The following post was submitted to Renegade South by Tim Sumrall. Particularly noteworthy is that Rev. Anthony Bewley was lynched for his pro-Union views in 1860, well before secession from the Union had been achieved by the Texas legislature. This was the time of “Texas Trouble,” during which vigilantes targeted citizens who sympathized with the plight of slaves or opposed the mounting cries for disunion that would soon bring the American Civil War.
Abolitionist Minister Lynched in Fort Worth
On this day in 1860 (September 13 1860 ), abolitionist Methodist minister Anthony Bewley was lynched in Fort Worth. Bewley, born in Tennessee in 1804, had established a mission sixteen miles south of Fort Worth by 1858. When vigilance committees alleged in the summer of 1860 that there was a widespread abolitionist plot to burn Texas towns and murder their citizens, suspicion immediately fell upon Bewley and other outspoken critics of slavery.
Special attention was focused on Bewley because of an incendiary letter, dated July 3, 1860, addressed to a Rev. Bewley and supposedly written by a fellow abolitionist. Many argued that the letter, which urged Bewley to continue with his work in helping to free Texas from slavery, was a forgery. The letter was widely published, however, and taken by others as evidence of Bewley’s involvement with the John Brownites in Texas.
Recognizing the danger, Bewley left for Kansas in mid-July with part of his family. A Texas posse caught up with him near Cassville, Missouri, and returned him to Fort Worth on September 13. Late that night vigilantes seized Bewley and delivered him into the hands of a waiting lynch mob. His body was allowed to hang until the next day, when he was buried in a shallow grave. Three weeks later his bones were unearthed, stripped of their remaining flesh, and placed on top of Ephraim Daggett’s storehouse, where children made a habit of playing with them.
http://www.tshaonline.org/day-by-day/30999
Letter From Anthony Bewley
http://www.nytimes.com/1861/01/23/news/a-methodist-minister-lynched-letter-from-rev-anthony-bewley.html
