Death of A Carpetbagger

Death of a Carpetbagger: The George Washington Smith Murder and Stockade Trial in Jefferson, Texas, 1868-1869 Author(s): Christopher
B. Bean Reviewed work(s): Source: The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 112, No. 3 (Jan., 2009), pp. 262-292 Published by: Texas State Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30239649 . Accessed: 04/02/2013 14:57
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Plan of the calaboose in Jefferson, Texas, where "carpetbagger"George Washington Smith was murdered on October 3, 1868. Map from the collections of the National Archives, Washington, D.C.
The George Death of a Carpetbagger: Washington SmithMurderand Stockade Trialin Jefferson, Texas,1868-1869
CHRISTOPHER
B. BEAN *
I OWNED HELL AND TEXAS I WOULD RENT OUT TEXAS AND LIVE in hell." In these words, General Philip Sheridan, commander in Texas after the Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the former Confederacy into five military districts, summarized his view not only of the state's unbearable climate, but of political and social conditions that existed in the post-war Lone Star State as well. Of the eleven former Confederate states, none had a more difficult time coming to terms with emancipation and suffered more lawlessness and violence than Texas, particularly the state's northeastern counties, where loyal white men, both carpetbaggers and scalawags, and freedmen experienced almost
SF
constant violence.
"There has not been ...
the slightest change in the
feelings and determination upon the destruction of the Radicals," declared one Unionist leader in 1868, "they only await a more favorable opportunity." Contemporaries viewed the region as one infested with armed banditti, thieves, cutthroats, and assassins. One could not pick up a newspaper without reading of murder, assassination, and robbery.'
*Christopher B. Bean earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of North Texas and now teaches military history and the Civil War and Reconstruction at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. Conventionwhich Met at Austin, Texas, 'Journal of the Reconstruction June I, A.D., i868, vol. i (Austin: Tracy, Siemering, and Company, 1870), 111 (first quotation); D. Campbell to Governor E. M. Pease, September 5, 1868, Records of the Governor Elisha Marshall Pease, Texas Office of the Governor, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission (second quotation; hereafter cited as Governor Pease Correspondences); John Highland, "Texas Collection," SouthwesternHistorical Quarterly45 (Oct., 1941): 197? 198; Willie Lee Rose, Slavery and Freedom,ed. William W. Freehling (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 78; Alabama StateJournal, Jan. 3o, 1869; New YorkTribune,Sep. 18, 1868; New YorkTimes,Oct. 25, 1868; Report of Maj. O. O. Howard to the Secretary of War, Oct. 14, 1868, United States House of Representatives, Annual ReportU. S. War Department,1868, 1052, H. Exec. Doc. 1, 4oth Cong., 3rd Sess. (Serial 1367; hereafter cited as Annual Report);Campbell to Governor E. M. Pease, Nov. 3, 1868, Governor Pease Correspondences, Marshall Texas Republican, Dec. 4, Dec. 11, 1868; Edward C. Henshaw to Lt. Charles Vernon, Dec. 1, 1868, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1869, Registered Reports of Operations and Conditions, NovemberDecember, 1868, M821, reel 28 (National Archives; hereafter cited as Bureau Records); D. Campbell to C. Caldwell, Sep. 1868, Governor Pease Correspondences. According to Gen. J.J. Reynolds, commander VOL. CXII, NO. 3 SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY JANUARY 2009
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The Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia, the Knights of the Rising Sun (KRS), and outlaw gangs led by men such as Ben Bickerstaff and Cullen Baker exemplified this kind of violence in the most spectacular way. Doubtless, the greatest short-term deficiency of local Republican authorities was their ineffectiveness in countering this threat. As historian Carl H. Moneyhon concluded in his most recent work on Texas during Reconstruction, the future of the Republican Party in the Lone Star State depended on the ability of the party to protect the former slaves and white Unionists from such force. Unfortunately, in spite of efforts such as the creation of a state militia, the efforts to protect the freedmen from white violence proved too much for the fledgling party of Lincoln. In the end, federal authorities also appeared unwilling or unable to protect those threatened by such violence, despite the occasional anti-Klan campaign or deployment of troops to problem areas.2 For decades, historians of Reconstruction generally viewed in as and the South oppressive and corrupt Republican governments excused white violence as necessary and justified against illegitimate
of the Fifth Military District, the "murder of negroes is so common as to render it impossible to keep an accurate account of them," see Annual Report,U. S. War Department, 1868, 705. 2 Carl H. Moneyhon, TexasAfter the War: The Struggle of Reconstruction(College Station: Texas &M The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern University Press, 2004), 85; Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: Reconstruction (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1971), xxxiv; James M. McPherson, "Wartime," New York Reviewof Books,Apr. 12, 1990: 33-35. There exist a few treatments specifically concerning violence or the Ku Klux Klan in Texas during Reconstruction, most notably Gregg Cantrell, "Racial Historical Quarterly93 (Jan., Violence and Reconstruction Politics in Texas; 1867-1868," Southwestern 1990), 333-355; James Smallwood, "When the Klan Rode: White Terror in Reconstruction Texas," Journal of the West25 (Oct., 1986), 4-13; Rebecca A. Kosary, "Regression to Barbarism in Reconstruction Texas: An Analysis of White Violence Against African-Americans From the Texas Freedmen's Bureau Records, 1865-1868" (M.A. thesis, Southwest Texas State University, 1999); Douglas Hales, "Violence Perpetrated Against African Americans by Whites in Texas During Reconstruction 1865-1868" (M.A. thesis, Texas Tech University, 1994); Barbara Leah Clayton, "The Lone Star Conspiracy: Racial Violence and the Ku Klux Klan Terror in Post Civil War Texas, 1865-1877" (M.A. thesis, Oklahoma State University, 1979); and Barry A. Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness: White Violence, Texas Blacks, 1865?1868," Journal of Social History 18 (Winter 1984): 220-221. For other Texas and national treatments-some sympathetic to white Reconstruction violence, while others not--dealing peripherally with these subjects, see William L. Richter The Army in TexasDuring Reconstruction,1865-1870 (College on All Sides: The Freedmen's Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987); William L. Richter, Overreached in Texas,1865-1868 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991); William BureauAdministration L. Richter, "The Army and the Negro During Texas Reconstruction, 1865-1870," East TexasHistorical Journal io (Spring 1972): 7-19; Stanley Horn, The Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-187I (Boston: The Riverside Press, 1939); Otto H. Olsen, "The Ku Klux Klan: A Study in Reconstruction Politics and Propaganda," North CarolinaHistoricalReview39 (Summer 1962): 34o-362; James E. Sefton, The United States Army and Reconstruction186-1877 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967) ;James Marten, TexasDivided:Loyaltyand Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1865-1874 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 199o); and James M. Smallwood, Barry A. Crouch, and Larry in Texas(College Station: Texas A&M University Peacock, Murderand Mayhem:The Warof Reconstruction Press, 2003). 3Smallwood et. al., Murderand Mayhem,133.
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regimes run by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and freedmen. More recent scholarship has contradicted this paradigm, asserting that most violence in Reconstruction Texas, and across the South for that matter, amounted to an unjustified attack on civil rights and political liberties. According to revisionists, Klan-like groups and their supporters, not federal authorities or the military, committed most of the violence, primarily to preserve the antebellum social order and values that included white supremacy and suppression of the newly freed slaves. "They were willing to use any means necessary to achieve their victory," wrote historians James Smallwood, Barry A. Crouch, and Larry Peacock. In East Texas, according to these scholars, ruffians harassed and killed nearly anyone who stood in their way, especially "uppity" blacks. Such violence played a major role in turning Reconstruction into a litany of "failed promises." Few events in Reconstruction Texas better demonstrate the political and racial violence of that era and attempts by federal and local officials to counter such actions than the 1868 murder of George Washington Smith and the subsequent Stockade Trial in the Marion County town of Jefferson. The Smith murder and trial that followed were highly publicized events during that time as partisan newspaper editors and politicians used the whole affair for ammunition in their attacks against each other. For many white Texans, the assassination of Smith represented a long overdue offensive against the despotism embodied in Radical Republicanism. For Unionists, the event embodied the rebellious spirit that four years of war had failed to kill and was evidence that a more punitive reconstruction should continue with the support of the government in Washington.4 Thus the story of the murder of George
4 For works that attempt to justify violence during Reconstruction, see W. D. Wood, Reminiscencesof Reconstruction in Texas (San Marcos, Tex.: n. p., 1902), 9-10o; William A. Russ, "WasThere Danger of a Second Civil War During Reconstruction?" MississippiValley HistoricalReview25 (June 1938), 58; Charles W. Ramsdell, Reconstruction in Texas(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1910), 317-318; Brenda Stalcup, ed., Reconstruction: (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1995), 114-19; Richter, Army in OpposingViewpoints TexasDuring Reconstruction, (Austin: University of Texas 195; W. C. Nunn, Texas Under the Carpetbaggers Press, 1962), 71. For works that show how violence was used against Unionists, see Leon Litwack, Been in the StormSo Long: TheEmergence in the South (New York:Knopf, 1979); Everette Swinney, of BlackFreedom Amendments,1870-1874 (New York: of the Reconstruction Suppressingthe Ku Klux Klan: The Enforcement Garland Publishing,, 1987); Billy D. Ledbetter, "WhiteTexans' Attitudes Toward the Political Equality of Negroes, 1865-1870," Phylon 40 (Sep., 1979): 253-263; John A. Carpenter, "Atrocities in the Reconstruction Period," Journal of Negro History 47 (Oct., 1962): 234-247; Otis A. Singletary, Negro Militia and Reconstruction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1957); Rable, But ThereWas No Peace,Ann Patton Baenziger, "The Texas State Police During Reconstruction: A Reexamination, " Southwestern Historical Quarterly72 (Apr., 1969): 470-491; James Smallwood, Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black TexansDuring Reconstruction (Port Washington, N.Y.: National University Publications, 1981); Robert W. Shook, "Federal Occupation and Administration of Texas, 1865-1870" (Ph.D. diss., North Texas State University, 1970); Melinda Meek Hennessey, "To Live and Die in Dixie: Reconstruction Race Riots in the South" (Ph. D. diss., Kent State University, 1978). For more national perspectives, see Trelease, White and Rable, But ThereWasNo Peace. Terror,
