, James McLean, or other white leaders in various archives. Also frustrating are the lack of photographs. For example, there are no known pictures of the leader of the Regulators, James Coker, who remained a prominent Marianna merchant until his death in 1888. In fact, there is no record of the location of Coker's grave, although his widow (his much younger, third wife) Ella Holliday lived well into the 20th century. Nor are there any images, or grave location, for his infamous son, Billy Coker. It is very surprising that there are no images or such information about attorney James F. McClellan, who, in addition to be being a successful attorney who argued numerous times before the state's supreme court in Tallashassee, served as a number of years as a Florida circuit court judge based out of Pensacola before his 1890 death. It is much easier to list the photographs that can be found. Among promiment Jackson County citizens, I've received contemporary images of only William H. Milton (a wartime photograph courtesy of Dale) and Charles W. Davis (courtesy of a family member), plus a group photo that includes an elderly William D. Barnes (also from Dale). There are no images found (yet) from the Reconstruction era of Ely, Bond, Barnes, Lott, Myrick, Alderman, Baker, Baltzell, Bush etc.

November 1870: A Brutal Election Day

2010-11-30T12:49:00.000-08:00

On November 8, 1870, Jackson County witnessed perhaps the most violent election day in its history. After ambivalent, almost disbelieving, responses to previous elections won by Republicans candidates, the Conservative-Democrat whites were determined to win back control. James Coker and Dr. Alexander Tennille set the example for several white men brandishing sticks who intermittently harassed black men lined up at the polls to cast ballots and taunted that there would now be a "white man's government." Several black men were beaten and a riot seemed ready to explode at any moment. At one decisive moment, Jim Baker, a white man, grabbed Coker's pistol to prevent the Regulator's leader from shooting a black voter. Republicans alleged that Judge William Anderson improperly closed the polls before sunset, preventing many men from voting.

These tactics helped eliminate the large Republican majority. While Charles Hamilton had carried the county by 831 votes two years earlier, now the Republican candidate for congress, Josiah Walls, led by only 4 votes. Conservative attorney James C. McLean, a rising leader in Jackson County, took an assembly seat, breaking the Republican hold over Jackson County's seats in the state legislature. John Barfield, a "scalawag" farmer, won a place in the assembly as a Republican, but resigned under pressure soon afterwards. Ben Livingston, an African American grocer, whose son had been murdered at the picnic shootings a year earlier, gained the remaining assembly seat.

These mixed results seemed to infuriate the Regulators even more and frustration at their failure to win back control of the county government through the ballot led to the resumption of more extreme measures.

Black Confederates: A Different Viewpoint

2010-11-11T14:31:00.000-08:00

The debate over African Americans having served in the Confederate Army is raging across the internet. Much of the discussion focuses on nuance (e.g., did African Americans serve as "soldiers" as opposed to camp attendants, did they serve as slaves or of their volition, etc.) and many of the participants are speaking past each other. I found the following excerpt from Congressional testimony taken in early 1866 fascinating in offering the viewpoint of some Tallahassee blacks that suggests much of this debate is moot or misplaced. It must be considered, however, that this passage is retold by a white, Yankee interlocutor. Rev. L. M. Hobbs toured much of Florida in 1864 and 1865 and became associated with the Freedmen's Bureau's education efforts. Sometime in late 1865, he spoke to some African American young men at a school in the Tallahassee area. The discussion eventually turned to service in the Confederate army, or maybe Florida's militia. Hobbs told his Congressional interviewers the following:

“I asked the boys what they understood freedom to mean. They said that to be free was to be their own; that is, that they were not under the control of another person to be bought and sold. I asked them if they could do as they pleased now that they were free. They said they could not break the law – could not do wrong without being punished. I asked them how they knew they had been made free. They said that when the Union soldiers came and hoisted the United States flag over the capitol, that meant freedom; they knew they were free then. Just before the surrender the rebels were organizing colored troops for their service, and on two or three occasions a large number had been taken to Tallahassee to be drilled. I have frequently asked the negroes what was their opinion of that. They said they were all going into the rebel army. I asked them if they would have fought against the United States government. They said, “Not a man of us; we had our plans all laid; we knew all about it; we would never have fired a gun at the Union soldiers, but on the very first opportunity we would have turned our fire upon the rebels, or we would have gone over to the Union side.” I asked them if they had always believed that that Union cause would prove successful. They said that at times they would feel discouraged, from hearing the rebels always say that they were whipping the Yankees, but that they had always hoped and believed that the Union cause would be successful.” [emphasis added]. Rep. of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 39^th Cong. 1^st Session, Part IV, p. 10.

