The Lynching of Methodist Minister Anthony Bewley in Civil War Era Texas

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

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbe71

Read Full Post »

Newt Knight, the story goes on forever, continued: Southern Unionism Under Scrutiny

The following is Ed Payne’s third and final essay regarding the newly-rediscovered 1880 pension claim of Newt Knight, leader of the Knight Company of  ”Free State of Jones” fame. Here, Ed takes us beyond Jones County, Mississippi, and examines the rules and shifting political alliances that dictated the generally dismal outcome of most claims of Southern loyalty to the Union filed in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Vikki Bynum, Moderator

“We’ll all die guerrillas”:Southern Unionism under Scrutiny and Newt Knight’s Relief Bill of 1880

by Ed Payne

In his second petition for relief, submitted before Congress in 1880, Newt Knight requested compensation totaling $21,150 for himself and 54 other men.  The claimants had rebelled against Confederate authority in Jones County, Mississippi in late 1863 and fought a series of skirmishes against state militia and CSA troops.  Senator Blanche K. Bruce, the lone Republican remaining in the Mississippi delegation, introduced the bill.  It was referred to the Committee on Claims, from which it never emerged.  (Note 1)

The failure of Newt Knight’s 1880 Relief Bill—and of similar attempts in 1870, 1887, and 1891—needs to be considered in the context of postwar attitudes and politics.  The sentiments of Northern Republicans were shaped by anger over the toll exacted by the Civil War and what many perceived as a lack of Southern contrition in its aftermath.  As a result, those who had a financial stake in affirming wartime Unionism faced considerable skepticism.  From 1874 onward, difficulties arose from a different source: the re-emergence of Southern Democrats in Congress, many with strong ties to the former Confederacy.

The basic facts underlying Newt Knight’s petition are recounted in the Prologue to this series.  Knight decided that he and his men’s battle against Confederate authority, augmented by his postwar reputation as a stalwart Republican, merited compensation.  The 1880 Relief Bill requested payment for their “services as officers and members of Knight’s company, United States infantry, during the years eighteen hundred and sixty-three, eighteen hundred and sixty-four, and eighteen hundred and sixty-five.”  The wording was both terse and oblique since Knight conceded in later depositions and interviews that his men had never been mustered into the United States Army, acting instead as partisans on behalf of the Union cause.

The Knight claim was just one of thousands emerging from the war ravaged South.  As soon as hostilities concluded, Southern civilians claiming Unionist sympathies began petitioning for reimbursement of property appropriated by the federal military.  Meanwhile, a significant number of Southern men had died or been disabled while serving in the Union Army.

Congress provided four means by which Southerners identifying themselves as loyal could seek compensation:

1) Union Army pensions.  Historian Richard N. Current estimated that 104,000 white males from the Confederate states who fought in the Union Army, including 2,700 recruited from Northern prisoner-of-war camps.  They generally fell under the series of laws passed by Congress to provide financial support for disabled Union soldiers and survivors of those who died in service.  However, a key restriction on these benefits, described below, would have serious implications for a number of these men.

2) Southern Claims Commission.  Established in 1871, the SCC had the narrow but contentious mission of validating claims by Southern loyalists for property requisitioned or seized by federal troops for military use.  In order to receive compensation, claimants underwent extensive investigations designed to expose the actual extent of their Unionism.

3) Private claims.  From its inception, Congress has had the power to introduce private legislation on behalf of constituents.  It quickly created a number of standing committees to evaluate these claims.  To be enacted, private bills had to be favorably reported out of committee, passed in identical form by both houses of Congress, and be signed into law by the President.

4) Court of Claims.  Congress established the Court of Claims in 1855 to lessen the burden of evaluating the deluge of private claims.  Over time Congress gradually expanded the scope and authority of the Court of Claims.  This was the body that issued the final ruling on Knight’s claim in 1900.

While Newt Knight did not seek Union Army pension benefits or redress through the Southern Claims Commission, the standards developed by those entities delineate political sentiments common in the postwar era.  As early as July of 1862, Congress inserted language into pension legislation excluding all persons who supported the Confederacy. This restriction was codified in 1873 as Section 4716 of the Revised Statutes, which stated:

“No money on account of pension shall be paid to any person, or to the widow, children, or heirs of any deceased person, who in any manner voluntarily engaged in, or aided, or abetted, the late rebellion against the authority of the United States.”

The Section 4716 prohibition, originally aimed at officers from the pre-war Army who had sided with the South, later applied to Union veterans with any prior Confederate service.  The exclusion ignored conscription laws enacted by the Confederacy beginning in April of 1862.  Southerners who opposed secession believed their enlistment in the wake of this legislation was not voluntary;  it simply allowed the enlistee to select his unit and avoid the stigma of conscription.  Congress refused to accept this line of reasoning and insisted that Southern soldiers either, a) voluntarily joined the Confederate military, or, b) had been conscripted, but still with a presumption of willing service.  It naturally followed that those who voluntarily participated in the rebellion were deemed traitors to the Union, not loyalists. (Note 2)

Hanson Walters of Jones County does not appear on the Knight Band rosters, but like many of its members he enlisted in the 7th Battalion Mississippi Infantry on 12 May 1862.  The number of men who joined the 7th Battalion at the same time indicates the coercive impact of the first Conscription Act.  Hanson served through the siege of Vicksburg but, after being paroled by Union forces, failed to report to the Confederate exchange camp.  He was declared AWOL as of 23 August 1863.

When troops entered the Piney Woods to round up Confederate deserters, Hanson headed south and, along with two hundred other Mississippians, joined the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry Regiment.  He remained a U.S. soldier until honorably discharged on 1 June 1866.  Three decades later, in 1898, sixty-one year old Hanson Walters applied for a Union disability pension citing rheumatism.  He was rejected under Section 4716 due to his earlier service in 7th Battalion.  In 1902 Congress finally exempted most Southern Union veterans from the disbarment.  Hanson re-applied and received a disability pension until his death on 24 Dec 1910.

Rejected pension application of Hanson Walters, veteran of the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry, based on prior Confederate service.  The notation reads, “Claimant rendered voluntary service in the C.S.A. as shown by his own affidavit & the report from the records of the War Dept.”

The postwar definition of loyalty is further exemplified in the work of the Southern Claims Commission.  Recall that the SCC evaluated claims arising from goods being commandeered by Union forces from loyal Southerners.  SCC officials developed an array of procedures to investigate the merits of each case.  Examiners disseminated notices of hearings so anyone who wished to dispute claimed Unionism could testify.  A standard set of fifty-one questions probed the full extent of wartime attitudes and actions.  A sampling of these questions indicates SCC tests for loyalty:

5.  On which side were your sympathies during the war and were they on the same side from beginning to end?

13.  Did you adhere to the Union cause after the States passed into rebellion, or did you go with your State?

46.  Were you in the Confederate army,  State Militia,  or any military or naval organization hostile to the United States? … If you claim that you were conscripted, when and where was it, how did you receive notice, and from whom, and what was the precise manner in which the conscription was enforced against you?  If you were never in the rebel army or other hostile organization, explain how you escaped service.

Endorsements from Union men in high positions counted for little.  SCC historian Frank W. Klingberg noted the case of a Mrs. Evans of Louisiana, the sole heir to her late father’s sugar plantation—whom she asserted was a loyalist.  She received a letter of support from Republican Congressman Benjamin F. Butler, a former Civil War general who had gained Southern infamy during his tenure as military commander over New Orleans.  Furthermore, the man serving as current military governor of New Orleans appeared as a witness on her behalf.  But testimony from neighbors and acquaintances cast doubts on the loyalty of the late Mr. Evans and the claim was rejected.

So were many others.  The strict standards employed by the SCC overcame the initial mistrust of Northern congressmen.  Over the course of its existence (1871-1880), the SCC evaluated 22,298 cases seeking compensation totaling $60,258,150.  Of these, only 7,092 passed investigative scrutiny (31.8%) with final federal payments totaling $4,636,930—7.7% of the original amount sought.

As the foregoing demonstrates, in the aftermath of the war Congress adopted a highly restrictive definition of wartime loyalty.  Claimants had to provide strong evidence of consistent support for the Union cause before and throughout the war, regardless of the perils of such a stance.  To have acquiesced to Confederate authority at any point during the conflict meant one forfeited a claim to loyalty.

Measured against this benchmark, the Newt Knight Relief Bill bore an unstated onus.  Of the 55 men listed, at least 35 (63.6%) served in the Confederate military, mostly in the period between May 1862 and August 1863.  Furthermore, 30 of these—including Newt Knight—belonged to a single unit: the 7th Battalion, Mississippi Infantry.  It seems clear that in the spring of 1862 few Piney Woods yeomen considered draft evasion a realistic option.  They became pawns in the conflict between two rival powers.  As a result, they were viewed by wartime Confederate officials as recalcitrant conscripts turned bushwhackers and by postwar federal officials as willing rebels who later shifted their loyalty.  (Note 3, 4)

The submission of the Newt Knight claim as a private relief bill did not circumvent these difficulties; in many ways it exacerbated them.  Over the course of the nineteenth century, nearly half a million relief petitions arrived in Congress.  This produced a chaotic process in which thousands of private bills competed for attention in each session.  Only the least contentious and most straightforward claims had some chance of surviving the legislative process, and the Knight Bill was neither.