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Washington Smith and the ensuing Stockade Trial provides an enlightening case study of violence in Texas after the Civil War.Although only a single incident in a state located on the periphery of the Confederacy, it adds notably to the understanding of why Reconstruction proved so ineffective in protecting the basic rights of Freedmen in the South. Situated in northeast Texas on the Louisiana border and immediately north of Caddo Lake, Marion County covers 416 square miles. What this county lacked in area, however, it more than made up in importance during the mid-nineteenth century. Created in 186o from several surrounding counties, Marion County enjoyed water access to the Red River via Big Cypress Bayou and Caddo Lake. Jefferson, the county seat, developed into an important port city, serving an agriculturally rich hinterland that stretched well into the interior, and by 1868 had approximately ten thousand residents. Although it was the most important city in northof east Texas, Jefferson did not impress all observers. "The tour ensemble the place is anything but agreeable," wrote one newspaper correspondent about Jefferson in 1869. "The streets are not paved, and are always knee-deep with mud, except when the dust sweeps through them in blinding clouds."5 In 1868, a little more than half of Marion County's population consisted of recently emancipated slaves. The white minority voiced distinct unhappiness at the implications of Radical Reconstruction. They expressed particular nervousness about the Union League, which advocated racial equality and preached incendiary doctrines to the freedmen such as black enfranchisement and office holding. One group in particular, the Knights of the Rising Sun, held meetings and prowled the countryside en masquealmost nightly. This secret fraternal organization targeted any individual who disrupted the civic peace, meaning those advocating anything threatening the racial order. Such intimidation caused freedmen and white Republicans to attend League meetings under arms, only increasing the fears and anger of local whites. It was apparent to all parties involved that by the fall of 1868, Jefferson represented a city on edge, with Republicans in an advanced state of intimidation, while Democrats despised black enfranchisement and believed that every gathering of former slaves portended rebellion.6 The general hostility toward freedmen, scalawags, and carpetbaggers
5 New YorkTribune, July 13, 1869 (quotation); Mark Howard Atkins, "Marion County," in Ron Tyler, Douglas E. Barnett, Roy R. Barkley, Penelope C. Anderson, and Mark F. Odintz (eds.), TheNew Handbook of Texas(6 vols.; Austin: Texas Historical Association, 1996), III, 924-925; Bureau of Business Research, An Economic (Austin: University for The Texasand PacificRailway Company Surveyof Marion County: Prepared of Texas Press, 1949), 1.03. December 25, 1868; HarrisonFlag, May 13, 6Trelease, WhiteTerror, 107-1o8; San AntonioDaily Express, November 13, 1868. 1869; Marshall TexasRepublican,
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came to focus on an individual in Jefferson who preached racial equality and possessed the greatest black following. That individual was George Washington Smith, a young veteran Union army officer from New York who had come to Jefferson as a merchant to work with his uncle immediately after the war. Smith likely would not have been popular in the community under any circumstances, but his zealous pursuit of outstanding debts added to the general animosity toward carpetbaggers. Although the business failed, Radical Reconstruction presented him the opportunity for a career in politics. With uncompromising ideals, Smith, at the age of twenty-four, headed the Union League in Jefferson, worked as a member of the executive committee of the county Republican Party, and, through the black majority in the area, won election as a delegate to the 1868 state constitutional convention, which held its first session in Austin from June 1 to August 31. In his own words, Smith wanted to assist "the Negro in his efforts to escape the oppression of the rebels."' To the Republican press in the area, Smith embodied the selfless Christian democratic ideal in the mold of the pre-Civil War Abolitionists who advocated equality for freedmen. He stood against injustice and did not waver in the face of criticism. "In his daily life," declared one convention member in a posthumous eulogy, "he was correct, almost austere. He never drank, smoked, chewed, nor used profane language." Another called him "a fine specimen of manhood." Smith thought the freedmen deserved equality not only at the ballot box, but in the courtroom as well. He fought tirelessly, regardless of the "perfect storm of indignation against himself," for the arrest of whites who committed crimes against the black community. The fact that Smith had suffered several wounds in combat during the Civil War attested to his bravery, and he did not lack fortitude or commitment. He refused to compromise what he thought right. For example, when warned by some to flee from potential death, Smith replied, "No, I shall stay here and do my duty, and leave the result with God."8
Scalawags, and Others(Waco: Texian Press, 1973), 52 (quotation); 7 Traylor Russell, Carpetbaggers, Compiled Service Record, New York, Records of the Office of the Adjutant General, Washington, D. C., RG 94, M551; Henry C. Morhouse, Reminiscences State Volunteers: History of its Three of the 123rd New York Years Servicein the War(Greenwich, Conn.: People's Journal Book and Job Office, 1879), 251; New York Tribune,July 31, 1869; Mark F. Odintz, "George Washington Smith," in Tyler, et al. (eds.), the New Handbookof TexasV, 1098; ChicagoTribune,August 16, 1869; Harrison Flag, May 13, 1869. Contrary to some assertions, George Washington Smith was not a Freedmen's Bureau agent. There was a George William Smith, of the burning of Brenham fame, who was a Bureau agent at Seguin and officer in the 35th Infantry Regiment and was at one time stationed in Jefferson. There was also a district court judge named George W. Smythe. With the names so similar, it is understandable to see the mistaken identity. Dec. 2, 1868 (first quotation); Houston Tri-Weekly South-Western, Union, May 24, 1869 (sec8 Shreveport ond quotation); New YorkTribune, Union, Oct. 29, July 31, 1869 (third quotation); Houston Tri-Weekly 1868 (fourth quotation); Flake'sDaily Bulletin, May 8, 1869; JeffersonRadical, Aug. 11, 1869; Morhouse, Reminiscences, 251.
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In stark contrast, the Democratic press called Smith "Dog" to indicate that he was a low and unprincipled character who drove the locals to "madness," incited black mobs against their white neighbors, and "undoubtedly merited the fearful retribution of death." They accused him of traveling the area "almost in [a] state of nudity to exhibit his contempt of its people." Smith's "love" for the former slaves, they added, revolted white-southern sensibilities. To most white Jeffersonians, the Yankee Smith embodied all southern fears concerning racial equality, living and consorting in "unbridled licentiousness" with blacks. This animosity, Mayor William W. Hodge later testified, stemmed from Smith's personal relationships that blurred the line between the races. Although Republican papers defended Smith and called these accusations "false as hell itself," they stuck.9 Smith reportedly possessed unlimited ability to sway local freedmen. According to the Marshall TexasRepublican,he bragged about his influence with the local black population. The hated northerner also was alleged to have threatened to burn the town, "telling the negroes they would have to burn it, before they could govern it." Smith was reported to have bragged that the "defenseless" women of Jefferson dreaded such an outrage and feared the consequences of a race war, and therefore protected him from harm. Unfortunately for Smith, these words, whether he said them or not, came back to haunt him, especially when throughout 1868 Jefferson was "threatened with incendiaries," including a fire that devastated the city's business district. Whether Smith or his speeches had anything to do with Jefferson's fires is unknown, but for years after his death, fires plagued the city to such an extent that one newspaper contemplated keeping the headline "Another Fire in Jefferson" standing. Nevertheless, the climate in Jefferson in late summer and early fall of 1868, one thick with anger and fear, required only coincidence and happenstance to spell disaster for Smith.10 The beginning of the end for Smith came on the night of Saturday, October 3, 1868, upon returning to town from a political rally earlier
July 31, 1869 (first quotation); Marshall TexasRepublican,Feb. 12, 1869 (second 9 New YorkTribune, Gazette, June 23, 1869 (third quotation); Flake'sDaily Bulletin, May 8, 1869 quotation); Austin Tri-Weekly South-Western, (fourth quotation); Marshall TexasRepublican, May 9, 1868; Shreveport May 5, 1869; Ben C. Cooner, "The Rise and Decline of Jefferson, Texas" (M.A. thesis, North Texas State University, 1965), 62; Harrison Flag, May 13, 1869; Marshall TexasRepublican,Feb. 12, 1869; Lucille Blackburn Bullard, Marion County,Texas, (Jefferson, Tex. : n.p., 1965), 1og; Testimony of Mayor William Hodge, of the Judge Advocate General, Army Court Martial Case Files 18o9-1894, RG 94, Records of the Office 186o--I87o Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780-1917, Case PP 629, Box 2582, pp. 1219, 2181 (National Archives; hereafter cited as Trial Transcript).
'o Marshall TexasRepublican,February 12, 1869 (quotation); Marshall TexasRepublican,May 2, May 5, Feb. 22, Feb. 29, 1871. and Mar. 7, 1868; Shreveport South-Western,
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that day. His colleague, Aaron Grisby, a local man of the cloth, brought Smith's valise (carpetbag) in a buggy after its owner forgot it at the political rally earlier that day. Grisby transferred the bag to several black men to return to its owner. On the road to Smith's home, however, a party stopped and robbed the freedmen, taking the bag. The Knights of the Rising Sun, a local vigilante and home-guard group, were more than likely responsible for the larceny, for the Knights' newspaper, the Ultra Ku Klux, published an inventory of the bag's contents. A close confidant of Smith later testified that Smith told him about the theft that he "meant to have satisfaction if it cost this town $500,000."" Believing his bag to be concealed at the home of Richard A. Figures, a local hotel employee and a member of the Knights, Smith demanded permission to search the residence. Figures objected, however, and the commanding officer of the soldiers who accompanied Smith to prevent any trouble between locals and the hated northerner refused Smith's request to search the premises on the grounds that he lacked a warrant. Smith allegedly then returned to town to form a squad of freedmen to assist in his original design of searching Figures's residence for his bag. Figures, who heard about this "premeditated outrage" and feared for his family's safety, called on his neighbors for protection. Before returning to Figures's home, Smith, according to later court testimony, went to the house of a freedman, Cornelius Turner, to pick up his washed clothes. Suddenly from the street, Col. Richard P. Crump, a local merchant, leading member in the community, and a man with a reputation for violence, yelled out to Smith, "Halt, you damned scoundrel," and fired his gun. The intended target quickly ran behind the house, and a group of men who came to the support of the colonel pursued, firing as they went. In spite of the intense fight that transpired-Smith, in fact, emptied his weapon-neither he nor the freedmen who came to his defense received Col. wounds, but two-not ten as some reports have suggested-of men "It in did. was the current that the Crump's report Jefferson long expected attempt at Smith's assassination had been made and that the assailants had got the worst of it," the Jefferson Radicalreported later."
" Trial Transcript, p. 1226 (quotation); Flake'sDaily Bulletin, Oct. 15, 1868; Shreveport South-Western, Oct. 28, 1868; United States Eighth Census (186o), Marion County, Texas, Population Schedules, City of Jefferson (M1188; University of North Texas Microfilm Collection, University of North Texas) hereafter cited as Eighth Census; New York Tribune, July 31, 1869. Although known to students of Reconstruction in Texas, these events have been examined only peripherally. Many of these studies are inadequate, partly because they were based on incomplete evidence. None used the more-than-threethousand pages of trial transcript and evidence; therefore, any depiction and interpretation of events are subject to criticism. This, in fact, is the only study of the murder of George Washington Smith and Stockade Trial based on the original sworn testimony and evidence, as well as previously unused state and criminal records.