"The Jackson County War" book

2010-10-07T14:02:00.000-07:00

The University of Alabama Press has confirmed that it will publish The Jackson County War. Release is tentatively scheduled for the spring of 2012.

141 Years Ago: The Picnic Shootings

2010-09-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

This post is a re-posting from least year's anniversary:

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 the forthcoming narrative history, The Jackson County War.

Celebration of Marianna Day in the 20th Century

2010-09-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

Coinciding with last year’s 145th anniversary of the Battle of Marianna, the town of Marianna and Jackson County revived the celebration of Marianna Day. The commemoration of the Battle of Marianna has a long history and, early in the twentieth century, many Florida communities observed the anniversary. The events were typically organized by United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters and were refined affairs, involving recitations, musical performances and readings. Local veterans and children were invited to participate. The following accounts are probably representative:

“Wednesday afternoon at two-thirty, Mrs. Jos. E. Wilson entertained the veterans and Daughters of the Confederacy at the beautiful home of her father, Col. W. T. Weeks, on Cherry street.

The house was elaborately decorated with large and small flags, ferns and roses. On the front veranda was placed a large punch bowl and Mrs. J. M. Brownlee served the arriving guests with this refreshing beverage.

The chapter historian, Mrs. J. M. Alvarez, arranged a program suitable to the occasion, which was the anniversary of the Battle of Marianna, and was as follows:

Invocation, Rv. W. G. Law
“A Medley of Southern Airs” – Played by Victrola
Solo, “Somewhere a Voice is Calling” – Mrs. A. Z. Adkins
A paper on the Battle of Marianna by Mr. H. Robinson, of Jacksonville, sole surviving Confederate participant, read by Mrs. R. A. Weeks.
Paper, “Wrongs of History Righted” – Mrs. J. M. Alvarez
Song, “Silver Threads Among the Gold” – Victrola
Solo, “Mother McCree” – Mrs. A. Z. Adkins

The approach of refreshments was announced by white paper napkins being distributed among the guests . . .

The veterans thoroughly appreciated the occasion and were enthusiastic in the praise of the honors shown them.”

Bradford County Telegraph, Sept. 29, 1916.

Pensacola was disorganized in 1908 but then held two Marianna Day events in 1909:

“At eight o’clock this evening there will be special services at Christ church in celebration of the anniversary of the battle of Marianna, Rev. P. H. Whaley conducting the services. All the southern organizations are extended a special invitation to attend. The crosses of honor for the veterans will not be presented at this time, owing to the fact that the order for them could not be filled immediately.”

Pensacola Journal, Sept. 27, 1908

“The United Daughters of the Confederacy held a very interesting exercise at the armory hall Monday at 10:30 a.m., to commemorate Marianna Day and Raphael Semmes’ birthday. The president, Mrs. W. R. Snead, presided. The following program was rendered:

Prayer – Rev. Clyde Johnson
Suwanee River – Chapter
Report of Chapter – Miss. M. F. Milton
Instrumental Solo – Miss Gussie Whitaker
Recitation, 'Marianna' - Miss Clara Lorley
Poem of 'Battle of Marianna,' written by Mrs. F. B. Chapman, read by Mrs. B. S. Liddon.
'Dixie' – By children of Confederacy"

Pensacola Journal, Sept. 29, 1909

At the Hotel Escambia, a reception, given “in honor of Marianna Day… and also in compliment to the Confederate Veterans…proved a success in every particular.” At this event “Members of all the Confederate associations in the city together with many of their friends were present.” The program was similar in format, although different in content, from the armory hall event. The evening concluded with the presentation of “crosses of honor.”