The inauguration of Union military hero Ulysses S. Grant as president in 1868 raised further obstacles.  President Grant quickly came to resent what he deemed as Congressional meddling in matters best left to the proper agencies, such as the Pension Office and the War Department.  He referred questionable relief bills that survived the legislative process to the appropriate executive agencies for review.  If their findings were unfavorable, and they almost inevitably were, Grant either issued a formal veto message or else exercised a pocket veto.  Grant’s vigorous stance can be measured by the fact that his seventeen presidential predecessors vetoed a total of 88 legislative measures, while he alone vetoed 93.  Forty-three of these were private relief bills, of which Congress managed to override only three.

During Grant’s second term (1872-1876), the Congressional landscape experienced drastic changes.  In 1873 the nation plunged into a prolonged economic depression.  This, combined with a series of corruption scandals, resulted in extensive Republican losses during the Congressional elections of 1874.  Democrats gained 94 seats in the House of Representatives, becoming a majority with 62% of the membership. The new arrivals included 56 Democrats from the eleven states which had comprised the former Confederacy, bringing with them strong ideological ties to the Lost Cause.

This political upheaval held serious implications for the 1880 Newt Knight Relief Bill.  Mississippi Republican Senator Blanche K. Bruce, who introduced the bill, did so with full knowledge that politically resurgent white Democrats in his state had doomed his senatorial career.  The Knight Bill went to the Senate Committee on Claims, chaired by Missouri Democrat Francis Marion Cockrell.  During the Civil War,  Cockrell had joined the Confederate Army and risen to the rank of brigadier general.  He participated in the defense of Vicksburg, where many men from the 7th Battalion, Mississippi Infantry and other Piney Woods companies concluded their war was over, and never returned after their parole by the Union Army.  Francis Cockrell, on the other hand, served until the end of the war.  We might assume him not to be favorably disposed towards the petition of those who, in defense of their own private armistice, took up arms against the Confederacy.  The 1880 Newt Knight Relief Bill never emerged from his committee.

Statements outlining the burden of proof for former Confederate soldiers seeking to establish Union loyalty. (Decisions of the Department of Interior in Appealed Pension and Bounty-Land Claims, Vol 7 [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1895], 586.)

In 1895 another submission of the Newt Knight Relief Bill finally received a hearing before the Congressional Court of Claims.  Three decades after the events under review, however, government attorneys still avoided the core issue of whether partisan activities on behalf of the Union might justify payment, even if conducted by ex-Confederates.  Instead, they focused on exposing discrepancies in the fading memories of the aged witnesses and rebutting stories of a failed attempt by Union troops to muster the band.  The matter of Confederate service did emerge.  But when government witness Joel E. Welborn candidly acknowledged the Unionist sentiments of many men who had deserted his 7th Battalion command, the court attorney felt it best to drop the subject.  The Court of Claims issued a final denial of the Knight petition in 1900. (Note 5)

None of this is meant to discount the actions of the Knight Band in their place and time, but merely to underscore difficulties confronting his unusual quest for compensation.  The postwar Northern Republican definition of loyalty held no place for the grudging Confederate enlistees of 1862.   And later ex-Confederate lawmakers deemed wartime Unionism as treason to the Lost Cause.  If Newt Knight never understood the political obstacles which doomed his petitions, he eventually acknowledged their end result.  Talking to an interviewer a year before his death in 1922, he commented, “We’ll all die guerrillas, I’ll reckon . . . Always was inofficial.”

Notes:

1.  Newt Knight, identified on rosters as captain of the unit, sought $2,000; those identified as lieutenants were listed for amounts ranging from $325 to $1,800; and those designated as privates for $300.  The variation in payments for the lieutenants resists explanation.   But dividing the individual amounts by the monthly pay rate for a Union captain ($115.50) and for enlisted men ($16) equates to back wages for approximately 18 months of service.

2.  The enactment of the Section 4716, Revised Statutes disbarment for those formerly in the Confederate military did not mean it could be rigorously enforced.  At war’s end, 17 Piney Woods widows filed for survivor benefits after their husbands died during service in the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry.  A search reveals that eight of these men had previously served in the Confederacy.  Nevertheless, all applications were approved.  By the late 1880s, the federal bureaucracy had made marked improvements in its ability to cross-check service records.  This produced an increasing number of denials of disability claims filed by aging Southern Union veterans such as Hanson Walters.

3.  Another perplexing matter are records showing that Newt Knight first enlisted for Confederate service in 1861, well in advance of conscription legislation.  He joined Capt. John L. Sanson’s Company of the 8th Mississippi Infantry on 17 August 1861 with the understanding he would be granted a one month furlough—from which he apparently never returned. Those listed on the relief bill who did not serve in the Confederacy for the most part avoided the conscription laws due to their youth and the community shift towards anti-Confederate sentiment by the summer of 1863: seven of those claimants were 14 or younger on the 1860 census, while another eight were 15 or 16 years old.

4.  Despite stringent requirements, records indicate some men in the Knight Band and elsewhere in the region could have passed the Congressional tests for consistent Union loyalty.  Among them were 1st New Orleans Infantry enlistees Riley J. Collins and Robert Spencer.

5.  For a detailed analysis of the government’s 1895 hearing, see Victoria Bynum, chapter four, Long Shadow of the Civil War; for a Q & A between the author and the University of North Carolina Press regarding this book, click here.

Sources:

The following authors and works were used in compiling this post:  Victoria E. Bynum, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern dissent and its legacies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 77-96; Richard N. Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists: Union soldiers from the Confederacy (Chicago: Northwest University Press, 1992), 213-218; Thomas J. Knight, The Life and Activities of Captain Newton Knight and his Company and the Free State of Jones County (Laurel: Carolyn & Keith Horne [reprint of 1946 edition], 2009), 103; Frank W. Klingberg, “The Southern Claims Commission: A postwar agency in operation,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol 32, No 2 (Sep, 1945), 195-214; Charles E. Schamel, “Untapped resources: Private claims and private legislation in the Records of the U.S. Congress,” Prologue, Vol 27, No 1 (Spring, 1995) http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1995/spring/private-claims-1.html; and Margaret M. Storey, Loyalty and Loss: Alabama’s Unionists in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 237-253.

Information on the membership of the 44^th Congress (1875-1877) is available on Wikipedia at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44th_United_States_Congress;  data on presidential vetoes and a detailed list of those invoked by Ulysses S. Grant can be found at:  http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/presvetoes17891988.pdf

Read Full Post »

Newt Knight: The story goes on forever . . .

Despite all the research that’s been conducted on Newt Knight, new material is still being discovered! After Grady Howell of the State Archives in Jackson, MS, discovered yet another example of Newt’s several attempts to gain federal compensation for himself, independent historian Ed Payne immediately went to work gathering more information about this 1880 claim and the unlikely alliance it forged between two controversial men of their time.  Beginning with the prologue that follows, Ed’s analysis will be published in three parts. My thanks to Grady and Ed!

Vikki Bynum, Moderator

Prologue: Newt Knight’s 1880 Relief Bill

By Ed Payne

Newt Knight

On 17 February 1880, Mississippi Senator Blanche K. Bruce introduced before Congress a piece of legislation entitled, “A bill for the relief of Newton Knight and others . . . therein named.”  The discovery of this bill adds another episode to Newton Knight’s long, fruitless quest to obtain compensation for his and his men’s opposition to Confederate authority in Civil War Jones County.

The relief bill briefly linked the lives of two very different men: a rough-hewn yeoman from the Piney Woods whose iconoclasm made him a wartime leader and, later, a social outcast—and an ex-slave who had transformed himself into a plantation-owning Reconstruction era politician noted for his diplomacy and gentlemanly manner.

Recently, while reviewing microfilmed newspaper stories, Grady Howell of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History discovered an editorial denouncing the relief bill in the Jackson Daily Clarion of 3 March 1880.   He graciously provided me with the citation.  The text of the bill appeared on the same page and is reproduced below, with corrected or alternate (‘aka’) spelling of several names provided in brackets.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America Congress assembled.  That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby authorized to pay, out of any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to Newton Knight, two thousand dollars; to J.M. Valentine, one thousand eight hundred dollars; to Simeon Collins, one thousand six hundred dollars; to J.J. Collins and W.P. Tumbow [Turnbow], each three hundred and fifty dollars; to Alpheus Knight and S.G. Owens, each three hundred and twenty-five dollars; and to Tapley Bynum, P.M. Bynum, Montgomery Blackburn [Blackwell], J.W. Blackwell, J.M. Collins, B.H. Collins, M.C. Collins, M.M. Coals [Coats], S.C. Coleman, B.H. Cawley, R.J. Collins, James Ewlen, J.M. Gunter, Tucker Gregg, R.H. Hinton, John Hogan, J.M. Hathorn, G.M. Hathorn, W.R. Jones, M.W. Rurven [Curven, aka Kirven], S.W. Curven [aka Kirven], J.M. Knight, G.H. Knight, H.C. Knight, B.H. Knight, Lazarus Mathews, A. McDaniels, C.H. Prine, Daniel Redock [Reddoch], W.W. Sumrall, John J. Valentine, Patrick Valentine, M.R. Valentine, R.H. Valentine, Elijah Wilbon [Welborn], T.L. Welch, R.J. Welch, W.M. Welch, G.R. Welch, Y. Wilbon [Welborn], W.Y. Wilbon [Welborn], N.V. Whitehead, G.J. Whitehead, D.W. Whitehead, James Yates [aka Ates], Thomas Yates [aka Ates], Joseph Vaughn, and Moses Richardson, or their representatives, each the sum of three hundred dollars, the same being for services as officers and members of Knight’s company, United States infantry, during the years eighteen hundred and sixty-three, eighteen hundred and sixty-four, and eighteen hundred and sixty-five.