12Marshall TexasRepublican,Mar. 26, 1869 (first quotation); Trial Transcript, pp. 172-173
(second
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Following the incident, Col. Crump attempted to cover his tracks by placing the blame on Smith and the freedmen. He searched Turner's house for the "culprit"who had fired in defense of Smith and, finding several weapons, urged Mayor William W. Hodge and City Marshal Silas H. Nance, who arrived on scene after the fray, to arrest the freedmen Cornelius Turner, Anderson Wright, and Lewis Grant for assault. "I told you that son of a bitch, Smith, would get you into trouble," stated one of the civil authorities as he took the freedmen into custody, "and you will find it out before tomorrow night." Local law enforcement then began looking for Smith.13 Fearing for his life, Smith had taken refuge behind a shed in back of the house. When Maj. James Curtis, commander of the federal post at Jefferson and sub-assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau for Marion County, arrived on scene, Smith immediately gave himself up to federal, rather than local, custody. Indifferent to Smith's pleas, which included bluntly telling Maj. Curtis "if you surrender me to these men they will kill me," the major handed the captive over to city authorities. In his later testimony the major stated that he decided to relinquish the hated northerner after both the mayor and the marshal gave assurances that they could protect Smith. Also, Col. Crump, who was chosen by civil authorities to raise a detail of men to protect Smith while in confinement, promised that he would not hurt the prisoner.14
Radical,Aug.,i 1, 1869 (third quotation); Ninth Census of the United States (1870) quotation); Jefferson (microfilm; National Archives), reel 1597 (hereafter cited as Ninth Census, 1870, reel 1300); Fake's Union, Oct., 29, 1868. Accounts vary as to what exactly Daily Bulletin, Oct., 15, 1868; Houston Tri-Weekly happened during the shootout. According to one story, Smith and his men arrived and even entered Figures's house, before the shooting began. From another source, however, Smith's party was accosted on the road to Figures's residence. And from still yet another, Smith and his party met at a freedmen's house in town before heading to Figures's house and it was there that Col. Crump and his party knocked on the front door and Smith and his men came out the back firing. The testimony of Maj. James Curtis, however, alludes to the incident on the third happening in town, approximately two blocks from the major's headquarters, rather than at Figures's residence located one and a half miles outside town; while Anderson Wright stated that the incident on October 3 occurred in the back of Lewis Grant's grocery. Additionally, Figures's testimony points to no incident occurring at his residence on South-Western, Saturday, October 3. What really happened may never definitively be known; see Shreveport Oct. 14, Oct. 28, 1868; Flake's Daily Bulletin,Oct. 15, 1868; Trial Transcript, pp. 77-78; New York Tribune, Oct. 16, 1868; and Trial Transcript, pp. 133, 263. Gazette, July 31, 1869; Austin Tri-Weekly 14 New York Tribune, July 31, 1869 (quotation); Trial Transcript, 28-29, 77; Maj.James Curtis to Gen. J. J.Reynolds, Aug. 30, 1868, Bureau Records, Letters Received A-C 1867-1869, reel lo; Special Orders, September 8, 1868, Bureau Records, Issuances and Rosters of Bureau Personnel and Special Orders Received, September 1865-April 1869, reel 19; Constitution of the Knights of the Rising Sun, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General: Army Court Martial Case Files 18o9-1894, RG 94, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 178o-1917, Box 2585, p. 33 (National Archives; hereafter cited as Constitution of KRS). According to Maj. Curtis's testimony, Smith did not run to his headquarters as nearly every account reports, nor did Col. Crump and the civil authorities arrive at the major's headquarters with a warrant for Smith's arrest as commonly believed. Instead, Maj. Curtis testified that Smith was still hiding at the scene when he arrived. See New York Tribune, July 31, 1869.
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Local law enforcement, with the blessing of the major, placed the three freedmen and Smith in the calaboose, a seven to eight foot high wooden security fence enclosure (triangular shaped) containing an iron jail, which consisted of one room and a cell attached. It was located only a block and a half from Maj. Curtis's headquarters. The city jail, which was located nearly a mile from the major's headquarters, was a wooden structure. Officials thought it wise to house Smith in an iron structure like the calaboose because it was easier to guard and could not be burned. Throughout the night on October 3, the four prisoners remained under guard by a handpicked group of sentries led by none other than Col. Crump. The guards separated Smith from the freedmen, placing him in the iron jail and holding the others in the yard. Early the next morning, local officials arrested a fourth freedman implicated in the fray, Richard Stewart.'5 Meanwhile, the Knights began organizing for some "southern justice." They believed themselves "conservator[s] of peace" against those who antagonized and "foment[ed] discord" between the races and "assisted" authorities "in bringing offenders to answer before the Court of Justice and checking crimes and offences." The Knights did not have to travel far in order to render assistance to local authorities, because Mayor Hodge later testified that he asked the Knights to provide a detail of their "best" men to assist in guarding the prisoners. This was a highly questionable decision, for some civil authorities were also Knights, including Marshal Silas H. Nance, Sheriff C. E. McGregor, Deputy Sheriff Mark H. Joplin, and policeman W. A. Thomas, all of whom volunteered to protect the prisoners. Access to the calaboose by some of these men would prove decisive. According to one freedman, he overheard the marshal saying to another man, "Boys, about ten o'clock is our best time." Events defined that time's significance. Whether planning 'justice" for months or days, it is clear the KRS had decided to kill Smith. As one Knight bragged to the black prisoners, "Wewill have radical meat before tomorrow."16 On Sunday morning, October 4, Crump visited the prisoners, demanding from Smith all papers in his personal possession. After receiving what the prisoner had on him, the colonel proceeded to question one of the freedmen. Recalling the devastating fire earlier that year "caused" by "that carpetbagger," Crump noticed the freedman's name
New YorkTribune, July 31, 1869; Russell, Carpetbaggers, 53; Trial Transcript, pp. 78, 88, 114, 1104, a" 1693-1694. Col. Crump would only lead the detail on October 3, relinquishing that duty the next day. Constitution of KRS, (first and second quotations); Trial Transcript, p. 124 (third and fourth quo16 tations), pp. 3, 18, 124, 166, 181, 239-240, 267.
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appeared in Smith's papers for twenty dollars owed. After a brief explanation by the prisoner, the colonel ended with an ominous promise. "Whenthis town was burned up," rememberedCol. Crump, "itwas burned and niggers,and about the time it wasburned they stole enough up by the Yanks to last them till this time, and now you're about to burn it up again,but I'll see you about it. Right here on George Smith'spaper I see about twelvehundred niggers and low down outsidewhite men, you loyalleague men, but I will put an end to Mr.George Smith and all of them twelvehundred niggers-I will kill the last damned one of you.""7 Later that day, Maj. Curtis realized the possible danger to the prisoners. Despite the assurances from local officials that such disturbances usually resulted in all talk and no action, and hearing incessant rumors of impending danger, the major dispatched approximately half of his force to protect the prisoners, which brought the total number of civilian and military personnel guarding the calaboose to approximately sixteen. To assuage any fears about a possible breakout, Maj. Curtis promised to reinforce the guard detail at a moment's notice. Mayor Hodge later testified that he believed this to mean that the military would arrive firing away. The major further ordered Lt. Wilbur T. DuBois to take command at the calaboose and summoned all possible reinforcements from Marshall, about twenty miles south of Jefferson. Before sending any troops, however, the post commander at Marshall, Gen. J. Hayden, first consulted with Robert W. Loughery, the Democratic editor of the Jefferson Times and Marshall Texas Republican, who convinced him that troops were not necessary. Gen. Hayden, who testified that Maj. Curtis's request arrived around six o'clock that night, later stated, "it [the arrivalfor help] put it out of the question as to the matter of reinforcements, because the detachment could not by any possibility reach you before midnight and were the idea seriouslyentertained of taking G W Smith from the jail the attemptwill be made before the arrivalof the troops ... Were your commandthreatenedI should not hesitatea moment to come to your assistance even if I movedwith everysoldierat the Post."'8
'7Trial Transcript, p. 176 (block quotation), pp. 175-177Gen. J. Hayden to Maj. James Curtis, Oct. 4, 1868, Post of Marshall, Letters Sent, August 1868-March 1869, The Fifth Military District, RG 393 (National Archives; herereafter cited as Post of Marshall), block quotation) N. V. Board to Governor E. M. Pease, Oct. 13, 1868, Governor Pease July 31, 1869; N. V. Board to Governor E. M. Correspondences (second quotation); New YorkTribune, Pease, Oct. so, 1868, Governor Pease Correspondences; Trial Transcript, pp. 2o, 78-80, 85-86, 1116. After the fact, one newspaper leveled charges of duplicity and complicity at Loughery. "Yes, Bro Radical, "when it is known that you were aware of the condition of George Loughery," stated the Jefferson W. Smith; that he was lying in the city prison of Jefferson, friendless and without his arms; for you, Bro Loughery to advise that no help be sent him in an extremity of this kind, is indeed 'revolting,' SHOCKING AND INHUMAN," see Jefferson Radical,Sep. 18, 1869.
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Gen. Hayden, no doubt, could have sent reinforcements to Maj. Curtis had he wanted to, as evidenced by the last sentence of his statement; in fact, a detail of cavalry might have arrived much earlier than midnight as the general suggested, depending on the speed they traveled the approximately twenty miles from Marshall to Jefferson. Gen. Hayden's claim that troops, if sent, would not have arrived before midnight, nearly three hours after Smith's death, is unconvincing, for he did not know exactly when or if an attempt was going to be made on the prisoner. In his own words, the general prioritized what he deemed important to warrant sending reinforcements to Jefferson and protection for Smith ranked low. Whether Loughery convinced him that sending reinforcements was not necessary because all the talk of revenge was just rumor, or if he simply did not wish to dispatch soldiers to Jefferson to perform what he believed a civil matter will never be fully known. But what is certain is Gen. Hayden should have given more emphasis and importance to assisting a fellow officer (Maj. Curtis), who believed himself in need of help. Although some in the military incorrectly judged the situation, others, especially the black community, braced for trouble. Richard "Sugar Dick" Walker, a local freedman and eye witness to the events that night in the calaboose, testified that he knew something was going to happen and warned others to find "a safe place to hide." John W. Lea, who lived near the calaboose, saw freedmen nailing up windows and bracing doors. For the prisoners, unfortunately, Gen. Hayden, among others, failed to possess such insight, which proved disastrous.'9 Between nine o'clock and ten o'clock that night, a party estimated at several freedmen) 100ooto 250 armed, masked men (including the enclosure. The approached party approached in a very disciplined double-time manner and halted just outside the calaboose enclosure. According to the testimony of a remorseful Richard Figures, a member of the KRS and participant in the events that night who later turned state's evidence, attorney Hinche P. Mabry and William Saufly, a local merchant, conversed with the military sentries who were placed outside the enclosure to sound the alarm if trouble approached. Soon after the brief conversation, the sentries simply walked off. 20 Although some accused the military sentries of collusion with the Knights, there exists no evidence to support such an assertion. Nor does it appear that the Military Commission gave much credence to military
19Trial Transcript, p 20o8(quotation), p. 970o. 2"Trial Transcript, pp. 181, 213, 275-76; 304, Eighth Census, 186o, C. Caldwell to Governor [Pease], Sep. 30, 1868, Governor Pease Correspondences.