Pensacola Journal, Sept. 28, 1909

Also in 1909, Gainesville’s Kirby Smith UDC Chapter gathered for a “meeting of historical nature” that was “well attended” at the residence of the chapter’s president, Mrs. H. H. McCreary. This event included music and readings, featuring the recitation of a paper titled “The Battle of Marianna and Reminiscences of the War” by the chapter’s historian, Mrs. F. M. Prewitt.

Gainesville Daily Sun, Sept. 28 and 30, 1909

In 1913, the Miami UDC chapter held a picnic to commemorate Marianna Day and marked the occasion by unveiling a “handsome monument” to Confederate soldiers at the courthouse.

Orlando Daily Sentinel, Sept. 19, 1913

One account of an early Marianna commemoration suggests a less formal and, perhaps, one hopes, a less sedate event: “S. M. Robertson, J. B. Locky, D. C. Buie, W. H. Waldon and J. Baxley attended the meeting of Confederate Veterans at Marianna Friday. The occasion was a celebration of commemoration of the Battle of Marianna. They say they had a most enjoyable time and were treated royally.”

Chipley Banner, Oct. 3, 1912

A journalist reported a poignant moment during the 1927 observance. That year, the Florida division of the United Confederated Veterans held their reunion in Marianna to coincide with Marianna Day. For the first time, the elderly veterans in attendance rode the parade route in automobiles rather than march on foot. An official explained that this change was necessary because the “cost” for these aged veterans of walking “was too high in past years…invariably the task has overtaxed a man and we have lost a part of the precious few.” The 1927 event also saw the participation of Union army veterans who returned the flag of Gen. Finley’s Florida brigade captured at the Battle of Franklin.

Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 28, 1927

As can be seen from the above accounts, the observance of Marianna Day was often the preserve of the UDC. The role assumed by the UDC and the popularity of these early twentieth century Marianna Day celebrations may have been spurred, to some degree, by Mrs. Fannie B. Chapman. Mrs. Chapman, the widow of Washington Chapman, lived in Marianna during the war years and Reconstruction before moving to Pensacola. She became very involved in the UDC, rising to leadership positions. Around 1908-10, Mrs. Chapman wrote a series of articles for the Pensacola newspapers recollecting ante-bellum and war-time Jackson County. Her account of the Battle of Marianna is an important source. Interestingly, during the chaos of the fall of 1869, Mrs. Chapman displayed her implacable courage when she probably saved the life of her servant’s friend, a young African American named Joseph Nelson, who had been seized by the Regulators taking control of the town. Mrs. Chapman marched up to the chief of the Regulators and declared Nelson’s innocence from involvement in violence and then demanded and obtained Nelson’s release from custody. The Chapmans may also have played a role in 1869 in protecting other persecuted African American families.

The commemoration of Marianna Day, at least as a public event, slowly faded over the course of the twentieth century as the last individuals with memories of the War passed away. Also, as Florida’s population changed rapidly during the mid and late twentieth century, the explicitly nostalgic “Lost Cause” nature of the programs greatly limited their appeal. We do have an account, however, of the centennial celebration held at Marianna in 1964, featuring an appearance by U.S. Senator (and former governor) Spessard Holland:

“The Celebration of the Centennial of the Battle of Marianna, was held in Marianna at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, on Sunday afternoon, September 27, at two o’clock, with the William Henry Milton Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in charge.

The services began with a religious service held in the main body of the church, and then the assembly filed out to the Parish House for the main program with Senator Spessard Holland as speaker. Mrs. Wilson L. Baker of Tampa, president of the Florida Division of the U.D.C. presented Senator Holland to the assembly, after the singing of “Dixie” by the group and a choral number by a group from Chipola Junior College.