The facts behind Newt Knight’s petition can be summarized as follows: the Knight Band, composed primarily of Confederate deserters, was organized in Jones County, Mississippi, in October of 1863.  Comprised mostly of nonslaveowning yeomen from the region, its members either opposed secession from the outset or had become demoralized by the war’s impact on their families.

Contemporary accounts make it clear that the band enjoyed a considerable local support, understandable given the extensive kinship ties within the sparsely populated region.  Reports concerning the strength and activities of the band made their way as far as Richmond, Virginia.  In spring 1864 two successive campaigns were launched in an effort to bring the Knight Band to heel.  Forces led by Col. Robert Lowry captured and executed a dozen men, while forcing many others to surrender and rejoin their units or flee south to the Pearl River swamps.  However, a small remnant of men, including Knight, remained active in Jones County.  They eventually made contact with Union forces in Meridian and carried out assignments on their behalf. Convinced of the value of his wartime activities, Knight firstpetitioned thegovernment for compensation in 1870; that effort failed. (For a detailed history of the claims filed by Newton Knight in 1870, 1887, and 1891, see Victoria Bynum, “Fighting a Losing Battle,” Ch. 4, Long Shadow of the Civil War.)

U.S. Senate Chamber, 1877

The allies of Knight who forwarded his 1880 bill to Senator Bruce probably did so with full knowledge that the Republican would not be re-elected to his seat.  The Democratic Party had reclaimed most of Mississippi’s state government in 1876 on a platform of white racial solidarity.  Those now moving into positions of power were often ex-Confederate officers who had little reason to advance the claim of a traitor to The Lost Cause such as Knight.  The editorial comments of the Daily Clarion reflected that general attitude:

The Newton Knight Relief Bill.

In another column we have printed the bill, which a friend at Washington has been considerate enough to send us, that was introduced by Bruce a few days ago, in the United States Senate, for the “relief” of Newton Knight and other persons therein mentioned.  It was introduced by unanimous consent, read twice, and referred to the Committee on Claims.  The bill, if passed, would be a fraud on the government.  It is predicated on the fiction that the parties for whose benefit it purports to have been offered, rendered the United States Government service as “Knight’s Company United States Infantry,” in the late sectional war. From what we can learn there was no such company mustered into the United States Army.  The pretended military company, as we are informed, was for the most part a band of bushwackers, deserters from the Confederate army, and persons who escaped the vigilance of conscription officers, and from hiding places carried on a sort of predatory business at the expense of their neighbors who were in the Southern army.  A portion of them took refuge under the Butler government in New Orleans and never returned.  Some of the clan still live in the vicinity where they formerly resided, and have become law abiding, good citizens.  They were probably mislead (sic) in the first instance.  Knight himself, the chief beneficiary and the head of the clan, still lives in the Southern portion of Jasper county, and is “truly loyal” in living up to the social equality doctrines of the extreme Radicalism which he inculcates by precept and example, as essential elements of loyalty.  We are not prepared to forecast the fate of the Bruce bill; but it is due to candor to say that it is a fraud in the presumption that Knight and his clan were a company of United States soldiers.

The Daily Clarion’s description of the Knight Band falls on the more moderate side of postwar rhetoric.  Two allegations have remained common down to the present day: 1) that the Knight Band preyed upon the local populous, and 2) that Newt Knight deluded his followers into doing his bidding.

As Victoria Bynum pointed out in Free State of Jones, members of the Knight Band shared extensive kinship ties.  During the brief period in which it held power (October 1863 until April 1864), the band created anxiety among the region’s slave owners, raiding Confederate commissaries where the tax-in-kind produce confiscated from the area’s impoverished families was stored.  Knight was responsible for the murder of Confederate Major Amos McLemore, who sought to convince deserters to return to their units.  The band also killed several Confederate tax agents.  Thus the locals upon whom the band preyed were selected targets.  On the other hand, an officer participating in the Lowry campaign acknowledged that Confederate militia operating in the area had done much to provoke deep hostility among the general population.

Depictions of Newt Knight’s followers as pawns—led either by inspiration or duplicity—conveniently ignore the fact that the yeomen of the Piney Woods were routinely described as self-reliant and highly independent.  But writers often prefer simplistic narratives featuring a hero (or villain) of mythical proportions.  It is far easier to portray a man single-handedly instigating a rebellion than to grapple with the more complex story of a regional rebellion that, for a period of time, coalesced around his leadership.  Yet when over two hundred Piney Woods men trekked south in the spring of 1864 and agreed to join Union Army regiments in New Orleans, it was hardly due to the machinations of Newt Knight.  He remained in Jones County until the end of the war.

Finally, the editorial indicates that knowledge of Knight’s postwar relationship with former slave Rachel Knight and his mixed-race children with her, had reached Jackson.  For those promoting a political agenda based upon notions of racial purity, however dubious in actual practice, Newt’s personal life offered final proof of his “true loyalty” to “the social [i.e. racial] equality doctrines of the extreme Radicalism.  .  .  .”

Read Full Post »

The Collinses of Jones County, Mississippi: Selected Family Photos

Recently, Dean Collins, a descendant of Stacy and Sara Anderson Collins, shared with me several photos that I am pleased to post on Renegade South. Dean is descended from Stacy and Sara’s son, Vinson A. Collins of Jones County, Mississippi.

Vinson, (not to be mistaken for his nephew and namesake, Vinson A. Collins of East Texas) is pictured here:

Vinson A. Collins of Jones County, MS. Photo courtesy of Dean Collins

Born January 16, 1815, Vinson Collins was past the age of conscription during the Civil War. He was nonetheless as important a figure in Jones County’s anti-Confederate uprising–popularly known as the “Free State of Jones”–as were his numerous brothers, nephews, and cousins who took up arms against the Confederate Army. Even Vinson’s sister, Sarah Collins Walters Parker, is famous for having sheltered pro-Union family members at the expense of her own safety during the Civil War (Sarah’s own son, George Walters, served and died for the Confederate cause during the war).

Soon after the Civil War ended, on July 15, 1865, many of Jones County’s anti-Confederate citizens petitioned Mississippi’s provisional governor, William L. Sharkey, to overturn the county’s 1864  ”rebel” elections of probate judge and sheriff and fill those offices with Unionists. Governor Sharkey compromised by allowing dual appointments of both the pro-Union and pro-Confederate candidates. His decision resulted in pro-Union Vinson A. Collins serving alongside pro-Confederate William Hood as probate judge of Jones County.

Three years later, during Reconstruction, Vinson briefly served as delegate to the 1868 Mississippi Constitutional Convention from Smith and Jones County. (Note: the state legislature had previously renamed Jones “Davis County” in honor of Jefferson Davis, but the name “Jones” was restored in 1870).

Below is the back side of the same photo of Vinson A. Collins. Dean reports that the inscription was likely recorded by his grandmother, Bertie Wigington Collins.

Inscription on back of photo. Courtesy of Dean Collins

The following group photograph includes Clay Crittenden Collins (1853-1940), a son of Vinson and Nancy (Bynum) Collins, and his wife Clarissa, “Classie,” (1864-1950). Dean’s grandmother, Bertie Collins, speculated that the photo was taken at the old Lebanon school/church house. Dean believes that it is “most likely a Collins family gathering” since so many members of the Collins family seem present. Following the photograph is  a diagram that identifies a few of the people who were gathered that day. Readers are welcome to offer opinions of who’s who by keying additional names to the diagram numbers.

Group gathering including Clay and Clarissa Collins. Photo courtesy of Dean Collins.

Outline of group photo, courtesy of Dean Collins. Please help identify if you can!

Below is a close-up of Clay Crittenden Collins, son of Vinson A. and Nancy (Bynum) Collins, standing with wife Clarissa around the year 1917:

Clay and Classie (Clarissa) Collins, circa 1917. Photo courtesy of Dean Collins

Here is a 1925 photo of a school class of Soso, Mississippi. Bennie Crittenden Collins, son of John Calhoun and Francis (Hinton) Collins, grandson of Clay and Clarissa Collins, and great-grandson of Vinson A. and Nancy Collins, is kneeling in front row, second from left:

Soso School Days, circa 1925, courtesy of Dean Collins. Bennie Collins is in front row, 2nd from left. Can anyone identify any of the others?

Thank you so much, Dean Collins, for sharing these family photos with Renegade South!

Vikki Bynum

Read Full Post »

Ed Payne, “Piney Woods Research: Civil War and other documents available on FamilySearch”

A note to Jones County, Mississippi, descendants: In this post, Ed Payne shares documents featuring numerous ancestors by name that you may never have seen! My thanks to Ed for once again publishing his careful research on Renegade South.

Vikki Bynum, moderator

by Ed Payne

A few weeks ago I made one of my frequent visits to the William Winter Library at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.  My task was to search out a state Confederate pension file.  I located the microfilm roll and was happy to find it relatively free of scratches.  So I printed the image (which typically under-exposes the top and bottom of the image) in order to scan it to my computer as a jpeg file.  While attempting to produce a half-way decent reproduction, a staffer came by and mentioned that these records were now available on the FamilySearch website.  Curious, I returned to my office and tracked down the file.  I was amazed to find the same image in pristine condition and downloadable as a jpeg file.  Indeed, the image was so sharp I could see the embossed notary public seal.  I decided to take a closer look at the Mississippi-related records that have been added to the FamilySearch site.