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personnel involvement, because nowhere in the voluminous trial transcript is there a suggestion that the sentries conspired with the KRS to kill Smith. More than likely, the sentries believed these men to be the anticipated civilian reinforcements or just one of the periodic patrols the Knights were known to do throughout the town. The sentries had orders to sound the alarm if any armed party approached, but to let a party led by Dr. James Lockhart, which would include civilian reinforcements, to pass unmolested. With the sentries satisfied to the identity of the party, the columns continued toward the calaboose.21 Halting the body approximately sixty feet outside the enclosure, Saufly approached alone and began yelling to individuals on the other side of the fence inside the enclosure. Realizing that the guards inside were expecting the arrival of Dr. Lockhart's party around nine that night, Suafly replied to the inquiring Dan Sanford, a policeman and one of the guard detail, that he was with the doctor's party. To one Knight, the whole scene looked scripted. "[T]here was an understanding among the leaders for some purpose, I don't know what," he remembered. "I suppose as to questions that would be asked by persons inside the jail yard." On state's evidence, Dr. Lockhart would later be indicted on charges of complicity in the event.22 With the guards inside presumably still not cognizant of the plan, the Knights marched to the gate and, after policeman Sanford opened it, immediately broke ranks and poured in. Their entry was made all the easier because military officials inside had yet to bar the gate, as they were awaiting the arrival of Dr. Lockhart's party. A participant testified at the trial that "we entered every man for [himself]," while an observer compared the crowd's entry to "wild cattle." The party quickly overwhelmed the unprepared soldiers, sentinels, and local civil officers, despite the best efforts of the soldiers present. "[B]efore my men could spring to their feet," recalled Lt. DuBois, the commanding officer of the federal soldiers ordered to protect the prisoners at the calaboose, "they [the armed group] were inside and about fifty shot-guns and pistols and other weapons were leveled on us." It was later revealed that several soldiers within the enclosure hurriedly jumped over the fence upon seeing the crowd. One civilian guard, Sheriff Campbell McGregor, saw the entering crowd and implored the mayor to speak to the crowd. "For God's sake," Mayor Hodge answered, who was at first confused about the
21 Trial Transcript, p. 41. 22 Trial Transcript, p. 307 (quotation),
pp. 33, 277; John M. Frith to S. Bissell, Aug. 21, 1869, Correspondence of the Office of Civil Affairs of the District of Texas, The Fifth Military District, and the Department of Texas, 1867-1870, Letters Sent, June 1869-May 1870, M 1188, reel 22 (hereafter cited as Office of Civil Affairs).
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whole affair, but soon realized what they had come for, "what'sthe use of talking to such a crowd as that, we can't control them."23 With the soldiers disarmed, and with assistance from Marshal Nance's keys, the Knights secured the four freedmen in the yard and immediately began working on opening the calaboose door. While some worked to open the door, others took three of the four freedmen out, heading toward a spring on the western side of town, approximately a quarter mile from the calaboose. The fourth freedmen, Cornelius Turner, escaped from his captors and ran and hid under a nearby cabin. He became a spectator to the events that night. While taking the prisoners to the spring, one attacker advised his co-conspirators to finish the deed quickly, for at any moment the reinforcements from Marshall might be arriving (they were unaware of Gen. Hayden's decision). "Damn Major Curtis and his reinforcements," Anderson Wright later testified Col. Crump answered to the advice, "I have told him what I am going to do and I will do it or I will kill him and all his God damn men and burn down his shanty."24 In the adjoining woods near the spring the party riddled two of the freedmen with bullets, brushing off their pleas for mercy. Anderson Wright, however, got away. Having accepted his fate and with a pistol to his head, Wright asked to pray for both his attacker and himself before dying. "Pray,and [do] that damned quick," the would-be victim testified that Marion T. Slaughter said to him, "for you will be in hell in ten minutes, and Smith will not be five minutes behind you." As the prisoner knelt down, Slaughter knocked the praying man's hat off with his revolver and fired two shots at him, one hitting the man's shoulder. Wright immediately sprang up and ran into the woods, with bullets whizzing past him. For the next couple of days, the Knights scoured the area looking for Wright, but not before he found refuge at the military post at Marshall. He remained there until the military brought him back to Jefferson for the trial.25 Meanwhile, back in town, Maj. Curtis, apprised of the break-in, arrived at the calaboose alone, not waiting for the rest of his command to follow. Upon arriving, he found Lt. DuBois's military detail disarmed
Trial Transcript, p. 307 (first quotation), p. 1114 (second quotation), pp. 33-34 (third quotation), "23 pp. 634-635 (fourth quotation), pp. 40, 31,178, 277, 111524 Trial Transcript, p. 125 (quotation). According to Wright's testimony, when the party entered the enclosure, Marshal Nance leveled his gun at the four freedmen and stated, "Don't you move." This contradicts the assertions of Lt. DuBois, who testified that Marshal Nance told him that he was clubbed and knocked down by someone in the crowd who then took his keys. It must be noted no one in the enclosure that night corroborated the marshal's story, see Transcript, pp. 36, 41, 141. 25 Trial Transcript, p. 126 (first quotation), pp. 130-133, 282-283, 313, 323.
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against a wall and the intruders ineffectively battering at the metal calaboose double-door. The double-door (one opening outward and the other opening inward) proved nearly impossible for the men to open. As the group worked the door, Maj. Curtis tried to intervene by placing himself between the attackers and the door. On three separate occasions, he pleaded with the men "everyway on earth that a man could do to get them to stop it." The major even reminded the crowd that Col. Crump gave his word Smith would not be harmed, with some in the crowd responding with "we are not Col. Crump." "[I] have the greatest respect for you Major and your men," remarked one Knight, "but I intend to accomplish the purpose that I have come for." After removing the major for the third time, one attacker even warned him that if he continued to place himself in front of the door, "he would use him roughly." Maj. Curtis' superiors would later criticize him for his actions that night. Flake'sDaily Bulletinalso wondered: "Is it the duty of a United States officer to expostulate with anybody?"26 Shortly after removing the major for the last time, the party produced Marshal Nance's key to the outer door, which left only the inner door, which lacked a lock. In the trial's testimony stories differed as to exactly how the party obtained the key. One witness remembered the party strongly threatening Marshal Nance with bodily harm and death if he did not give up the key. Another witness stated that the marshal admitted that some of the attackers knocked him down and took the key. Others insinuated that the marshal's story was as scripted as everything else that night. Regardless of how the party obtained the key, the important thing was that they now had it, and that essentially sealed the fate of George Washington Smith.27 With the outer door unlocked and the inner door slightly pushed open, one attacker, George Gray, squeezed through the door and began fighting with Smith. "[H]e is killing one of our men," yelled out one of the attackers. At that moment, Gray,with Smith on his back, crawled to the door and his compatriots pulled him to safety. Figures later remembered that Gray "didn't come out of the jail straight." The Knights obviously underestimated the fight in the hated Yankee. For months, they
26Trial Transcript, p. 279 (first quotation), p. 83 (second and third quotations), pp. 220, 279-280 Oct. 28, 1868 (fourth quotation); Flake'sDaily Bulletin, Oct. 31, 1868; Gen. J. J. South-Western, Shreveport Reynolds to U. S. Adjutant General, Oct. 16, 1868, Letters Sent by the Department of Texas, the District of Texas, and the Fifth Military District 1856 and 1858 and 1865-1870, Letters Sent, Aug. io-Dec. 31, 1868, Mi165, reel 2 (hereafter cited as Fifth Military District). For examples of wondering how the major could surrender his men before any of them were killed, see Flake's Daily Bulletin,Oct. 1 1, 1868. 27Trial Transcript, pp. 36, 277; Trelease, WhiteTerror, 142. Richard Figures testified that policeman Thomas also possessed a key and opened the door for the attacking men, see Trial Transcript, p. 278.
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had labeled Smith a coward and no match against a southern man, but in a matter of minutes, Smith's tenacity and fight became unquestionable. Having proven his bravery during the Civil War when he received wounds at the battles of Gettysburg and Dallas (Georgia), Smith faced a large, armed crowd, unarmed and alone. "Armed," one newspaper declared, "he was a match for them all, and they gave him a wide berth. "28 But now Smith could only press his weight against the inner door and hope for help. For what must have seemed more than several minutes, the five-foot-nine-inch Smith kept his attackers at bay. "God damn him," Richard Walker later stated he heard Col. Crump angrily bellow, "let me get to him, and I'll be God damned if I don't stop him from rearing." Another attacker declared, "I'll put his light out directly." Smith's resistance frustrated the Knights, but in the end, he only delayed the inevitable. "Hand me that gun God damn me," one of them yelled out in frustration to someone in the crowd, "Iwill blow him out next time."'29 With Smith pressing his weight against the door and crying out for help, the attackers managed to pry open the door enough to fire two shots through the opening. The first shot missed, but the second found its mark. Others also fired shots through the window. With Smith wounded but still alive, Saufly ordered someone to give him "a showing." Someone then walked up and delivered the coup de grace to the dying man's head. Others then filed in and delivered approximately eighteen shots into the lifeless corpse, "that each one might participate in the triumph." The MarshallTexasRepublican, declaring the incident "an unavoidable necessity [for] the sanctity of home, the peace and safety of society, the prosperity of the country, and the security of life itself," concluded that "the career of Smith terminated as might have been expected.""3 With Smith dead (the whole affair had taken about five to ten minutes) the crowd broke into squads and began canvassing the area for other Republican leaders. "We have got Smith," some heard individuals
2 Trial Transcript. p. 279 (first and second quotations), 300; Houston Tri-Weekly Union, Oct., 29, 1868 (third quotation); Morhouse, Reminiscences, 251. Richard Walker testified that when the party got the inner door open, Smith wrestled an attacker's gun from him. It was then that the party immediately "doubled in on him." According to Figures, a participant in the attack, rather than a distant witness, Smith never garnered any weapon whatsoever. Nevertheless, such a story prompted several apocryphal stories that he killed several Knights, and they quietly buried the dead, see Trial Transcript, pp. 211-212, Flake'sDaily Bulletin, Oct. 31, 1868; Untitled and unpublished manuscript, n.d., Box 24-B, Barry Crouch Collection, Victoria College, Victoria, Tex. 29Trial Transcript, p. 212 (first and second quotations), p. 187.
oTrial Transcript, p. 187 (first quotation); Trelease, WhiteTerror,142 (second quotation); Marshall TexasRepublican, Oct. 16, Oct.3o, 1868 (third quotation); Trial Transcript, pp. 128, 18o, 186, 211, 280, 327-28; Testimony of Dr. W. C. Whitehead, Trial Transcript, n.p., Box 2585; Russell, Carpetbaggers, 53-54.