Senator Holland gave a resume of the battle, stating that it was fought on the grounds where the first Episcopal Church stood, that it was burned during the battle, along with two fine residences, that there were casualties on both sides, that the Federals retreated to Pensacola with their wounded. The Federals were trained militia, sent to take the territory as a valuable farming source of Confederacy supplies along with the salt works on the coast, and the Confederate forces doing the defending were of “The Cradle to Grave,” being boys under fifteen and men too old for army service, who were at home farming. They only had old fire arms, no military weapons, but made a brave effort to defend their homes.”

Gadsden County Times, Oct. 1, 1964

The organizers of Marianna Day in 2009 preserved the historical origin of the celebration - to commemorate the valiant defense of the town and remember the fallen – while broadening its scope to encompass a festival with music and events that welcomed the entire community. Hopefully, with such an inclusive program, Marianna Day will continue be a great success and the precedent for an annual celebration.

Charles Hamilton and the 5th PA Reserves at Antietam

2010-08-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

Corporal Hamilton and his Company A of the 5th PA Reserves fought in a sharp, fierce action charging up steep, rocky terrain at South Mountain. They then marched along with the rest of Seymour's First Brigade of Pennsylvania Reserve regiments in Meade's 3rd Division of Hooker's I Corps to Sharpsburg. On the early evening of Sept. 16th, they came down the Smoketown Road to the East Woods, bordering on the north east and east side of the cornfield to be become infamous the next day.

(The edge of the East Woods)

The 5th PA Reserves formed the extreme left of the I Corps. There was heavy skirmishing that night, and Col. Fisher reconnoitered the ground to the east of the woods, coming into contact with the 4th Alabama in the darkness. Early the next morning, Sept. 17th, the 5th advanced through the east edge of the East Woods, driving out any Confederates and supporting the left of the 13th PA (the "Bucktail" regiment). Moving just to the east of the Smoketown Road, the 5th emerged at the south-east corner of the East Woods.

(South east area of the East Woods from the Smoketown Road)

According to Ezra Carmen, the 5th PA Reserves "lining up behind the fence, opened fire upon Trimble's Brigade, in line across the plowed field near the Mumma grave-yard, 300 yards distant. The fighting was severe, the Confederates suffering most, being on open ground, while the Pennsylvanians had the cover of trees."

(Fence along original fence line at bend in the Smoketown Road where it emerges from the East Woods, the Mumma graveyard in a brick enclosure in front of the trees in the center).

At this point the Bucktails ran out of ammunition and pulled back to be relieved by the 2nd Reserves. Col. Fisher saw the 13th pull back but not the 2nd coming into the line. Apparently, believing his right was gone, leaving the 5th exposed now on the right as well as left, Fisher led his regiment back through the East Woods and out of action for the rest of the day.

August 1870: Debacle - Hamilton and Purman return to Marianna

2010-08-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Facing a serious challenge for the Democratic nomination for the congress, Hamilton planned to rally his support base by campaigning in Jackson County. The dedication of a new schoolhouse in Marianna in early August provided the occasion for a public rally and Hamilton’s first visit to Jackson County in nearly two years. Hamilton arrived accompanied by Purman, and a small band of supporters. From the start, this visit was a disaster. Hearing rumors of a planned assault, they fortified their lodgings, posted armed guards at the windows. The night was full of "great excitement" with the "running of horses and blowing of horns."

The rally was a catastrophe. To Hamilton’s complete surprise, J. C. Gibbs, Florida’s Secretary of State and a challenger for the Democratic nomination, appeared and attacked Hamilton, blaming him for the recent violence. This denunciation from Florida’s most prominent African American office-holder delighted the audience filled with the former Bureau Agents’ white antagonists.

After the meeting ended, Hamilton and Purman faced the daunting prospect of leaving Jackson County alive. Reliable information indicated their lodging would be stormed, but that all the routes heading east toward Gadsden County were picketed by waiting assassins. Purman and Hamilton upped the ante by proposing to raise a posse of several hundred armed blacks to escort them out of Jackson County. News of this proposal alarmed leading Marianna citizens who assembled to negotiate with Hamilton and Purman over measures to ensure their safe and swift exit from Jackson County. Hamilton and Purman prepared a list of twenty prominent white citizens and announced that if ten of the proposed men would escort them over the Apalachicola River, they would retract their call to raise a posse of blacks. The ten men gathered and the party left Marianna, selecting an unfrequented road northward toward the Georgia border and Bainbridge, rather than one of the main roads leaving east to Quincy.