FamilySearch is a free repository of genealogy-oriented materials hosted by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (LDS).  LDS teams have microfilmed a wide assortment of state and county records over the last half century.  Like many genealogists, I initially made use of FamilySearch because it was free.  But after I began researching in state archives and subscribing to services such as Ancestry and Fold3, my use of FamilySearch fell by the wayside—until the helpful tip prompted me to re-evaluate what the site has to offer.  The answer is that FamilySearch provides access to some very valuable source documents for those interested in the Civil War and its impact on the Mississippi Piney Woods region.

To view these records, go to the FamilySearch home page (https://www.familysearch.org).  Scroll down to the bottom half of the page to reveal the ‘Browse by Location’ selector and click on ‘United States.’  When the next page appears, select ‘Mississippi’ from the list of states.  The Mississippi records are organized into 10 groups, of which three pertain only to Tippah County.  Other than marriage records, which have been transcribed into a database, and a caveat concerning Civil War service records discussed below, all other materials are images of original documents.  In the remainder of this article I will offer an overview of the records found in the six statewide image collections, and specifically those pertaining to Jones County.

FamilySearch Mississippi Page

1) Mississippi Confederate records, 1882-1949

This record group consists of 27,040 images subdivided by county.  Note that while pension rolls are located in this category, individual Confederate pension applications are found in the next group.  The Jones County files include the following:

Confederate pension reports, 1916-1932

Enumeration of Confederate veterans and widows, 1907

Enumeration of Confederate veterans and widows, 1932

Indigent and disabled Confederate soldiers and dependents, 1863-1868

Indigent and disabled Confederate soldiers and dependents, 1867

Of these, I found the Jones County records in the ‘1863-1868’ subgroup the most interesting.  They are actually a portion of a statewide survey undertaken in early 1864.  The purpose was to ascertain the names of all men who had enlisted in CSA units, as well as tallying the women and children deemed indigent as a result of the war.

The list of 477 soldiers is probably the most comprehensive enumeration of Jones County men who joined, however willingly or grudgingly, Confederate units.  Even though the Knight Band had formed the previous October, and many of its members were known to the county supervisors conducting the survey, their inclusion on the lists indicates the supervisors’ diligent effort to record all Confederate enlistees—regardless of their subsequent actions against the Confederacy.  For example, among the names recorded within Beat 2 West of the Tallahoma were those of Knight Band members Terrell (‘Tirrel’) Welborn [111], Timothy Welch [116], Lazarus Mathews (‘Mathis’) [117], Patrick Valentine [118], and Jasper (‘J.J.’) Collins [124].  Also listed was William Mauldin [122], who would enlist in the Union 1st New Orleans within three months.

1864 CSA Survey, Beat 2W

A closer examination of the documents suggests the determination of which women and children were considered destitute may have been subjective.  In Beat 1, 31 women were tallied as destitute out of 85 soldiers listed (the subtotals on the documents contain addition errors).  In Beat 2 East of the Tallahoma, however, every wife and child of the 34 soldiers was classified in that condition.

2) Mississippi Confederate Veterans and Widows pension applications, 1900-1974

In 1888, the Mississippi legislature authorized the first annual pensions for CSA veterans who had lost a limb or been otherwise incapacitated during the Civil War.  Two years later the new state constitution included destitute widows under its provisions.  The 117,637 pension application documents in this group are subdivided by surname (e.g., ‘Aaron-Aikins’), with each containing anywhere from 475 to 775 documents. These applications date from 1900 onward; pension rolls covering the period 1889-1900 are found in the ‘Mississippi Confederate records, 1882-1949’ group.

Pension applications provide information on the residence of the applicant, the name of the soldier / veteran (if filed by his widow), date and place of marriage, date and place of soldier’s enlistment, and the unit in which he served.  On the reverse, the information was attested to by one or more witnesses and authorized by the county’s Chancery Clerk and members of the Board of Supervisors.  It is possible to find multiple records for a single veteran in the files.  Periodic revisions in the pension law required submission of new applications.  Also, when veterans died their widows had to file under their own name.

Locating records for a specific individual can be tedious, since a process of elimination is required to bracket the page range within which the application sought should be located.  If the application was filed by the widow of a soldier, it will be arranged according to her given name.  The size of each image file (nearly two megabytes) makes for slow loading.  Therefore, one’s best bet is to check on local availability of Mississippi Confederate Pension Applications by Betty C. Wiltshire (Carrolton, MS: Pioneer Press, 1994).  This three volume index includes the name of the applicant, name of the veteran, unit in which the veteran served, application year, and county of residence.  The index can verify if pension files exist and under what name(s).

State pension officials depended on the county supervisors to exercise vigilance in rejecting ineligible veterans and widows.  County officials, on the other hand, were inclined to approve applications where circumstances warranted and generally applied pragmatic standards as to what constituted ‘honorable service’ to the Confederacy.  For example, Merida (aka Merady, Marada) M. Coats enlisted in Company F of the 7th Battalion, Mississippi Infantry on 13 May 1862.  Subsequent muster rolls show him AWOL from July 1863 through February 1864.  As previously noted, the Knight Band organized in October of 1863 and his name appears on the rosters.  But when Confederate Colonel Robert Lowry led his forces into the Piney Woods in April of 1864, Merida was among the renegades who fell into his dragnet.  Sent back to his unit, he became a captive of Union forces at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia on 3 July 1864.  He was imprisoned at Camp Morton, Indiana for the remainder of the war and finally released on 20 May 1865.

Merida Coats apparently never applied for a Mississippi Confederate pension, but seven years after his death in January of 1917 his widow Sarah did.  Jones County supervisors approved her application and the signature of U.S. (Ulysses Sherman) Collins, the son of Newt Knight lieutenant Jasper Collins, was affixed in his capacity as Jones County Chancery Clerk.

Sarah L. Coats, pension application

3) Mississippi Enumeration of Educable Children, 1850-1892, 1908-1957

The records of Educable Children for Jones County available on FamilySearch are currently limited to 1920 and bi-annual listings from 1927 through 1949.  Still, they can be used as a supplement to census data.  The enumerations are generally organized by incorporated areas (subdivided by Wards) and elsewhere by Township / Range.  Listings are further broken down by race.  Since the lists are lengthy (303 pages for 1920; 499 pages for 1949), finding a family can be difficult without knowledge of their location during the time period.

4) Mississippi State Archives, various records, 1820-1951

This group is subdivided by county.  The Jones County records include tax rolls for the years 1827-1837 and Civil War records compiled by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) circa 1936-1939.  The late Jean Strickland transcribed nineteenth century tax records for many Piney Woods counties, but FamilySearch provides the opportunity to see the document images.  For example, the 1827 tax rolls were compiled the year Jones County was established and listed the early settlers on 25 pages.  The tax records consisted of two sections:  1) an audit of personal property owned, including both slaves and livestock, and 2) an audit of real estate ownership. The county’s first tax assessor was Stacy Collins, who would have several sons and nephews join the Knight Band 36 years later.

1827 Jones Co., MS, tax roll

Stacy Collins; 1827 tax roll letter

The Civil War records subgroup consists of 43 images of a folder and its contents.  Of these 31 are rough notes, while six comprise a typescript of Confederate veterans and widows enumerated in 1907, and five are typescripts of the muster rolls for the 7th Battalion MS Infantry, Companies B, C, and F; 8th MS Infantry, Company K; and 27th MS Infantry, Company B.

The typescript of the 1907 enumeration lists 166 persons who resided in Jones County at that time and were receiving Mississippi Confederate pensions.  The information was transcribed from notebooks provided to the surveyors.  (Images of the actual notebooks are found in the ‘Mississippi Confederate records, 1882-1949’ group.)  It should be pointed that Mississippi, like most other Southern states, authorized pensions for those who joined Confederate units formed in other states.  Thus out-of-state Confederate veterans who relocated to the Piney Woods when the timber boom began in the 1880s could later apply for a Mississippi pension.  The transcript includes the state of enlistment.

The typescript of enlistees by regiment and company represents efforts by WPA researchers to compile comprehensive muster rolls.  In doing so, the muster rolls included not only those residing in Jones County, but enlistees from surrounding counties as well.  Thus, although Newt Knight lived in bordering Jasper County, the typescript includes his enrollment in Company F of the 7th Battalion (‘Knight, Newton’ third from bottom of first column).  This explains why the list totals 615 names—more men than were of military age in Jones County alone.

MS 7th battalion, Co. F

The WPA muster roll typescripts, combined with the 1864 enumeration, provide a means to identify the men from Jones County who served in the Confederacy.  From this we may be able to better assess the proportion of men who joined the Knight Band and/or enlisted in the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry.

5) Mississippi, Civil War Service Records of Confederate soldiers, 1861-1865 and 6) Mississippi, Civil War Service Records of Union soldiers, 1861-1865

Despite the promising introductory text, FamilySearch does not provide access to muster roll records.  Instead, these groups merely allow one to conduct a search of the FamilySearch database by entering a first and last name.  If the search is successful, FamilySearch provides a link to the records on Fold3—but a subscription is required for full access.

All-in-all, the array of original document images added to FamilySearch is intriguing.  Those who research the history and genealogy of the nineteenth century Piney Woods of Mississippi—or those whose quest is further afield—owe it to themselves to visit FamilySearch and familiarize themselves with the materials now available.

– Ed Payne

Note:  The images downloaded from FamilySearch and reproduced for this post were modified using PhotoScape software.  The modifications were done to increase legibility and compensate for the considerable reduction in detail necessitated by WordPress requirements (illustrations limited to a maximum horizontal resolution of 500 pixels).