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in the calaboose cry out, "Caldwell and Campbell next." Republican county judge Donald Campbell anticipated he could be killed and took refuge at Maj. Curtis' headquarters. Republican Supreme Court Judge Colbert Caldwell, the second most hated man next to Smith in the area because of his widely published report as chairman of the constitutional convention's committee on lawlessness, heard the shooting around the calaboose and quickly fled his home into some nearby woods. His departure came at a fortuitous time, for moments later a sizable crowd of Knights arrived on his property.31 Although the judge evaded capture, his teenage son was not so lucky. A group captured the boy and for several hours the resolute youth refused to divulge his father's whereabouts. "Weought to kill this brat," snapped one of the boy's interrogators, "he is no better than the old man." "There is no use killing him," answered another in the party, "let him go, he is a brave boy and he don't deserve killing." They released Caldwell's son and, shortly thereafter, called off the search for his father. Other prominent Republicans were also targeted but escaped unharmed. Throughout the night, the various groups of Knights dispersed and peace was restored. Thus ended, according to one newspaper, "a tragedy.., .which surpasses in atrocity anything which has taken place in Texas since the [Gainesville] hanging of 1861 [sic]."32 On the following day, October 5, the few remaining white Republicans in Jefferson, fearing a repeat of the previous night, took refuge on the second floor of the Haywood Hotel, as federal troops occupied the first. The Knights, meanwhile, patrolled the town for "dangerous Negroes," especially those individuals who might have witnessed their actions the night before. Later that day when Maj. Curtis confessed to the remaining Republicans at the hotel that the only protection he could afford them was a military escort out of town, most Republicans decided to leave Jefferson. The civic leaders, however, realizing the effects to the town and themselves of such an exodus, pleaded for them to stay and offered them protection. According to historian Allen W. Trelease, the Republicans recalled the pledge made to Smith and the freedmen and "departed as quickly as they could, some openly and others furtively to avoid ambush."'3 Almost before the bodies were cold and the gunpowder smoke had
31 Flake'sDaily Bulletin, Oct. 15, 1868 (quotation); C. T. Garland to Governor E. M. Pease, Aug. 4, 1868, Governor Pease Correspondences; Trial Transcript, pp. 285-289. 32Trial Transcript, pp. 733-734 (first quotation); Shreveport South-Western, Oct. 28, 1868 (second quoOct. 28, 1868; Houston Tri-Weekly South-Western, tation); Trial Transcript, pp. 285-289, 747; Shreveport Union, May lo, 1869. 33Trelease, WhiteTerror, 143 (quotation)
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faded from the air there began another conflict, this one fought in black and white. The battles lines between the Conservative and Radical press had been drawn before the Smith murder. But with his murder, there was something tangible to focus upon, rather than some abstract theory, law, or far away event in Washington, D.C. Smith's death soon became a political football, and all sides ran with it. Conservatives and Republicans viewed the event differently and matched charge with counter-charge. Some correspondents presented the KRS and Democrats as the true villains and Smith as a martyr for the righteous Radical Republican cause. "The blood of Smith stains not only the hands of the masked perpetrators of the foul deed," declared the Tyler Index, "but attaches to the skirts of the citizens of Jefferson, and its voice cries from the ground like the blood of Abel in the ear of heaven of retribution." The Houston Tri-Weekly Union likened Smith to another martyr,John Brown, with Smith's body in the ground, but his "soul is marching on." According to Flake'sDaily Bulletin, conservative editors "manifest the grossest ignorance concerning the crime." The paper also accused these editors of duplicity in the event through their coverage. In fact, in order to give Republicans in the area a vehicle to express their philosophy and opinions, Winston Banks and C. T. Garland began publishing a local Radical newspaper called the Radical. "Wewish these gentlemen success," claimed the Houston Jefferson Union, "but it looks about as hopeless as the storming of hell in Tri-Weekly an attempt to take the Devil prisoner."34 Conservative newspapers, which were more numerous, condemned Smith and applauded the act. They excused violence and described the incident as necessary, placing blame on Smith and the Republicans for the murder. The conservative press added an aura of mystery and romanticism when describing the event, which would influence future versions about Reconstruction. "After the accomplishment of their object," reported the JeffersonTimes,"they all retired as quietly and mysteriously as they came-no one knowing who they were or from whence they came." The Marshall TexasRepublicanproposed "surely no reasonable man will contend that the removal of such a man was not demanded by motives of public safety."Stories about Smith's murder demonstrated a problem that appeared after other violent attacks during Reconstruction: two completely different versions of the same event. "Republican and Democratic accounts differed diametrically on almost
" TylerIndexquote as cited in Marshall TexasRepublican,Oct. 30, 1868 (first quotation); Houston TriUnion, May 24, 1869 (second quotation); Flake'sDaily Bulletin, May 8, 1869 (third quotation); Weekly Bulletin, Feb. 5, 1869 (fourth quotation); Jefferson Houston Tri-Weekly Radical, Aug. 1 1, 1869; Houston T'iUnion, Nov. 5, 1868. Weekly
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every particular,"wrote historian Allen Trelease, "and both were colored by considerations of political and personal interest." Regardless of the conflicting stories, there usually exist enough facts to corroborate the Republicans' case.35 Of all the Texas papers that engaged in this war of words about the Smith affair, the most vitriolic attacks came from the unapologetic "rebel editor" of the Marshall Texas Republican and Jefferson Times, Robert W. Loughery. He wielded the printed word like a sword, thrusting it at Smith's defenders. As a result, there soon existed a personal battle between Loughery and the Unionist editor of Flake's Daily Bulletin in Galveston, Ferdinand Flake. In a series of articles the two accused the other of distortion, embellishment, lying, and complicity in the murder. Loughery smeared Smith and the Republican cause and attacked the subsequent military trial as despotic and tyrannical. Flake, on the other hand, saw Smith as another victim of Democratic violence and the trial that followed as constitutional justice. "He does not know that his positions are untenable and his point refuted," declared Flake about Loughery's editorials, "but returns to and maintains them with a heroism perfectly sublime." Another Republican paper dared Loughery to come to Jefferson and flaunt his views. To that, the editor wisely answered that he did not "yearn for a martyr's fate or long for a resting place in a military stockade." Attacks by Loughery even drew the military's attention, especially when he insinuated that federal soldiers murdered a Marshall woman supposed to have a large amount of money belonging to the U.S. government. After the editor's arrest, which made him an instant hero, Gen. Joseph Jones Reynolds, the commander of the Fifth Military District, ordered officials not to "molest Loughery or his paper" any further. Nonetheless, the whole ordeal only stoked the fire-eating editor's claims about oppression and tyranny.36
Timesquote as cited in Marshall TexasRepublican,Oct. 14, 1868 (first, second, and third 5"Jefferson Oct. 3o, 1868; 144 (fourth quotation), 143; MarshallTexasRepublican, quotations); Trelease, WhiteTerror, Trial Transcript, pp. 666, 725. The Smith murder apparently also began feuds between Democratic papers, such as the JeffersonTimesand Marshall TexasRepublicansquaring off in a "wordywar" with the see HarrisonFlag, Oct. 14, 1869. Jeffersonjimplecute, 36Flake's Daily Bulletin, May 26, 1869 (first, second, and third quotations); Telegram from J.J. Reynolds to commanding officer at the Post of Jefferson, June 14, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Sent, May 29-November 8, 1869, M1188, reel 1 (National Archives; fourth quotation); Harrison Flag, July 29, 1869; Max S. Lale, "Robert W. Loughery: Rebel Editor," East TexasHistorical Journal 21 (1983): 3-15; Richter, Armyin TexasDuring Reconstruction, 178. Following the war, district commanders required Texas editors to submit a copy of each issue to headquarters in Galveston, where it would be examined for disloyal content. If judged to be too disloyal to the Union anything from rewriting articles to the closure of the press could happen, with the arrest of the editor in more extreme cases. Considering Federal control had solidified in the South, Congress allowed the military to cancel this policy in August 1866; but, of course, it could be reinstituted whenever necessary, see William L. Richter, "Outside My Profession: The Army and Civil Affairs in Texas Reconstruction," Military History of Texas and the Southwest 9 (1971): 10.