Upon their safe arrival in Bainbridge, Purman and Hamilton thanked their escorts, treated them to champagne, and released them. Marianna Courier editor Frank Baltzell later accused the leading citizens who provided the escort as having "tarnished their honor and contaminated their characters" by consenting to protect Hamilton and Purman.

"Bloody Settlement of an Old Feud in Jackson County"

2010-07-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Recent studies have shown that Florida was among the most violent states during the nineteenth century. Prior to the War, however, Jackson County held the reputation of one of the most peaceful regions in that state. The post-war period quickly ended that. Although occuring at the beginning of the Reconstruction era, the remarkable confrontation recounted in the following newspaper extract seems to have arisen from a personal dispute, not some political cause. This story is not directly pertinent to The Jackson County War, but gives a fascinating depiction of extra-legal dispute resolution:

"A serious shooting affair occurred at Neely's Store, in Jackson county, on Wednesday, 29th ult. [ed. Nov. 29, 1865]. The parties concerned were two men by the name of Williams, and one named Clare, on one side, and two Hams, father and son, on the other. The cause was an old feud existing for sometime. For the purpose of settlement they met at the precinct on election day, armed with rifles and double-barreled guns. At the first fire, one of the Williams was killed, and Ham, Sr., firing at the other brother, Newton Williams, missed his aim, the ball unfortunately taking effect on the body of a Baptist preacher, named Grantham, and inflicting what is believed to be a mortal wound. Meanwhile, the younger Ham was shot down, and his father, standing over him, defended his body with clubbed, but empty gun. While thus engaged, Newton Williams approached, and firing one barrel with fatal effect, into the breast of the father, turned and discharged the other through the head of the prostrate and disabled son. This ended the difficulty. Newton Williams remained on the ground nearly all day, assisted in the burial of his brother, and defied arrest. Next day, Captain [ed. Charles C.] Rawn of the Seventh Infantry, in command at Marianna, with a rifle of men, proceeded to the spot, and arrested Williams at his own house. Clare, at last accounts, was still at large. - Quincy Commonwealth,"
quoted in the Richmond Daily Dispatch, Dec. 28, 1865. [recovered from http://dlxs.richmond.edu/d/ddr ]

3 men face off against 2 to settle "an old feud," and 3 of them, and possibly a 4th man, a bystander, are killed! Some searching around on the census records gives information about the individuals involved. Newton Williams, also referred to as Jasper Newton Williams (not to be confused with a man born in 1847 in Jackson County with the same name) was about 31 at the time of this incident. Williams was allegedly to have killed Green White and Sancho Turner during their botched attempt to seize Sgt. Bond described in the Aug. 1869 post. In addition, Williams is said to have shot his friend Sgt. Bond in the leg during a drunken card game, giving him a total of 5 men shot and 4 murdered. Williams had two brothers, James Williams, about one year older, and William Williams Jr., 5 years younger. I'm not sure which brother was killed by the Hams, but I'm guessing it is James since the Williams brothers' father, William Williams Sr., was living with James in the 1860 census, but lives with Newton's family in the 1870 records.
The Hams are most likely William Ham, about 53 at the time of his death, based on the 1860 census, and his son is possibly Patrick, who, again according to the 1860 census, would have been about 19 when Newton Williams shot him in cold blood. William Ham was fairly prosperous, listed as owning 120 acres of land in the 1860 records. The only Grantham who is plausible as a victim is Daniel, about 40 in 1865, but listed as a farm laborer, not a minister.
I cannot find any information about Williams brothers ally, Clare.