Read Full Post »

Ed Payne, “Unionist Naming of Mississippi Children–Revisited”

In 2010, I published on Renegade South a study of the naming of white male Mississippi children during the period from 1861 through 1880, wondering if certain names might provide evidence of Civil War or post-Civil War Unionist sentiments.  Hundreds of African-American sons born during this period were given names reflective of the Union trinity of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman.  As might be expected, similar naming among white Mississippians was rare.  My initial inquiry produced a list of 54 persons.

After posting those results, I came across several more names, all associated with Ulysses S. Grant.  Why had these individuals been missed?  The answer lay in my failure to consider the many spelling permutations possible for ‘Ulysses.’  Parents and census enumerators proved highly inventive in rendering the name as Ulepes, Ulissus, Euilas, etc.  So I broadened the scope to encompass a wider array of spellings. I also extended my search for those possibly named after the three luminaries into the 1900 census, although I retained only those born within the study’s original 1861-1880 timeframe.

In addition to census data, I queried public family trees on Ancestry.com for Mississippians named after the Union trio.  Due to the dubious reliability of information found on public family trees, I only added those identifiable on a Mississippi census and whose public tree name could be verified through census or other records. The new searches yielded 42 additional individuals.

It bears repeating that the table provides a basis for exploring Unionist connections, but does not assert that such connections existed in every case.  It was common for nineteenth century Southerners to choose given names out of a store of family surnames.  Thus a given name of ‘Sherman’ or ‘Grant’ might simply reflect this tendency.  And since the name ‘Ulysses’ appears on pre-war censuses, it cannot be assumed to invariably denote Ulysses S. Grant thereafter.

Further research resulted in my deleting six names from the original 54 and making one substantial change.  (Note 1)  The revised table now consists of 90 names, of which 83 (93%) were native Mississippians. What follows are some of the stories that emerged from my research.  In all cases where only a county is cited, the state is Mississippi. (Note 2)

_________________

The naming of sons sometimes offers tantalizing hints of post-war divisions within families.  Solomon Isaiah Durham was born in Georgia circa 1826 and migrated to Mississippi by 1850.  The 1860 Chickasaw County census listed him as the owner of three slaves: two males, age 37 and nine, and a female age 13.  His household included three sons, the middle of whom was Isaiah, born in 1855.  Although Solomon fell within the Confederate conscription age range, no Civil War military records have been located for him.  Still, in 1870 he named a son Robert Lee Durham.  This would hardly be worth noting except for the fact that eight years later Isaiah named his first-born son Ulysses Grant Durham.  It is unclear whether Solomon died before or after the birth of Ulysses.  The implied differences between father and son did not prevent Isaiah from naming another child, born in 1885, after his late father.  While in his early twenties, Ulysses Grant Durham moved to San Angelo, Texas, where he resided until his death in 1924.  His uncle Robert Lee Durham farmed in Winston County and died there in 1940.

Young white Mississippians who bore names associated with the trio of Union leaders must have endured verbal taunts or worse, whether or not their names were actually intended to honor those individuals or not.  As a result, name changes occasionally appear to have taken place.  Take the case of U. Grant Shumpert (transcribed by Ancestry.com as ‘N. Grant’).  The 1870 census for Itawamba County listed him as the two-year-old son of Bailey Shumpert, who owned five slaves in 1860.  Bailey’s election as policeman for his district in 1861 would have exempted him from Civil War military service.  We do not know what inspired Bailey to name his son “U. Grant” in December 1867, but by 1880 the census listed the same child as Daniel Shumpert.  When he died nine years later at age 21, his tombstone was inscribed ‘Daniel G. Shumpert.’  According to family genealogies, the middle initial stood for ‘Grant.’  Similarly, the 1880 census for Itawamba County showed Emily Butler with a son born circa 1872 named Ulysses Butler.  Two decades later, Emily lived in the household of a son who reported being born in October of 1871—but who now identified himself as Joseph T. Butler.

Despite the rising tide of Lost Cause sentiment, some sons maintained their birth names throughout their lives.  As previously noted, in 1867 Jasper Collins, a Jones County Unionist and member of the Knight Band, named his first son born after the war Ulysses Sherman Collins.  That appellation did not prevent U.S. Collins from holding several elective posts in his home county, where he was generally known by the nickname ‘Lyss.’  And he was far from the only white male in the central Piney Woods with a Unionist name.  Among his contemporaries were:  Sherman Beech (b 1868), Lincoln Bynum (b 1861), Sherman Cawley (b 1870), Ulysses Grant Landrum (b 1864), Abraham Lincoln Lee (b 1862), Ulysses P. Walters (b 1868), and Ulysses Grant Welborn (b 1865).

Given the mortality rates that existed in the nineteenth century, it’s not surprising that some of those listed only appear on one census.  Lincoln Bosman was a one-year-old when listed with his mother on the 1870 census of Tippah County.  A decade later, the mother and a sister appear in Benton County but Lincoln is no longer found in the household.  The same is true of Ulysses Campbell (1869, Alcorn County), Ulysses Cotton (1870, Carroll County), William T. Sherman Haws and Abraham Lincoln Haws (1870, Choctaw County), Ulysses Upchurch (1880, Calhoun County) and several others.

In one case, both the motive for the naming of a child and the circumstances of his early death have been preserved.  John A. Klein migrated from Virginia to Vicksburg in 1836, where he prospered first as a jeweler and subsequently in a host of business ventures.  Six years after his arrival, at age 30, he married 16-year-old Elizabeth Bartley Day and proceeded to build a lavish home called Cedar Grove.  In the summer of 1863 Vicksburg was besieged by Union forces and Cedar Grove, like the rest of the city, came under artillery fire.  A pregnant Elizabeth Klein had fled the city and taken shelter in a log house near the Big Black River.  There her path intersected with General William T. Sherman, who commanded forces in the area.  Sherman was related to Elizabeth by marriage.  His sister, Susan Denman Sherman, had wed one of Elizabeth’s maternal uncles.  The general offered Elizabeth safe passage to the East under the proviso that Cedar Grove would be utilized as a military hospital until the end of the war.  That September Elizabeth named her newborn son William T. Sherman Klein.  The Klein family eventually reunited and moved back to Cedar Grove.  Elizabeth suffered social ostracism owing to her relationship with Sherman and, as a not so subtle rejoinder, never removed a cannon ball lodged in a parlor wall.  In July of 1879, two months before he would have turned sixteen, William T.S. Klein suffered a fatal chest wound when a friend’s gun accidentally discharged.

Cedar Grove

_________________

Roan L. Barrentine, the father of ‘Ulissus A. Barrentine,’ was born in Calhoun County in 1843.  He enlisted in Company K of the 30th MS Infantry at Carrolton on 27 February 1862, with his name recorded as ‘Roan L. Barentine.’  On 31 December 1862 he suffered a severe wound at the Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee and, after hospitalization, was issued a surgeon’s furlough to return home and recuperate.  Family genealogies indicate he married Cecila Ann Dunn shortly thereafter.  Regimental muster rolls bear the notation “Deserted the CSA August 21, 1863,” while records on the federal side show him admitted to their lines at Bridgeport, Alabama on 9 November 1863.  Roan was forwarded to the Military Prison in Louisville, Kentucky where he took an oath of loyalty to the Union on November 16 and agreed to spend the remainder of the war north of the Ohio River.

R.L. Barrentine POW record

After the war Roan returned home and began a family.  He named his fourth son, born in September of 1874, Ulysses Adelbert Barrentine.  The name is doubly suggestive of Unionist/Republican sentiment.  Adelbert Ames, a native of Maine and Union major general, had been appointed provision military governor of Mississippi in 1868.  Two years later he was elected by the state legislature to serve as U.S. Senator.  He returned to Mississippi in 1873 to engage in a bitter struggle for the Governorship against fellow Republican James Lusk Alcorn.  Alcorn was an Illinois native who had moved to Mississippi in 1844 and served as a Confederate brigadier general.  He headed the moderate faction of the Republican Party while Ames led the Radical wing.  Alcorn succeeded Ames as governor and then briefly joined him in the Senate.  However, the two were implacable foes and made the 1874 gubernatorial contest their battleground.  Ames won the political battle for the governor’s office, but it ultimately cost his party the Reconstruction war.  As the Republican Party splintered, the Democrats united under the banner of white racial solidarity and took control of the state legislature in late 1875.  The legislature immediately drew up articles of impeachment against Ames.  Aware that President Ulysses S. Grant had turned a deaf ear to his pleas for federal troops, Ames resigned his office in March of 1876 in exchange for impeachment charges being dropped.

Adelbert Ames

Roan Barrentine’s choice of the names ‘Ulysses’ and ‘Adelbert’ for his son in 1874 hardly seems the action of a man oblivious to national and state politics.  No records have been found to indicate if Roan’s political leanings found expression other than in the naming of his son.  What is known is that Ulysses A. Barrentine, age eighteen, died on 12 June 1893.  The Greenwood Enterprise on 16 June 1893 carried this small news item on page 3:

Mr. R.L. Barrentine, of Hemingway, passed through Greenwood Wednesday morning for Coahoma county to have the remains of his son, John, removed to Carroll county.  The young man was either killed or took his own life.  There was a woman in the case.

Although the son was cited as ‘John’ in the article, cemetery records of the Centerville Baptist Cemetery in Carroll County make it clear that the victim was Ulysses.  Family lore, supported by census records, holds that after the death of Ulysses the woman in question found herself to be pregnant and married a much older man.  Dropping the ‘A’ from the father’s middle name, she named the child Delbert.