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As editors battled it out, local officials and military officials began an effort to bring participants in the murders to justice. Ironically, the Knights actually created the one thing they tried to prevent. "The murder of Smith and the freedmen," wrote historian Ben Cooner, "marked the beginning of military control in Jefferson." Fearing more trouble and attacks on the remaining Republicans, Maj. Curtis requested additional troops. He believed at least a regiment (about one thousand men) necessary. Cognizant of the situation in Jefferson as well as northeast Texas in general, Gen. Reynolds instead ordered a company (about one hundred men) of troops to Jefferson. These soldiers were sorely needed on the frontier, but the general deemed the situation in Marion County more urgent."7 Throughout the next few months, several companies of cavalry and companies from the 29th, 17th, and 35th Infantry regiments arrived in the city, along with Gen. George P. Buell, the new post commander at Jefferson, Col. Adam G. Malloy, the military-appointed mayor, and First Lt. Henry Sweeney, the new Freedman's Bureau agent and replacement for the much-maligned Maj. Curtis. Col. Malloy had orders to bring all perpetrators to justice. He began by replacing almost the entire city's government. By early 1869, the military force in the area had grown to three companies of cavalry and four companies of infantry."8 Within a few months after the incident at the calaboose, military officials had four of Jefferson's leading men in custody, with a fifth on the run: William Saufly, the alleged organizer of the attack on Smith, left town "on business." Saufly was very difficult to capture; even when the military placed a two-thousand-dollar reward for his capture, he still evaded their attempts. In the end Saufley's "business trip" took him through the Indian Territory all the way to New York."3
" Nov. 11, 1868; South-Western, Cooner, "Rise and Decline of Jefferson," 65 (quotation); Shreveport Nov. 6, 1868. Marshall TexasRepublican, " Marshall Texas Nov. 6, 1868; Marion Country, "Minutes of Commissioner's Court," Office Republican, of the County Clerk, Jefferson, Texas, 98; General J. J. Reynolds to Adjutant General, United States Army, Washington, D. C., Oct. 22, 1868, Records of the War Department, Adjutant General, RG 94, Box 321; Marshall TexasRepublican,Nov. 6, 1868; Headquarters to Lt. H. Sweeney, Oct. 14, 1868, Bureau Records, Letters Sent, Registers of Letters Received: September 1867-June 1869, reel 3; Telegram from Gen. J. J. Reynolds to Gen. [J] Hayden, Oct. 16, 1868, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, August 10-December 31, 1868, M1i 65, reel 2; Willard Richardson and A. H. Belo, eds., TexasAlmanac, 1870 (Galveston: Richardson and Company, 1869), 203. Although some of the blame lies with headquarters for their failure to offer any assistance-"the difficulties ... are fully appreciated"-to the many pleas for help by the sub-assistant commission in the weeks before the Smith incident, Maj. Smith still is most to blame for his inability to control the situation in Jefferson, especially considering he was not only the Bureau representative in the area, but also military commander, see Maj. James Curtis to Gen. J. J. Reynolds, Sep. 19, 1868, Bureau Records, Letters Received A-C 1867-1869, reel lo, and A.A.A.G. to Maj.James Curtis, Sep. 28, 1868, Bureau Records, Letters Sent, March 1867-May 1869g,reel 1. :"Gen. J. J. Reynolds to Gen. J. A. Rawlins, Dec. 7, 1868, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, August to-December 31, 1868, M1165, reel 2; Telegram from Capt. C. E. Morse to Capt. J. P. Brown, Dec. 7,
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With pressure mounting, the KRS held an emergency meeting, and about twenty members decided to become fugitives from the law, fleeing all across Texas and to other states, including Louisiana, New York, and Georgia. In spite of the mass exodus, many participants in the Smith murder did not escape capture. Authorities captured thirty-seven suspects over a period of five months and arrested, questioned, and released dozens more. Those held included some of the more prominent and "best" citizens of Jefferson as well as some of its "worst." Officials went out of their way, however, to capture those who had fled, even employing private detectives. Some of these detectives possessed reputations, according to the local press, equal to if not worse than those of some of the men they chased. The detectives were often accused of being wife beaters or drunks.40 The most successful detective was Charles A. Bostwick, a man described by a local conservative newspaper as the "vilest living wretch." As one contemporary noted, Bostwick, in his attempt to capture Smith's murders, often "threw caution to the wind," at times with tragic results. For example, while looking for Winshop O. "Bud" Connor, future pioneer in the Texas pharmaceutical industry and future four-term mayor of Dallas, Bostwick and his men mistakenly took William Perry, a beloved elderly, deaf man in the community and builder of the famed Excelsior Hotel, as the suspect. The mistaken identity resulted in Bostwick shooting Perry outside the man's residence. Although Bostwick was exonerated, incidents such as this only served to fuel the animosity and attacks against the investigation and authorities, especially against Mayor Malloy.41
1868, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, August io-December 31, 1868, Mi1165, vol. 6, reel 2; Telegram from J. J. Reynolds to Adjutant General, Aug. 9, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Sent, May 29-November 8, 1869, Mi188, reel 1;John M. Frith (sworn affidavit) to Colonel H. G. Malloy, Aug. 21, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, M1188, reel 22; G. P. Buell to C. E. Morse, August 2, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, M1188, reel 22; Telegram from Gen. J. J. Reynolds to U.S. Adjutant General, Oct. 16, 1868, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent: August 1o-December 31, 1868, M 1165, reel 2. "oTelegram from Gen. J.J.Reynolds to Gen. J. Hayden, Oct. 6, 1868, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, August io-December 31, 1868, MI 165, reel 2; HarrisonFlag, Aug. 19, 1869; Trelease, WhiteTerror, 145"' Austin Tri-Weekly Gazette, South-Western, June 23, 1869 (first quotation); Shreveport May 5, 1869; HarrisonFlag, May 13, 1869; Telegram from Capt. C. E. Morse to Gen. G. P. Buell, Dec. 17, 1868, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, August lo-December 31, 1868, M1165, reel 2; W. P. Bainbridge to Commanding Officer at Post of Jefferson, Sep. 11, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Sent, May 29-November 8, 1869, M1188, reel 1; "Minutes of the Board," Jan. 18, 1869, 360-361. Connor left Jefferson and landed in Dallas, along with several participants in the Smith murder, see Alicia F. Rodriquez, "Disfranchisement in Dallas: The Democratic Party and the Suppression of Independent Political Challenges in Dallas, Texas, 1891-1894," Southwestern HistoricalQuarterly 68 (July 2004): 43-65. Apparently several of those captured by Bostwick filed accounts against him for his treatment toward them, see Bainbridge to Commanding Officer at Post Jefferson, Sep. 11, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Sent, May 29-November 8, 1869, Mi188, reel 1.
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Believing the civil courts "more than a farce" and wanting to instill "law and order" in the area, the military decided to try the suspects by military commission. A military commission differed from civil courts and courts martial. Comprising five to thirteen members, such commissions derived their powers not from statute law but from the existence of martial law and the military commander under the laws of war. They were used when civil courts were incapable or unwilling to administer justice. A simple majority was sufficient for conviction, but death sentences required a two-thirds vote. Although subject to review by the commanding military officer, and in some cases by the president of the United States, military commissions did not require judicial review. As would be expected, many criticized the military for using commissions to try civilians. "Military courts are not fitted for the trial of civilians," declared the Austin Tri-Weekly Gazette,"they were never intended forbeen resorted to have occasionally to accomplish tyrannical endsthey in administering impartial justice." been successful never have they Employing every maneuver possible, including a trip by prominent attorneys John Burke and former Whig gubernatorial candidate Benjamin H. Epperson to Washington, D.C., in order to appeal directly to Secretary of War John M. Schofield, the defense tried desperately to get the case transferred to the civil courts. But Gen. Reynolds decided against the motion, having little confidence in the county's courts. He further noted that the defendants were charged with federal crimes-overpowering United States military forces-that could not be tried in a state court. To criticisms of the policy of denying bail to the defendants, the general responded that a number of these men charged with the murder had already fled the area to escape arrest. Those already in custody were also charged with murder and according to state law, bail could be revoked in murder cases when "the proof is evident or the presumption is great" for flight. Critics, nevertheless, questioned the commission's constitutionality, citing the 1866 Supreme Court Case Ex parte Milligan, which ruled citizens could not be tried in military courts when civil courts were in operation. But these arguments, too, all failed to persuade officials.42
"Gen. J. B. Kiddoo to Gen. Oliver O. Howard, June 26, 1866, Bureau Records, Letters Sent, Gazette, September 1865-March 1867, reel 1 (first quotation); Austin Tri-Weekly Apr. 14, 1869 (second Justice in quotation); Sefton, UnitedStatesArmy,193 (third quotation), 31; Kenneth E. St. Clair, "Military North Carolina, 1865: A Microcosm of Reconstruction," Civil WarHistory 11 (Dec. 1965), 342; Clifford J. Mathews, "Special Military Tribunals, 1775-1865" (M.A. thesis, Emory University, 1951), 157-158; and Martial Law (Washington, D.C.:JamesJ. Chapman, 1892); William E. Birkhimer, Military Government 5 (Mar. 1867): 30-31; Ralph Wooster, "Ben H. Epperson: East Texas Lawyer,"East TexasHistoricalJournal Max S. Lale, "Stockade Case," in Tyler, et al. (eds.), The New Handbookof Texas,VI, o06;Telegram from Lt. Louis Carrier to Army Chief of Staff, Feb. 15, 1869, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, January 1-April 17, 1869, M1 165, reel 3; Gen.J.J. Reynolds to Secretary of WarJohn A. Rawlins, Aug. 16, 1869,
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Editor Loughery even involved himself in trying to sway public opinion with cries of indignation about the terrible ordeal imposed on a "refined, hospitable, and intelligent people." He claimed that citizens of Jefferson were subjected "to the indignity and danger of midnight arrest." He accused the authorities of snatching these men from their beds "without apprehensions of being awakened and dragged off by armed soldiery before the dawn." "The perpetration of such flagrant acts of despotism," Loughery wrote, "is unparalleled in the history of a country that is in a state of profound peace, and is indeed most remarkable." A popular point to focus on for him was the prisoners' treatment. Ever vigilant, Loughery even appealed to northern papers for intercession against the military tyranny in Jefferson. His indictment drew some attention but did not cause military officials to change their course.43 Realizing the uneasiness many had with trying civilians in military commissions, military officials did ensure that the proceedings were as fair and impartial as possible. Unfortunately, however, the actions of several judges undermined their best efforts. Senior military officers removed one commissioner for "drunkenness" and allowed another to withdraw from the commission. This individual was former Freedmen's Bureau sub-assistant commissioner Col. Samuel H. Starr, who, at times, acted more like a prosecutor than a judge. Surprisingly, both sides objected to the removal of the "one-armed member." "The Military Commission has been sadly mutilated,"opined the JeffersonRadical, "by the withdrawal of the one-armed member." Three other commissioners faced investigation for accepting "hospitalities" from some defendants' family members, with one commissioner being arrested and relieved. According to the Radical Republican newspaper, Houston Tri-Weekly Union, by these actions the commissioners compromised their integrity and jeopardized the entire proceeding. Such faults only increased the already persistent attacks by both sides, especially from the Democratic press.44
Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, August 3-December 31, 1869, M 1165, reel 3. The commission comprised Col. W. H. Shafter, Col. S. H. Starr, Maj. Syman Bissell, Col. N. A. M. Dudley, Col. J. A. Gordon, and Col. Samuel R. Schwenk. " Marshall TexasRepublican,Nov. 6, Dec. 11, 1868 (first and second quotations); HarrisonFlag, Feb. 18, 1869; HarrisonFlag, Dec. 18, 1868; Assistant U. S. Adjutant General N. Claywood telegram to Gen. George P. Buell, June 30, 1869, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, April 17-August 3, 1869, M1165, reel 3. Radical,Aug. 11, 1869 (quotation); Houston Tri-Weekly Union, September 14, 1869; Excerpt 4"Jefferson of HarrisonFlag, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, April-December 1869, M1 188, reel 13; Col. W. H. Shafter to Gen. J. J. Reynolds, July 24, 1869, Officials of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, M1188, reel 23; J. A. Gordon to Gen. J. J. Reynolds, July 34, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, M1188, reel 23; Gen. Ed. Hatch to General J. J. Reynolds, July 24, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, M 188, reel 23; Trial Transcript, p. 2394-