The Fourth of July during Reconstruction days

2010-07-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

For a description of Fourth of July celebrations in Jackson County during Reconstruction, refer to my post from last year:

http://www.thejacksoncountywar.com/2009/06/excellant-barbecue-celebration-of-4th.html

May 1870: A Grand Tournament

2010-05-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

The image of the old South as a society role playing the chivalrous world of a Sir Walter Scott novel is not entirely Hollywood myth. Riding skill competitions and feasts with fanciful medieval-like pageantry and ritual had been common in the South since the 1850s. In the post-war years, these events became even more popular. Jackson County held a particularly "grand tournament" in May 1870:

The field of play was set up midway between Marianna and Greenwood where a ring was suspended from an arch and a rostrum erected for the judges. In a nearby grove, a throne and dinner table were assembled. Captain Joseph Barnes of Greenwood commanded the band of twenty knights, dressed in "tasty and attractive costumes," who rode "their noble and beautifully caparisoned steeds with an ease and grace that challenged the admiration of all." John M. F. Erwin, serving as "Field Marshall," read the program and William D. Barnes addressed the audience. After tilting for the suspended ring, the champion, Robert Hearn, crowned Miss Lizzie Bryan the Queen of Love and Beauty. Other successful Knights chose four Maids of Honor. After a sumptuous dinner, the crowd returned to Marianna for a ball held across three large halls, and dancing lasted until dawn."

Such festivities must have been cathartic after the violence of the previous fall. Black citizens, however, did not attend, except for members of the "delightful band which discoursed sweet music the while." At least for a few hours, some Jackson County residents could pretend that nothing had changed.

This account is adapted from the forthcoming book, The Jackson County War.

Recognition for the "Samuel Fleishman" article

2010-03-18T07:01:00.000-07:00

Serendipitously, I discovered yesterday that "Samuel Fleishman: Tragedy in Reconstruction-Era Florida" Southern Jewish History 8 (2005), 31-76, is listed among 36 articles nominated by the Organization of American Historians for its Best American History Essays of 2008 competition. Fleishman didn't make the final cut of ten essays chosen for reprint in the OAH's annual book, but apparently it was culled from among thousands of essays to receive the honor of nomination.

The Sound of the Rebel Yell

2010-03-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

John Quincy Dickinson wrote that on Oct. 2, 1869, Marianna men pursuing Calvin Rogers through the town's streets let loose the clarion call of the Rebel Yell. A Union army veteran of combat in the Louisiana theater, Dickinson was certainly familiar with the Rebel Yell from battlefield exprience. From my brief research, I've found contradictory statements about the sound of this legendary battlefield call. The Museum of the Confederacy staff think they've confirmed its sound. Check out these fascinating videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfHylwlq9Ow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buZ1M3iN-UE

[credit to Ken Levin's excellent www.cwmemory.com blog for finding these videos]

Remembering Calvin Rogers (c. 1831 - Jan. 26, 1870)

2010-01-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

This African American farmer, a former slave, first entered the historical record when he signed a petition in March 1867 addressed to Florida Bureau chief Col. John T. Sprague asking that William J. Purman be reassinged to Jackson Co. after the Bureau had tranferred Purman away from Marianna. By the following year, Rogers was serving as president of Jackson County's newly formed Republican Party. Under his leadership the county party ratified the new state constitution and issued public messages offering reconciliation with white neighbors allied with the Democratic-Conservative opposition. In the elections in the spring of 1868, Rogers became the first African American elected to public office in the history of Jackson County when he was elected Constable.

A noted "stump speaker," Rogers spoke at mass public gatherings, such as the 4th of July picnic hosted by the county's African American community in 1869. Henry Reed, a free-born African American active in public affairs during the early years of Reconstruction in Jackson Co., testified that Rogers was "a good man and as true a man as ever there was in the world." Rogers made a memorable impression on twelve-year-old T. Thomas Fortune, who, years later, memorialized Rogers in his poem "Bartow Black." Fortune recalled Rogers as "far above the average of his race in intelligence and courage."

Jackson County whites, however, viewed Rogers quite differently. They bristled at the unprecedented situation of a black man holding a law enforcement position with the authority to arrest whites. They resented Rogers's "domineering manner" and accused him of "repeated acts of oppression in his office of both white and colored." White opinion regarded him as "a bad, bold and dangerous man." The country board of commissioners tried to discourage his service as constable by imposing the onerous obligation of posting a $1,500 bond for guarantee of his performance of the official duties. By the fall of 1869, the Regulators had targetted Rogers for assassination.