In his old age, Roan Barrentine recast himself as a steadfast soldier of the stars and bars.  He filed for a Mississippi Confederate pension in 1929, asserting his service until the war ended.  A year later he was admitted to Beauvoir, a retirement home for aged Confederate veterans on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  Roan remained at Beauvoir until his death in May of 1934.  His body was returned to Greenwood and interred at the Poplar Springs Cemetery.  The change in loyalties reflected in his Civil War records and the provocative naming of his son were long forgotten.  His hometown Greenwood Commonwealth observed his passing with the usual encomiums reserved for the dwindling ranks of Confederate veterans.

_________________

The 1880 census of Lafayette County listed ‘Eulsyses M. Wilson’ as an 11 year-old male in the household of ‘M. Wilson’ age 45.  M. Wilson—born Massmiller Price in Fayette County, Tennessee in 1835—was the son of Washington Price and his bride Rebecca Wilson.  However, Rebecca filed for divorce in 1837 and soon thereafter Washington Price wed Francis Harris.  Two years later Rebecca married Roderick Williams.  By the 1840s both couples had relocated to Lafayette County.  Washington Price drew upon his wealthy family connections in North Carolina to develop one of the largest cotton plantations in the county.  The 1850 census showed Price as the owner of 71 slaves and real estate valued at $40,000.  Roderick Williams owned no slaves and reported real estate worth $500.

Rebecca Wilson Williams died in the mid-1840s.  Massmiller assumed the Williams surname of his stepfather.  However, family researchers state that shortly after Massmiller married, Washington Price offered him a significant sum of money to change his surname.  This is supported by Lafayette County records which list a marriage between ‘M.N. Williams’ and Nancy Jane Lamb in January of 1854, followed by a second license between Nancy and ‘Massmiller Wilson’ (his mother’s maiden name) in December of 1855. Washington Price died in October of 1855.  After giving birth to two children, Nancy Lamb Wilson died in 1858.

When the Civil War came to north Mississippi, Massmiller is said to have sided with the Union and moved behind their lines.  He was a blacksmith and, since no military records have been found, he may have worked as a civilian farrier for the U.S. Army.  This would have been in keeping with the Quaker beliefs of his Lamb in-laws, who were said to have had a deep influence on him.  And Quaker objections to slavery may well have resonated with Massmiller as he compared his own yeoman upbringing with that of his plantation reared half-siblings.

Massmiller (‘Matt’) Wilson returned to Lafayette County after the war.  He had married Mary Elizabeth Thweatt in 1862 and they had ten children, including the son whose full name was Ulysses Monroe Wilson.  Beside his blacksmith work, Massmiller was a talented woodworker who constructed coffins, for which he always refused payment, whenever a death occurred in his section of the county.  Massmiller’s own death came in May 1898 at the age of 63.  The son he named Ulysses outlived him by a mere three years, dying in November 1901.

_________________

My goal in compiling the table that follows is to provide an alternative means by which to explore Unionist sentiment in Mississippi.  Such sentiments sometimes turn up in places where one might least expect to find it.  Such is the case of Daniel W. McInnis, born around 1820 to early Piney Woods settler from Scotland named John McInnis.  In 1847 Daniel married Nancy Carr and established himself as a planter in Covington County.  By 1860, he had achieved considerable prosperity—at least by Piney Woods standards.  Daniel estimated his real estate as worth $2,500 and his personal property at $12,000.  The value of his personal property derived largely from slaves.  That year the census listed him with ten bondsmen: three in their twenties (two females and one male), two males age thirteen, and the remainder children ranging from two to nine years old.  Slavery and the cotton economy made only modest inroads in the Piney Woods compared to other areas of the state, so Daniel’s chattel property placed him among the top 30% of Covington County slave owners. (Note 4)

As a man entering his mid-forties, Daniel evidently did not taken up arms in the Civil War, even though he had a considerable stake in its outcome.  Therefore, his decision to name a son born on 22 September 1863 Ulysses Grant McInnis is a puzzling one.  It is possible that Daniel McInnis numbered himself among the pre-war Whigs who worried that a precipitous rush to secession would only insure the demise of the Peculiar Institution.  In such a case, the naming might have carried the implicit message:  ‘I told you so.’  Or perhaps Daniel had harbored moral qualms about slavery even while tied to its economic rewards.  If so, did the surrender of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant in July of 1863 produce some sense of relief that the question was no longer his to resolve?

The war divested Daniel of his slaves.  He relocated to neighboring Simpson County where in 1870 he reported his personal property as worth $2,500.  In 1880 he served a single term in the Mississippi House of Representatives.  Daniel McInnis continued to farm until his death in 1893.  His son Ulysses G. McInnis also farmed and ran a cotton gin before becoming a grocer late in life.  Ulysses died on 18 February 1942.  As census records and his death certificate confirm, he never sought to change the Unionist name given him by his slave-owning father.

Ulysses McInnis death certificate

This is only a small sampling of the stories beginning to emerge from inquiries into the background of Unionist named children.  I hope to provide more as my research continues.

— Ed Payne

Notes:

1.  Three persons were removed from the original list after World War I draft registration cards confirmed they were named after Sherman Parisot, the owner of a steamboat line during Reconstruction:  Sherman P. Kirkead, Sherman Parasot (aka Parisot), and Sherman P. Wilson.  Both Grant Robinson and Grant Thompson were removed when further research showed them to be African-American and thus outside the scope of this research.  Grant Taylor was eliminated when the full name of this father was found to be John Grant Taylor, making him a namesake.  The original table listed “William, Abraham L.” based upon an Ancestry transcription error.  The household surname was Haws, but the sibling listed above Abraham was recorded as “William, T.S.” and this erroneous surname applied to the next two persons.  The original census page image revealed that the individual’s actual name was William T.S. Haws.  Thus the Haws household in fact contained two children with Unionist names: one honoring William T. Sherman and the other Abraham Lincoln.  Both are listed in the revised table.

2.  Several sources are gratefully acknowledged.  For information on Cedar Grove and William T.S. Klein:  “Cedar Grove, A Man’s Monument” by Paul Duval and “Cedar Grove: National Register of Historical Places Inventory—Nomination Form.”  Both are located in the vertical file folder “Cedar Grove” at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.  For information on Massmiller Wilson: genealogical file compiled by Mary Lois S. Ragland dated 07/29/1995 and posted on the Ancestry Public Tree ‘Lewis & Bradford Family Tree’; and communications with descendant Patricia Williams.  For information on Washington R. Price: biographical sketch by Eva Crocket posted on “Find A Grave” 08/29/2006, Memorial # 15551855.  A balanced account of the rivalry between Adelbert Ames and John Lusk Alcorn, and its political consequences, can be found in Warren A. Ellem, “The Overthrow of Reconstruction in Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History, 1992 54(2), 175-201.

3. A different Daniel McInnis (1845-1926) enlisted in the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry in 1864.  His full name was Daniel Henry Clay McInnis and he was the son of John (“Jack”) McInnis (1816-1899) who migrated into the Piney Woods from North Carolina.  Daniel W. McInnis, on the other hand, consistently reportedly that his father had been born in Scotland.  While both families are said to have originated in Argyllshire, Scotland, any relationship would have been distant.

4.  In 1860 there were 204 slave owners in Covington County among a free white population of 2,845.  Slaves comprised 35.5% of the county’s population compared with a statewide average of 55.2%.  Of the 204 slave owners, 145 (71.1%) held nine or few bondsmen.

Unionist naming – revised (90 names)