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In spite of these claims, which all the commissioners vehemently insisted did not compromise their judgment, and questions concerning its members, the commission did everything to ensure a just trial. It complied with habeas corpus, even releasing all parties held not likely to be convicted, regardless of their possible involvement. In fact, this move frustrated some involved with the prosecution, who believed that no more defendants should be released until after the trial, for it "would have a bad effect on the community." They believed that the judge advocate, Major Henry Goodfellow, possessed too much discretion, compared to other members on the commission. The members also allowed bail for all prisoners not facing capital charges. For the most part, the commission followed as fair and impartial a course as could be expected under the circumstances.45 White town folk in Jefferson focused their complaints not only on the military commission but also on the woefully inadequate facilities used to house all those arrested. Military officials had recently ordered all civilians to be tried by military commissions in northeast Texas to be held at Jefferson in the stockade. Thus, it soon filled to capacity. The stockade was an immense timber structure, measuring 70 by 1oo feet with walls fifteen feet high and broad enough on top for soldiers to walk. It was an open-air enclosure that, up to the trial, housed, at times, almost a hundred men, not the two to three times that number claimed by some. Contrary to one historian's unsubstantiated assertion that "life was cruel and unbearable," with many dying from "exposure and pneumonia," only a few people died, and those not from neglect. The army enacted all reasonable measures to confine the defendants properly, including allowing limited visits and gifts from relatives and sheds to protect them from the weather. Although an imposing structure, however, it proved less than airtight. The local commander, in fact, complained that he was unable to guard the detainees adequately, and on several occasions, prisoners escaped from the stockade, including some of those involved in the killing of Smith.46
45C. T. Garland to Gen. George P. Buell, Jan. 1, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, April-December 1869, M1188, reel 13 (quotation); Major [Syman] Bissell to Gen. J. J. Reynolds, June 24, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, April-December 1869, M188, reel 13; Harrison Flag, Jan. 7, 1869; Gen. E. R. S. Canby to Commanding Officer at Post of Jefferson, Jan. 8, 1869, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, January 1-April 17, 1869, M1165, reel 3; Capt. C. E. Morse to Commanding Officer at Post of Jefferson, May 28, 1869, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, April 17-August 3, 1869, Mi165, reel 3; Telegram from Gen. J. J. Reynolds to Gen. [George P.] Buell, June 28, 1869, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, April 17-August 3, 1869, M1 165, reel 3. (Dallas: Mathis, Van Nort, and Company, 14 Winnie Mims Dean, Jefferson,Texas:Queen of the Cypress 1953), 70 (quotation); Captain of 26th Infantry to Gen. George P. Buell, Apr. 3o, 1869, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, April 17?August 3, 1869, Mi1165, reel 3; Marshall TexasRepublican,Apr. 2, 1869; Arch McKay and H. A. Spellings, A History of Jefferson,Marion County, Texas:One-timeGatewayof Texas Retains its Gloryin Rush and Harmonyof Modern Times1836-1936 (Jefferson, Tex.: n.p., 1936), 5;Shook,
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By May 1869 seventy-five men faced indictments for conspiracy to oppose the United States government's authority and murder. Only twenty-three actually went on trial, including two freedmen. The government tried those not present in absentia. Those facing trial represented the area's most influential political and business figures. In fact, their service for the Confederacy endeared them to many local whites. One newspaper sarcastically described these men as the town's "high-toned chivalric knights." They included William B. Ochiltree, former judge of the Fifth Judicial District of Texas in 1862, attorney general of the Republic of Texas in 1845, and namesake of Ochiltree County (he would eventually be released because "he was not a leading spirit in the murder"). Ludwig (Ludwick) P. Alford, a former county commissioner for Harrison County during Presidential Reconstruction, was also a defendant as was Col. William L. Crawford, a former officer in the 19th Texas Infantry and prominent lawyer. William B. Saufly, head of the depot for clothing during the war and former mayor of Jefferson, also went on trial. All these men were known-and applauded by some-for their resistance to Republican Reconstruction efforts. None, however, matched the reputation for violence of Col. Richard P. Crump, a wealthy merchant, assistant marshal of Marion County, and a former commanding officer of the First Texas Partisan Rangers.47 In a possible act of poetic justice, the military decided to hold the trial in the KRS's meeting hall, Freeman's Hall. The military commandeered the building because it was large enough to accommodate all participants, the defense, and witnesses. During the five-month trial, 176 wit"Federal Occupation," 223; Gen. George. Buell to Capt. C. E. Morse May 14, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, April-December 1869, M1188, reel 13; Gen. George P. Buell to Capt. C. E. Morse, May 14, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, April-December 1869, M1188, reel 13; South-Western, Shreveport Apr. 21, 1869. to the Southwest(Austin: 47New York July 13, 1869 (quotation); Fred Tarpley,Jefferson: Tribune, Riverport Eakins Press, 1983), lo9; George P. Buell to Capt. C. E. Morse, Oct. 31, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, M1188, reel 23; no author, "Thomas Peck Ochiltree," in Tyler, et al. (eds.), TheNew Handbookof Texas,IV, 1102; Randolph B. Campbell, A SouthernCommunity in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850-i880 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1983), 259; Dallas MorningNews,Feb. 18, 1920; Civil WarTimesIllustrated, May 1997: 40-46; Marshall TexasRepublican, Aug. 25, 1865; Marshall TexasRepublican,Oct. 23, 1868. Those named in the indictment included Richard P. Crump, Ludwig P. Alford, William H. Magill, Mark H. Hopkins, Silas H. Nance, Charles L. Pitcher, John A. Richardson, Mathew D. Taylor,John C. Murphy Jr., Henry A. Stealey, Walter L. Marshall, John M. Vines, William A. Hightower, David E. Carpenter, Richard Batte, William D. Hannagan, George Gray, Oscar Gray, Henry M. Woodsmall, William L. Crawford, Horatio N. Geer, Nathaniel McCoy (freedman), and Richard Davis (freedman), Marion T. Slaughter, William B. Saufly, Harrison Thurman, A. A. Spence, George O'Neal, James Alley, Charles Hotchkiss, William Alley, William Rose, James Knox, Jacob Bates, David Castleberry, Richard Sedberry, John Hopperty, William Ochiltree, "Bud"Connor, Stephen Sullivan, William Nichols, Theodore Nichols, James Cotton, Theodore Lewis, John Lewis, "Bud"Jones, Thomas, Gorman, _ Monan, Cotton, Jon Brooks (freedman), Haggerty, Kirkland,John H. Pratt, Theodore Scott, John Muse, Campbell, John Penman, Pink Barnes, Dobbins, John Brightwell, and Wallace, McCarty. John Chambers,
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nesses testified, 46 for the prosecution and the rest for the defense. More than a dozen lawyers made up the defense team, which represented almost the entire Jefferson bar. It comprised the best and brightest legal minds in the area, including United States Congressman and father of a future Texas governor, David B. Culberson; former district court judge, Reuben A. Reeves; and Baptist evangelist and former captain in the 16th Tennessee Cavalry, William E. Penn. Two defense members, Henry M. Woodsmall and Hinche P. Mabry, would eventually be defendants, with the latter fleeing to Canada after hearing that a witness had turned state's evidence against him. "The prisoners' counsel composed of some of the ablest lawyers in East Texas," acknowledged the Harrison Flag, they "are indefatigable in their labors . . . and will leave nothing undone calculated to enhance the chances of acquittal."48 The prosecution relied heavily on the testimony of the two commanding officers that night, Lt. DuBois and Maj. Curtis, along with several men who turned state's evidence. Several freedmen witnessed the events at the calaboose that night. Anderson Wright, Cornelius Turner, and Richard "Sugar Dick" Walker all testified and helped the prosecution. Their testimony was helpful only to a certain degree, for the commission did not think their testimony as important as that of white witnesses. Federal authorities realized the danger to those who turned state's evidence and offered protection, "knowing they cannot live in the county after having given evidence in the case." Danger or not, some prominent Republicans in Jefferson still offered their services to the prosecution. "I have a knowledge of the whole deplorable transaction of its causes," remarked judge and editor of the JeffersonRadical, C. T. Garland, "and of the circumstances connected therewith such as no other lawyer possesses."49 The defense produced witnesses to corroborate clients' alibis. Most defendants claimed that they were attending church, sleeping or sick in bed, courting young ladies, or visiting friends at the time Smith was mur48 Harrison Flag, June 3, 1869 (quotation); Thomas J. Hudson to Major C. H. Hoyt, May 21, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, Mii188, reel 22; Johnathan H. McLean, Reminiscences (Dallas: Smith and Lamar, 1918), 117; Anne W. Hooker, "DavidB. Culberson," in Tyler, et al. (eds.), The New Handbookof Texas,,II, 436-437;Georgia Kemp Caraway,"Reuben A. Reeves," in Tyler, et. al. (eds.), TheNew Handbookof Texas,,V, 508; Samuel B. Hesler, "William Evander Penn," in Tyler, et al. (eds.), The New Handbookof Texas,V, 139-40; Max S. Lale, 'John Burke," in Tyler, et al. (eds.), The New Handbookof Texas,I, 833; Douglas Hale, "Hinche Parham Mabry," in Tyler, et. al. (eds.), The New Handbook of Texas, IV, 361. The other members of the defense team included Samuel F. Moseley, Thomas J. Campbell, William H. Mason, R. R. Haynes, former private in First Texas Infantry, Hood's Brigade and future state legislator, George T. Todd, John Clark, and C. G. Todd. " Unsigned to Gen. George P. Buell, Mar. 30, 1869, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, January 1-April 17, 1869, M1165, reel 3 (first quotation); C. T. Garland to Governor E. M. Pease, Adjutant General-General Correspondences, Texas Adjutants General's Department (Archives Division, Texas State Library, Austin; second quotation); Cap. C. E. Morse telegram to Maj. [J] Curtis, May 8, 1869, Fifth Military District, Letters Sent, April 17-August 3, 1869, reel 3. Mi1165,
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dered. Given a "general public conspiracy" of this magnitude and the fact that the prosecution relied on the testimony of seventeen black witnesses, whose credibility white men, including military officers, were accustomed to discounting, this move by the defense proved quite effective. They presented their case fully against the evidence, focusing mainly on the memory, unreliability, and militancy of the witnesses, possible collusion in black testimony, intimidation of witnesses by federal officials, and payments to witnesses for their testimony. Lawyers for the defense focused sharply on the character of Dr. John Frith, a KRS member who turned state's evidence. They questioned sixteen specific witnesses about the doctor's reputation within the community, hoping to raise doubt about his character. In hundreds of pages of trial transcript witnesses described the doctor as dishonest and intemperate. Several witnesses for the defense, however, did admit that they never knew the doctor's bad reputation until all the arrests began."5 The prosecution's exhibit "L"-the sworn deposition of Lt. DuBois, the commanding officer of the federal soldiers ordered to protect the the testimony of participants to the prisoners at the calaboose-and murder, Richard A. Figures, Dr.John Frith, and Alamanza A. Davenport, however, represented the most damaging evidence against the defendants. With their testimony, the prosecution was able to prove which defendants had forced the Federal soldiers to desert their posts as well as which defendants were present that night at the calaboose. Such depositions also exonerated or at least cast enough doubt on others' whereabouts or role in the murders to bring about not-guilty verdicts. Consider the testimonies of Figures and Lt. DuBois. These two key witnesses, corroborated by other white key witnesses, never mentioned that they saw or spoke to Col. Crump during the whole affair, although several freedmen testified that they heard and recognized the colonel present that night. Nevertheless, the lack of corroboration by certain key witnesses against certain defendants greatly influenced the commission's decision no matter what suspicions the members might have had.51 After the prisoners' final concluding arguments that focused primarily on the constitutionality and jurisdiction of the proceedings, partiality of