The story of Calvin Rogers's role in the terrible events of the fall of 1869 are told in detail in previous posts on this blog. After being wounded at the picnic shooting in late September, Rogers was accused, on very thin evidence, of culpability in the murder of Maggie McClellan. He was hunted relentlessly until finally cornered in Marianna on this day, 140 years ago. If Rogers was responsible for the reprisal shootings on Oct 1, 1869, when intended targets were clearly James McClellan and James Coker, he showed gravely poor judgment. He may have hoped to forstall his own inevitable murder by decapitating the Regulators' leadership. Instead, recklessness merely compounded the tragedies.

January 1870: Closing the Circle

2010-01-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

After the reimposition of order and the arrival of the troops, normal life resumed in Jackson County. The circuit court judge finally deemed it safe enough to travel to Marianna and Calvin Rogers, still in hiding, was charged with Maggie McClellan's murder. Aleck Dickens was charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact. Murder charges were also brought against Jack Myrick, who was safely far removed from Florida and justice. Judge Anderson's county criminal court charged Myrick with assault with intent to kill and resisting an officer. Billy Coker, long since disappeared, was accused of only assault and battery. Quiet was not complete, however, as evidenced by some unidentified gunman's taking pot shots at the guard posted in front of the troops' quarters and the unexplained murder of Lassiter Shadrach, an African American farm laborer, in December.

The Regulators still had one score left to settle. On January 26, 1870, Calvin Rogers was finally tracked down. "Several citizens" cornered him at the home of a black resident of Marianna. The Courier reported that Rogers "in attempting to break arrest was killed by the constable and posse." Thus, the life of Jackson County's first black law-enforcement officer ended in a vigilante lynching. No evidence was ever put forth to prove Rogers's responsibility for the murder of Maggie McClellan other than James Coker's claim that he recognized Rogers's voice calling "fire" in the darkness.

The same day that Calvin Rogers was slain, the murder that had initiated the year of terror was remembered in Tallahassee. In the Florida legislature, Senator Purman had introduced a bill calling for state financial support of Dr. Finlayson's two orphaned children. The state assembly approved the proposal and awarded John and Sallie Finlayson, sheltered by their grandparents in Mobile, a grant of three hundred dollars per year to be paid out for ten years.

This account is adapted from my forthcoming narrative history, The Jackson County War.

December 1869: President Grant

2009-12-21T13:05:00.000-08:00

At the end of December, Florida Congressman Charles Hamilton and Florida Secretary of State Jonathan C. Gibbs called upon President Grant and Secretary of War William Belknap to appeal for help in preventing future violence in Jackson County. They argued that recently "a bitter spirit" prevailed in West Florida, and the formation of a militia to keep the peace required a nucleus of United States soldiers. They asked that three or four companies of soldiers, preferably colored troops, be sent to "overawe the lawless element." President Grant and Secretary Belknap reportedly responded with great interest to this presentation and assured the Florida Republicans that the federal government would assist in the preservation of law and order. No additional troops were sent, but the soldiers who arrived in Marianna in late October stayed there until the following April (1870). This would not be the last time President Grant showed personal interest in the situation in Jackson County.

William J. Purman biography blog

2009-12-10T13:47:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-03T21:57:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-14T07:20:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2009-10-11T14:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-09T06:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Oct. 3 & 4, 1869

2009-10-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

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.

Oct 1, 1869: Revenge gone astray

2009-10-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

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.

Sept 29 & 30, 1869

2009-09-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

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. Updates to thejacksoncountywar.com will be more frequent over the coming weeks as the 140th anniversary is remembered.

August 1869: A Plot Foiled

2009-08-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2009-06-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

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.

June 1869: Secession (to Alabama) Agitation

2009-06-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-27T06:53:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-09T14:23:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-29T08:54:00.000-08:00

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

2008-09-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Publications Update

2008-08-19T20:44:00.001-07:00

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 annotation will published sometime in 2011.