Last revised:  03/06/2012

Cns	YoB	County	Name as listed	Name corrected
1870	1869	Leake	Ulysses Atkinson	Ulysses Atkinson
1880	1875	Carroll	Ulissus A. Barrentine	Ulysses A. Barrentine
1870	1868	Jones	Sherman Beech	Sherman Beech
1880	1880	Lawrence	Eulislus S. Berry	Ulysses S. Berry
1880	1879	Pike	Euilas Berryhill	Ulysses Berryhill
1870	1868	Monroe	Grant Bibb	William Grant Bibb
1870	1866	DeSoto	Eulisa Billingsly	Ulysses Billingsly
1870	1869	Tippah	Lincoln Bosman	Lincoln Bosman
1870	1864	Clarke	Lincoln Brannon	Lincoln Brannan
1870	1868	Jasper	Sherman Bunnsaw	Sherman Bunnsaw
1880	1872	Itawamba	Ulysses Butler	Ulysses Butler
1870	1861	Jones	Lincoln Bynum	Lincoln Bynum
1870	1869	Alcorn	Ulissas Campbell	Ulysses Campbell
1880	1870	Jones	Sherman Cawley	Sherman Corley
1870	1868	Jones	Ulysses S. Collins	Ulysses S. Collins
1880	1880	Pontotoc	Oaker Grant Conlee	Oscar Grant Conlee
1870	1869	Monroe	Ulyssis Coon	Ulysses Coon
1870	1870	Carroll	Ulyssus Cotton	Ulysses Cotton
1880	1868	Lauderdale	U.S. Grant Creel	U.S. Grant Creel
1870	1867	Smith	Ulissus B. Currie	Ulysses B. Currie
1870	1868	Rankin	Sherman L. Davis	Sherman L. Davis
1870	1869	Tishomingo	Ulysees G. Dexter	Ulysses G. Dexter
1880	1876	Lincoln	Sherman Dunaway	Sherman Dunaway
1880	1878	Clay	Ulyses G. Durham	Ulysses G. Durham
1880	1880	Hinds	Sherman C. Eddy	Sherman C. Eddy
1880	1875	Panola	Uliseese Fills	Ulysses Fills
1880	1874	Lee	U.S. Ford	U.S. Ford
1880	1879	Grenada	Sherman George	Sherman George
1870	1865	Carroll	Ulyssus Hall	Ulysses Hall
1870	1866	Tippah	Ulyssus T. Hamlin	Ulysses T. Hamlin
1870	1869	Choctaw	Abraham L. Haws	Abraham L. Haws
1870	1868	Choctaw	William T.S. Haws	William T.S. Haws
1870	1869	Calhoun	U.S. Grant Hillhouse	U.S. Grant Hillhouse
1870	1866	Oktibbeha	Abraham L. Holland	Abraham L. Holland
1880	1872	Leake	Isac G. Horne	Isaac U.G. Horne
1880	1872	Tishomingo	James Grant Hutson	James Grant Hutson
1870	1870	Itawamba	Sherman Jammison	Sherman Jamison
1880	1865	Union	Abe Lincoln Kennedy	Abe Lincoln Kennedy
1870	1869	Marion	Ulysses S. King	Ulysses S. King
1900	1878	Greene	Ulississ L. Kittrell	Ulysses L. Kittrell
1870	1864	Warren	Wm Klem	William T.S. Klein
1870	1864	Jones	Ulysses Landrum	Ulysses Landrum
1870	1863	Jones	Abraham Lard	Abraham L. Laird
1870	1863	Jones	Abraham L. Lee	Abraham L. Lee
1900	1878	Itawamba	Ulyses E. Little	Ulysses E. Little
1880	1879	Choctaw	Abe Livingston	Abraham L. Livingston
1870	1865	Tippah	Sherman Lee Lominick	Sherman Lee Lominick
1880	1872	Grenada	Grant Luten	Ulysses Grant Litten
1870	1869	Copiah	U.S.G. Matthews	Ulysses S.G. Matthews
1880	1866	Pike	Allines May	Ulysses May
1880	1880	Kemper	Grant McDade	Grant McDade
1880	1878	Attala	Ulisses McDaniel	Ulysses McDaniel
1870	1869	Oktibbeha	William Grant McDowel	William Grant McDowell
1870	1868	Pike	Grant McEwin	Grant McEwin
1870	1864	Simpson	Uless McInnis	Ulysses McInnis
1870	1866	Newton	Grant W. Millan	Grant W. Milling
1880	1866	Tippah	Ulyssus L. Miller	Ulysses L. Miller
1880	1865	Jefferson	U. Grant Mingee	U. Grant Mingee
1870	1863	Holmes	Grant Nelson	Grant Nelson
1880	1877	(Hays, TX)	Ulissis Oglesby	Ulysses Oglesby
1870	1868	Prentiss	Eulissus Owens	Ulysses Owens
1870	1870	Chickasaw	Grant Perry	Grant Perry
1870	1861	Carroll	Abraham Porter	Abraham L. Porter
1870	1868	Lee	Ulesses O. Potts	Ulysses O. Potts
1880	1873	Pontotoc	William Grant Pritchard	William Grant Pritchard
1880	1878	Monroe	Eulis Davis Ritter	Ulysses Davis Ritter
1870	1869	Jackson	Ulysses Rouse	Ulysses Rouse
1870	1863	Calhoun	William L. Ryan	William Sherman Ryan
1880	1874	Pontotoc	Ulysis Sappington	Ulysses Sappington
1870	1864	Smith	William S. Searcy	William Sherman Searcy
1880	1870	Tippah	Ulissis G. Shelly	Ulysses G. Shelly
1870	1868	Itawamba	U. Grant Shumpert	U. Grant Shumpert
1870	1866	Harrison	Sherman Sivilly	Sherman Swilly
1870	1865	Jackson	Sherman Smith	Sherman Smith
1870	1869	Pike	Sherman Spence	Sherman Spence
1900	1875	Pontotoc	Lis Step	Ulysses Stepp
1870	1869	Monroe	Ulyssus Sulivan	Ulysses Sullivan
1870	1865	Pontotoc	Sherman Swords	Sherman Swords
1870	1866	Calhoun	Grant Tacket	Grant Tackett
1870	1869	Lincoln	U.S. Grant Townsend	U.S. Grant Townsend
1880	1878	Calhoun	Uleious Upchurch	Ulysses Upchurch
1870	1864	Prentiss	Sherman Walden	Sherman Walden
1880	1878	Chickasaw	Grant L. Walker	Grant L. Walker
1900	1868	Jones	Ulysses P. Walters	Ulysses P. Walters
1900	1880	Attala	Ulissis Wasson	Ulysses Wasson
1800	1874	Holmes	William S. Weems	William Sherman Weems
1870	1866	Jones	Sherman Welborn	Sherman Welborn
1900	1880	Claiborne	Ulysses Whatley	Ulysses Whatley
1870	1865	Jasper	Ulepes Grant Willborn	Ulysses Grant Welborn
1880	1869	Lafayette	Eulsyses Wilson	Ulysses Monroe Wilson

Read Full Post »

The Free State of Jones is now available as an “e-book Short”

Would you like to know the true  story of the Free State of Jones, but don’t have time to read the long version? Good news! The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War (published 2001) has just been released by the University of North Carolina Press as part of its new “e-Book Shorts” series.  This excerpted digital version contains the original book’s introduction, epilogue, and two Civil War chapters.  Entitled Rebels Against Confederate Mississippi, it’s available from Amazon’s Kindle store for $4.99 (currently on sale for $3.99). For those who prefer the long version, it too is available from Kindle.

For details, or to order, click here.

Between late 1863 and mid-1864, an armed band of Confederate deserters battled Confederate cavalry in the Piney Woods region of Jones County, Mississippi. Calling themselves the Knight Company after their captain, Newton Knight, and aided by women, slaves, and children who spied on the Confederacy and provided food and shelter, they set up headquarters in the swamps of the Leaf River. There, legend has it, they declared the Free State of Jones.

Read Full Post »

Announcement: The Upcoming Littlefield Lectures at the University of Texas, Austin

The Littlefield Lectures, UT Austin

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be delivering this year’s Littlefield Lectures for the History Department of the University of Texas, Austin.  The lectures are based on research from my last two books, The Free State of Jones, and The Long Shadow of the Civil War:
“The Free State of Jones: Community, Race, and Kinship in Civil War Mississippi,” March 6, 4-6 p.m., Avaya Auditorium, ACE 2.302

“Communities at War”: Men, Women, and the Legacies of Anti-Confederate Dissent,” March 7, 4-6 p.m., Avaya Auditorium, ACE 2.302

If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!

Vikki Bynum

Read Full Post »

My upcoming presentation on the “Free State of Jones”: The McKinzie Symposium in Kansas City, Missouri

Free State of Jones, by Victoria Bynum

Gregg and I are excited to be heading off to Kansas City on January 26, where I’ll be a featured speaker for the 2012 Richard D. McKinzie Symposium.

The McKinzie Symposium will take place Thursday, January 26 – Friday, January 27, 2012, and will explore the topic, “Confederate Disunion: The War Beyond the Battlefield”

On  Thursday at 6:30 pm, Dr. Stephanie McCurry will present the keynote address, “Confederate Reckoning: The Politics of the ‘Homefront’ in the Civil War South.” Two plenary sessions, including my own, follow on Friday:

9 am–“Recalculating the Price of Freedom: Women and the Civil War”
Dr. Thavolia Glymph

10 am–“The Free State of Jones: Community, Race, and Kinship in Civil War Mississippi”
Dr. Victoria Bynum

For complete information on the symposium, including registration instructions, click here:

McKinzie-Program-2012

A Brief History of the McKinzie Symposium:

This year marks the 17th year of the Richard D. McKinzie Annual Research Symposium. The symposium is co-sponsored by the UMKC College of Arts and Sciences, the Kansas City Public Library, and the Organization of American Historians, the largest professional body of American historians in the country. Thanks to the generous support of the Bernardin Haskell Program, the McKinzie Symposium has grown into a highly anticipated event for our campus. The symposium offers a special opportunity for the participating faculty in the High School College Program—as well as UMKC faculty, students, and the broader Kansas City community—to interact with some of the nation’s leading scholars of American history and culture

If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!

Vikki Bynum

Read Full Post »

Southerners Against Slavery: Wesleyan Methodists in Montgomery County, North Carolina

In two of my works on Southern Unionism, Unruly Women (1992), and Long Shadow of the Civil War (2010), I wrote extensively about the effects of the anti-slavery Wesleyan Methodist movement in creating an environment of fierce anti-Confederate sentiment in the Randolph-Montgomery County area of North Carolina during the Civil War. In Montgomery County, several Wesleyan families’ refusal to support the Confederacy tragically resulted in the vigilante  murder of three Hulin brothers by home guard soldiers.

The Hulins, Moores, and Hurleys became Wesleyans a full decade before the Civil War and were anti-slavery activists. A year before the war erupted, in March 1860,  Hiram Hulin, Jesse Hulin, Nelson Hulin (sons of Hiram), William Hurley Sr., William Hurley Jr., and Spencer Moore (son of Valentine Moore) were charged alongside Daniel Wilson, a well-known anti-slavery leader from Guilford County,  with circulating “seditious” anti-slavery materials.

Although I relied principally on court records, military records, newspapers, and memoirs to tell the story of Unionism in this region of North Carolina, I found two Wesleyan Methodist publications, Roy S. Nicholson’s Wesleyan Methodism in the South (1933), and Mrs. E.W. Crooks’ Life of Rev. Adam Crooks (1875), crucial to my ability to confirm the religious conversions of the above Montgomery County families.

In the following essay, I draw from both these works. As “in house” publications, they reflect the perspective of the Wesleyan Movement, yet, in combination with primary sources, they leave no doubt of the religious ideology that led the Hulins, Moores,  Hurleys, and others to oppose slavery and the Confederate Cause.