5oTrial Transcript, 318, 258-60, 205; Earline Hart Burnett, "AHistory of the First Methodist Church, Jefferson, Texas, 1844-1954" (M.A. thesis, Stephen F. Austin State College, 1954), 48. All the black witnesses received financial compensation for their testimony and the defense claimed that, therefore, the witnesses were not credible, see Gen. George P. Buell to Capt. C. E. Morse, Nov. 3, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869?May 1870, Mi1 88, reel 23; Gen. George P. Buell to Cap. C. E. Morse, Oct. 14, 1868, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, M1188, reel 23; Capt.C. E. Morse telegram to Commanding Officer at Post of Jefferson, Oct. 28, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Sent, May 29-November 8, 1869, M1188, reel 1. For sections disparaging Dr.John Frith, see Trail Transcript, pp. 1500-1550, 2000-2100, 2200-2300, 2600-2750. Exhibit "L,"Trial Transcript, Box 258551
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the judges, allegations of witness testimony, veracity of the government's witness, and other technicalities, the trial came to an end on August 9. Following an extensive deliberation, the commissioners returned on August 23 with seventeen acquittals. But the court found six menLudwig P. Alford, Oscar and George Gray,John A Richardson, Mathew A. Taylor, and Charles Pitcher-guilty and sentenced the first three to life sentences for conspiracy to commit murder and the last three to four-year sentences at the Huntsville prison. Horatio Greer was also found guilty, but on a motion by a commission member, the military reconsidered his punishment and acquitted him.52 In all, only five would serve time, because shortly before being escorted to Huntsville, George Gray,facing life in prison, escaped while visiting his "dangerously ill" daughter. Gray was allowed to visit his daughter at her residence. This personal time was the opportunity he needed to make his escape. As soldiers waited at the front door, Gray quickly made it to a side room and jumped out a window and, with the guards firing at him, ran into the woods and disappeared. It was later learned that his daughter feigned her illness. In early 1870, bombarded with numerous letters from military officials, civil authorities (including Republican governor EdmundJ. Davis), and the inmates' friends and families, President Ulysses S. Grant pardoned the remaining five after they had served approximately a year of their sentences. Actually, Mathew A. Taylor, after serving only months on his sentence, had been released the previous year. Many believed him to be more a follower than a leader in the event and wanted leniency shown him. His fellow co-conspirators received their pardons due to time served but also because of the general spirit of reconciliation prevalent during Grant's tenure as president.53 Both defenders and critics of Smith reacted with anger at the commission's verdicts. In the opinion of most Republicans and military officers, more than a few defendants escaped justice. They believed Col. Crump was more responsible for Smith's death than any other person and wanted him to be held accountable. In fact, Gen. Buell refused to accept the acquittal of Col. Crump, along with others, and rejected the findings; but
5 Lt. Syman Bissell to Capt. C. E. Morse, Sept. 2, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, Mi188, reel 22; Capt. C. E. Morse to Commanding Officer at Post of Jefferson, Oct. 19, 1869, Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Sent, May 29-November 8, 1869, Mi1188, reel 1; Trial Transcript, 3o69-3074, 3109. " Convict Record Ledgers, Penitentiary Records 1849-1954, "A"series: 1-3,ooo, 1849-1873, vol. 1998/038-149, reel 1 (Archives Division, Texas State Library, Austin) ; G. E. Gray to Lt. Syman Bissell, n.d., Office of Civil Affairs, Letters Received, June 1869-May 1870, M1i88, reel 22; Miscellaneous Letters, Trial Transcript, Box 2586; General Court Martial Orders No. 69, Dec. 8, 1869 and General Court Martial Orders No. 9, Feb. 7, 1870, Trial Transcript; A. G. Malloy, et al, to Dr. M. D. K. Taylor, Nov. 20, 1869, and E. J. Davis to Ulysses S. Grant, Nov. 9, 1869, Miscellaneous Letters, Trial Transcript, Box 2586.
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officials released the colonel and the general eventually dropped the matter. Several officers thought the "minnows" had been convicted, while the "whales"had not. By contrast, white citizens decried the sentences as arbitrary,lacking any satisfactory explanation from the commission as to why some men were found guilty and others were not. "Those convicted were no more guilty than those acquitted but the members of the commission had to find some guilty in order to satisfy the Yankee Army Officers," opined Charles DeMorse, editor of the NorthernStandard in Clarksville. "God speed the day when we will be rid of such vermin as we have had since the close of the late war."54 This case study of the Smith murder and subsequent Stockade Trial during 1868-69 highlights at least one explanation of why Reconstruction in Texas-and the South for that matter-turned out the way it did: the inability of military forces and Republican officials to protect white Unionists and freedmen from violence. Federal authorities faced a people who refused to accept defeat's full implications. In spite of emancipation and constitutional amendments protecting the political rights of blacks, white southerners never fully accepted the freedmen's new social and political status. Many in Jefferson, so to speak, never quit fighting. To alter Clausewitz's famous dictum, "for the South, peace became war carried on by other means." Most white southerners accepted the Confederacy's defeat militarily, but they never conceded ideologically. The surrender at Appomattox was not an admission of guilt. "The justness of their cause was unquestioned," concluded George C. Rable, a leading historian on Reconstruction violence. "[R]epentance therefore was inappropriate."" The deaths of Smith and the freedmen also demonstrate the coordinated nature of violence against Reconstruction by late 1868. The KRS did not act irrationally or without a purpose, but rather with a political motivation and an unmistakable and comprehensible goal held by most southern whites. The killings of Smith and the freedmen, for his "obnoxious" beliefs and their transgressions against accepted social and racial mores, were, in the end, all motivated by the basic precept of white political ideology in the South: white dominance and black subjugation.56
" Tarpley,Jefferson,i11 (quotation); Trelease, WhiteTerror,147. The Grand Jury of Marion County returned indictments against William Knox, Amarine Spence, Dan Harris, Joseph H. Pratt, William P. Saufly, and Hinche P. Mabry, charging them with the murder of Smith, Grant, and Stewart. None of the defendants was ever tried by the Military Commission, and only Saufly and Spence were mentioned in the charges. Those two were tried by the District Court of Marion County and found not guilty. "It makes one wonder if the heavy hand of the Yankee Military,"declared one local historian, "wason the shoulder of the court demanding action," see Russell, Carpetbaggers, 70o. But ThereWasNo Peace,15 (first quotation), 6 (second quotation), 23. 155Rable, 56Rable, But ThereWasNo Peace,69 (quotation).
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As more whites reentered politics after recovering from the shock of the defeat of the Confederacy, groups such as the KRS used violence to "save" the South from government by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and blacks and to reestablish the racial, social, and political hierarchy destroyed with slavery's demise. As Carl H. Moneyhon noted, violence in Texas during Reconstruction was to destabilize the freed community, prevent them from voting Republican, and thereby undermine the Republican Party's efforts to mobilize black voters. Violence then became more purpose-oriented and specific, rather than random and sporadic as seen in the years immediately following the war. According to one Reconstruction historian, "much of the violence inflicted on the freedmen had been well-organized, with bands of white men meting out extra-legal 'justice' and anticipating the Klan-type groups that would operate so effectively during Radical Reconstruction.""57 When violence increased, local officials proved impotent or apathetic, or too involved with the perpetrators to deal with it effectively, and federal authorities usually intervened. The posting of the military to a particular region provided a convenient excuse for more violence and accusations of despotism, as witnessed by Loughery's actions. Furthermore, the military acted as police, and in order for there to be effective police control, the general public must believe that the application of force is necessary to serve a desired public function. White southerners did not accept the military's police function, and therefore, they resisted. When soldiers were dispatched to a particular area, they usually neutralized the perpetrators for the moment. For some historians, such examples of effective suppression support their claims that soldiers were the answer. That claim is only partly accurate, however. It is correct that the army gave Republicans and freedmen protection, but nineteenth-century Americans were constrained by a philosophy that stressed individualism and resisted martial solutions. Those who condemn the North's response as too conservative and argue that increased troop deployments and iron-fisted policies toward those who attacked white Republicans and freedmen would have brought a different result must take into account that the enemy (the Confederacy) was not some foreign nation, in some far away place, with strange and different customs. These were fellow Americans.58
57Nicholas Pastore, "A Neglected Factor in the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: A Comment," The Journal of Psychology29 (Jan.-April 1950): 279 (first quotation); Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 278?79 (second quotation); Moneyhon, Afterthe Civil War,8o-81. 5 Pastore, "The Role of Arbitrariness in the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis," journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 47 (July 1952): 728; C. Vann Woodward, The Futureof the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 165-166; Rable, But There Was No Peace, 19o-91. For those who believe the response to Reconstruction was too conservative, see Michael Les Benedict, Compromise of Principle:
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Finally, this case study shows the naivete-some might say recklessness-of some of those who came south to help former slaves in the transition from bondage to freedom. Regardless of the moral justness of his cause, Smith realized the animosity many white citizens had for him and should have known better than to boast publicly of his influence with the freedmen. He knew his reputation, reported Gen. J. Hayden, commander of the post at Marshall, who military officials ordered to the town to investigate the killings, and "it behooves me to set forth . .. one who [se] miserable death seems chargeable in a great degree to his own foolhardiness ... [by his pursuit of] a course in life which no friend of good order could endure, and set at [defaming] the feelings of the people although he could not but know that this nation has not become so characterized or so enlightened as to be free from mob law." Individuals like Smith, who idealistically believe in the justice of their causes, too often become blinded to conditions around them, and see the world as it "ought" to be, rather than as it "is."Responsibility for the fires in the town in 1868 did not lie with Smith, but many whites suspected him, and his making threats, at best, could only be called careless. Others also misjudged the situation. Mayor Hodge and Maj. Curtis dismissed threats to Smith and the freedmen. The mayor spent much of the day of the murder investigating rumors about mob violence and ultimately concluded that they were baseless. Maj. Curtis, who realized after the fact that the whole affair would "fall back upon him," also heard the rumors but later testified that he did not "feel any assurance that they [Knights of Rising Sun] would dare to attempt a thing of this kind." This remark sums up one incident of terrifying violence and also suggests one explanation of how a defeated South thwarted Reconstruction and essentially won what some have called the nation's "Second Civil War."59
1863-1869 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974). Congressional Republicansand Reconstruction, For those who believe martial solutions to have been the answer, see William L. Richter, The Army in Texas During Reconstruction, 1865-1870 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987) and BureauAdministrators in Texas, 1865-1868 (College Station: Texas Overreached on All Sides: TheFreedmen's A&M University Press, 1991). 59Gen. J. Hayden to Charles E. Morse, A.A.A.G., Oct. 14, 1868, Post of Marshall, Letters Sent, August 1868-March 1869, Fifth Military District (block quotation); Trial Transcript. p. 82 (second quotation), America'sUnfinishedRevolution,1863-r877 (New 79, 10o93-1094, 1107-1 o08,Eric Foner, Reconstruction: York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), 170; W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1941), 107.

Death of A Carpetbagger

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Death of a Carpetbagger: The George Washington Smith Murder and Stockade Trial in Jefferson, Texas, 1868-1869 Author(s): Christopher

"There has not been ...

the slightest change in the

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Washington Trial

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

SmithMurderand Stockade Trial The George Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

The George SmithMurderand Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Washington Trial

The George SmithMurderand Stockade Trial Washington

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