The Jackson County War should be published in late 2010.

UPDATED: April 2010

Purman-Finlayson Wedding Account

2008-06-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

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

2007-12-30T20:19:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-07-18T20:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

From the National Archives.

Jonathan C. Gibbs really, really hated William Purman

2007-03-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

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"

2007-03-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-03T18:54:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-16T20:07:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-14T10:43:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-01T17:31:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

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.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ADDED JULY 2011 RE: W.M. LEVY'S SUPPOSED JEWISH BACKGROUND:
Levy is included in a few recent books that list Jewish Congressman or soldiers. To get to the bottom of whether Levy actually indentified himself as Jewish, or he was only awarded this religious/ethnic status posthumously by 20th century scholars, I tracked down the sources:

1. Kurt F. Stone's Jews of Capitol Hill lists Levy and cites the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia and Marcus’s American Jewish Biography for his sources.

2. In his Jewish Confederates, Robert Rosen doesn’t cite any American-Jewish history material. He includes Levy in his book based only on Jewish name recognition and for Levy’s bio uses his military records, the Civil War OR, and Levy's commander, Zachary Taylor. Rosen does use the Levy family papers from the Williams Research Center in New Orleans, but I’ve also checked those out and the family letters (to wife and daughter Catharine) contain zero references to anything Jewish. So at least Rosen gets credit for using some primary sources. Rosen also cites Krick’s Lee’s Colonels, and I know Bruce Allardice did research for Krick, so if there is a Jewish reference there, it comes from Bruce who told me essentially that he relied on the Levy's Jewish name only. If we're going to call Levy Jewish for miltary history purposes, I don’t know why Rosen overlooks brother Charles Levy whose record in the Confederate Navy was probably more impressive than WML’s record in the army.

3. Jacob Rader Marcus - a giant of Jewish American history:

A. In his Early American Jewry, Marcus does not mention WM Levy , his brothers, or his father John B. Levy.

B. In The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography there is a concise Levy blurb with the only citation being the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. Marcus does not list the father, or brothers.

4. The source that is the urtext of the WM Levy as Jew information: the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia has a couple of paragraphs about W. M. Levy lifted directly from the Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress.

But, the congressional bios are available no-line and contain no references to Levy being Jewish. Here is Levy’s http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=L000269 . This is the UJE’s only source and the UJE does not mention the father or any brothers.

4. Also, Louis Ginsburg's Chapters on the Jews of Virginia: Ginsburg lists John B. Levy among “possible Jewish names” in a Portsmouth, VA Masonic lodge. He also mentions “John Levy in Warwick County” as a “Jewish sounding name” in the 1790 Census. Finally, he writes that “William M. Levy is shown as an attorney” in Portsmouth.

So, in conclusion, some UJE editor was cherry picking Jewish names from the lists of congressmen in the Congressional Biographies, which contains no mention of Levy's Judaism. This is the source for Marcus and all his followers of the tradition that WM Levy is a prominent Jewish American. Ginsburg, at least, admitted he was just listing Jewish sounding names.

What’s next? It’s conclusive that no one has found any evidence that Levy was Jewish by ancestry, let alone considered himself Jewish. I’ve found evidence to show he considered himself a Christian (an anecdote of his appearing in church in Virginia during the War, church affiliation for himself and brothers, his burial etc. ). To take this further, the next step is to start investigating his father, John Benjamin Levy, more thoroughly (is the Benjamin middle name a give-away, trumping “john”?). I’ll start seeing what’s available for the late 18th century Virginia Jewish community.

William Mallory Levy Biography: Part III- Post-War

2006-10-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-18T19:42:00.001-07:00

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

2006-08-19T21:04:00.001-07:00

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

2006-08-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

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.
[UPDATE AUG. 23, 2010: Fate of Simon Fleishman solved - Born in 1840, Simon "Fleischman" was buried in Chicago in 1908 - See: http://genealogytrails.com/ill/rebelsoldiersa-g.html ]

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

2006-08-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

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. W. 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)