Vikki Bynum, Moderator

Southerners Against Slavery: Wesleyan Methodists in Montgomery County, North Carolina

Rev. Adam Crooks (1824-1874)

The man most responsible for bringing Wesleyan Methodism to the Randolph/Montgomery County area of North Carolina was Rev. Adam Crooks, who was originally from Leesville, Carroll County, Ohio, where he was born in 1824. According to Crooks’ biographer, his wife Elizabeth Willits Crooks, in 1841 he joined those northern Methodists who split from the Methodist Episcopal Church over slavery. The following year, in December 1842, the splinter group produced a newspaper, the True Wesleyan, which heralded the establishment of Wesleyan Methodism in the United States. These Wesleyans claimed to embody the doctrinal standards of early Methodism as established under the guidance of Rev. John Wesley.  They opposed worldly habits such as the use of whiskey and tobacco and ostentatious dress and adornment. Most important to the history of Montgomery County, they opposed the ownership of human beings by other human beings.

Opposition to slavery, and specifically to the degrading and violent means by which it was maintained, was not limited to Methodists of the North. In 1847, during its Allegheny Conference in Mesopotamia, Ohio, the Wesleyan Church received an urgent letter from “Free Methodists” of Guilford County, North Carolina, who requested the services of a Wesleyan preacher. In this old Quaker stronghold of the South, anti-slavery principles had never completely died. “There is much more anti-slavery sentiment in this part of North Carolina than I had supposed,” Crooks later observed, “owing, in great measure, to the influence of the Society of Friends.” During his stay in North Carolina, he was amused to be “taken for a Quaker, go wherever I will,” even once after preaching in a Methodist Episcopal house. Crooks concluded that this assumption reflected the antislavery doctrine he preached and the “plain coat” that he wore.

The call from North Carolina had great appeal to Crooks. By age twenty, he had become a Wesleyan exhorter who preached against the evils of slavery.  In August 1845, he joined the Allegheny Conference as a junior preacher, and received a six-week assignment to the Erie circuit, where he ministered to a small Erie City church comprised of many fugitive slaves. Now, he agreed to travel to North Carolina. With the sectional crisis over slavery growing fiercer by the day, it took a great deal of courage to enter the slaveholding South with the express purpose of preaching against slavery. In preparation for his mission he was ordained an Elder.

Crooks encountered many Methodists in North Carolina who resented being forced to remain with the Methodist Episcopal Church in the wake of its national division into pro- and anti-slavery denominations. Finding it ”impracticable” to join the anti-slavery Northern Division of the church, they formed a third division, the “Free Methodist Church.” According to Crooks, “up to this time, they had no knowledge of the existence of the Wesleyan Methodist connection.” Once they learned of the Wesleyan persuasion, he said, they immediately sent for preachers, convened, and adopted the Wesleyan principles as their own.

Pro-slavery North Carolinians labeled Crooks a “nigger-thief,” an abolitionist, and an advocate of racial amalgamation (race mixing). Nevertheless, he preached before large and small congregations and regularly denounced slavery in the presence of slaveholders. In October, 1847, Crooks presided over the founding of Freedom’s Hill Church, located in the old Snow Camp community of present-day Alamance County, N.C., and the first Wesleyan Methodist Church in the South.

In 1850, despite violent opposition to Wesleyan preachers by pro-slavery mobs, Crooks prepared to preach in Montgomery County at the invitation of members of Lane’s Chapel and Lovejoy Chapel.  Twice, he was warned by letter to cancel those plans. The first letter, signed by “Many Citizens” from Montgomery and neighboring Stanly Counties, accused Crooks of

preying upon the minds of the weak and innocent, inducing them to believe that slave-holding is not only an oppression to the slaves, but to all those who do not hold slaves. The slaves hereabout are in much better condition than their masters or other citizens. Your doctrine, if carried out, would bring down vengeance upon the heads of your followers by amalgamation and otherwise.

Crooks was accused of being “worse than a traitor,” and threatened with expulsion if he dared to appear in Lane’s Chapel: “we are in hopes you will return from whence you came, or you will be dealt with according to the dictates of our consciences.”

A second letter from Montgomery County, dated 27 December 1850 and signed by eleven people, demanded again that Crooks leave the state. Crooks did not answer the letter, but traveled to Montgomery County as planned, where he stayed at the home of Valentine Moore and prepared, in February 1851, to preach at Lovejoy Chapel, located about a mile from Moore’s home.

A mob headed by a local justice of the peace and slaveholder met Crooks at the door of Lovejoy Chapel. Alluding to the Methodists’ national schism over slavery, the j.p. accused Crooks of “making interruptions in families, neighborhoods, and Churches” by preaching against slavery. He claimed that Crooks was “causing us to abuse our servants,” i.e. slaves, by telling them they deserved to be free, which “makes them unruly; so that they have to be abused.” Again, Crooks was ordered to leave the county.

Several other local slaveholders challenged Crooks as well. “Brother Crooks did you not preach to servants not to obey their masters?”  Crooks answered that he had not, but his accuser insisted that he had. Hiram Hulin then interceded on Crooks’ behalf. “Don’t you interrupt the man,” he told the slaveholder, who responded by shaking his fist and stamping the floor, declaring that he was on his own “premises.”  Hiram’s brother, Orrin Hulin, then called for order, reminding the men that they had entered the chapel to worship God.

Those opposed to Crooks’ right to preach moved to expel him from the chapel. They declared Crooks a traitor, no better than Aaron Burr,  sent to Montgomery County by anti-slavery radicals such as Daniel Wilson of Guilford County.  Likewise, Orrin Hulin was condemned for having written a letter to the True Wesleyan that described a Montgomery County slaveholder’s brutal torture and whipping of slave.

Then, the anti-Crooks faction rose to forcibly remove Crooks from Lovejoy Chapel, at which point Orrin Hulin cried out,

Men, take notice of who takes hold of that man by violence.

As the mob approached Crooks, William Hurley stepped before it and called out,

But stop, don’t you run over me. What are you going to do with the preacher?

According to author Elizabeth Crooks, chaos followed, as Crooks was

led or rather dragged from the pulpit into the yard. . . . Some are rushing for their horses, others are screaming, and still others prostrated, motionless and speechless.

Mrs. Crooks further described how several men forced Crooks into a buggy as Orrin Hulin once again called on Crooks’ supporters to “take notice of who forces that man into that buggy.” Several of Crooks’ supporters followed the buggy on foot to the home of one of the slaveholders. There, over dinner, pro- and anti-slavery factions, including Crooks, argued over slavery. Sheriff Aaron Sanders, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and part of the mob that accosted Crooks, was present. So also was William Hurley, Crooks’ defender, who proclaimed himself  “ever opposed” to slavery.

“Well, if you believe slavery to be wrong, you need not hold them; it does not hurt you,” a slaveholder challenged.

Hurley answered, not as an abolitionist, but as a citizen who defended his right to belong to an anti-slavery church:

Well, but for me to support a thing I do not believe in would not be right. And you can have your privileges and let us have ours.

When asked if his church, which refused membership to slaveholders, might yet receive a slave, Hurley said “yes”, provided the slave was a Christian. Those words provoked this angry response from an unnamed slaveholder:

What!—receive a nigger and not a white man? That is a grand insult depriving us of our rights.

“Not at all,” maintained Hurley. “We do not say that you shall not hold slaves; all we want is to keep clear of supporting it.”

“Well, if that is your principle you ought to leave the state,” advised the same man, advice to which Hurley strenuously objected:

I was born and raised here—pay for my privileges under the law, and it is a hard case if I am to be deprived of them.

As the argument heated up, another slaveholder advised the mob to “serve him [Hurley] as we do Crooks.” But William Hurley appeared to be forgotten after four magistrates ordered Sheriff Sanders to deliver Adam Crooks to the jail.

After being locked up, Crooks was lectured by his captors on the need to abandon his plan to preach in Montgomery County. Exhibiting the common social superiority that slaveholders felt toward nonslaveholders, they assured Crooks that the folks who had invited him to speak (members from the Moore, Hulin, and Hurley families) were the “very dregs of the county,” while “those who are against you,” (slaveholders), “are the best men of the county.”

Finally and reluctantly, Adam Crooks agreed to leave Montgomery County and was accordingly released from jail. He then returned to the home of Valentine Moore to say his goodbyes. While there, he reported, Valentine’s daughter Caroline (who would soon marry Hiram Hulin’s son, Jesse) announced to Crooks that she was leaving the Methodist Episcopal Church and joining with the Wesleyans.

Caroline Moore Hulin

Slaveholders had prevented Adam Crooks from preaching in their county, but they had failed to prevent the successful birth of Wesleyan Methodism in their community. Battle lines would be redrawn during the Civil War, in a brutal inner war that would pit the same Sheriff Aaron Sanders against the same community of dissenters.

Vikki Bynum

For more on Adam Crooks and Southern Wesleyan Methodism, see:

1. Roy S. Nicholson, Wesleyan Methodism in the South (Syracuse, NY: Wesleyan Methodist Publishing House, 1933).
2. Mrs. E.W. Crooks, Life of Rev. Adam Crooks, A.M. (Syracuse, NY: Wesleyan Methodist Publishing House, 1875). A copy of this book is owned by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and may be accessed online at UNC’s Documenting the American South.  http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/crooks/crooks.html.
3. An independent film company has recently produced the story of Adam Crooks. See The Courageous Love, Rubacam Productions,  http://www.thecourageouslove.com/home/About.html

Read Full Post »