https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/territorial/s488/detail/9673

Although this blog normally focuses on North Alabama, it would be short-sighted to ignore that North Alabama was once part of the Mississippi Territory and that the norms and attitudes that prevailed there influenced how mass enslavement and plantation system developed in Madison County. Also, some historic sources are too fascinating to pass up. Here is a brief statement that recounts the trial of three enslaved men accused of robbing a fourth enslaved man during a party.

   I was present this morning at a trial before Mr. Pollard in which he acted as a magistrate. The case was simply this. A Negro man of Mr. Dangerfield’s filed a complaint against three fellows for having stolen six dollars out of his chest on Wednesday or Thursday night last. My fellow Sam was one of the accused. They were examined repeatedly the evidence amounted to this. That on the night stated there had been a dance at Cato’s (who keeps a house in town) that the three accused were there after the party broke up, they went to Mr. Dangerfield’s house for the purpose of playing cards (which they had been doing at Cato’s) they were admitted and furnished with whiskey before […] to play – They broke up a little before day […] after which the money was missing on which the fellow made his accusation. He failed to substantiate the charge and my fellow was acquitted of having taken any part in the burglary, his object being to find a runaway of Mr Wm. Wright’s that is about town, for which Mr. W. offered him a reward.

   The decision of the magistrate was that Mr. D’s fellow should pay him costs of court, $4.75/100 & $10 fine, of the other two fellows pay $2 ea of a fine. Mine was acquitted. He enquired if they could pay fines or when they could pay him, particularly Mr. D’s man. Who said he would as soon as he had collected some money as he had lost all he had, as stated above, but that he would pay as soon as possible. Mr. P observed he must do it even if he had to work at night & pick oakum – I suggested the propriety of having these fellows whipped instead of fined, that I thought it would have a much better effect. He observed he did not know the Laws exactly on that point but that he would inform himself or something to that amount. 

   […] Dunlap was present at the greatest part of the trial. 

• Mark Jackson [?]
• Natchez July 24, 1813

We can learn a lot from this brief transcript. First let’s examine all the characters mentioned.

Mr. Pollard, an unnamed enslaved man, his enslaver Mr. Dangerfield, an enslaved man named Sam, two other enslaved men with no names, Cato, Dunlap, another unnamed enslaved person who had escaped from William Wright, William Wright himself, and finally the author Mark Jackson. The original statement is incredibly faded, and the author had messy handwriting even when it was fresh, so it is possible that his name could be anything from Jackson to Isaacson. That’s twelve people in two paragraphs and at least five (possibly six) of them are enslaved.

Mr. Pollard – Almost certainly either Peter P. Pollard, who ran a magistrate office in early Natchez, or William Pollard who was the Justice of the Peace of Mobile. Either way from the way he is discussed and the deference afforded him by all involved we can work out that he’s a white man with a background in law.

Unnamed enslaved man who was robbed – Tragically the statement’s author neglected to even extend the most basic personhood to the man who brought the suit against the other enslaved men in his group.

Mr. Dangerfield – Most likely William Dangerfield, a prominent enslaver and plantation owner in Natchez who served as the acting governor of the Mississippi Territory for a time.

Sam – A man enslaved by Mr. Dangerfield. He may have been hired by William Wright to find the whereabouts of an enslaved person who escaped from Wright.

Two other enslaved men – Again, the statement’s author neglects to record their names.

Cato – A man who keeps a house in Natchez.

Dunlap – Someone who came to watch the trial.

William Wright – An enslaver whose hostage has escaped and is somewhere nearby Natchez

Unnamed enslaved person who escaped from William Wright

Mark Jackson – The author of the statement

We can learn a lot from these small glimpses. Enslaved people in early Natchez possessed a modicum of autonomy and mobility. They are socializing at night, drinking in multiple locations, and gambling. All of their movement and revelry seemingly outside the concerns of the local night watch or slave patrol. This may have been a festive occasion – there are recorded examples of festivals on plantations (Black Saturnalias) throughout the Caribbean, the junkanoo celebration that occurred in a variety of locations from Jamaica to North Carolina, and celebrations among the enslaved and free Black populations of the Northeast known as Pinkster. It may have also been the norm for what was still very much a frontier town.

Secondly, enslaved people in Natchez occasionally possessed some amount of property. The man who filed the complaint against his fellow revelers at one point owned both a chest and six dollars. Indeed, Mississippi Territorial records are replete with enslaved people who owned everyday items like chests, small amounts of cash, blankets, and a favorite set of clothes. These items technically existed at the whim of the enslaver, but allowing a touch of autonomy or sense of identity was often used to ‘soften’ the constant horrors of enslavement.

Third, enslaved people might be able to hire out their own time. This goes back to the concept of limited autonomy mentioned above. When Mr. Pollard issued his series of fines he instructed the men that they might have to work at night, implying that nights or evenings were ‘owned’ time, or pick oakum to satisfy the fines. Oakum was a type of hemp fiber that was soaked in tar and used to seal gaps in ships. Picking oakum meant that one had to tease apart the woven fibers from otherwise useless pieces of cord. The activity was tedious, irritating to the fingers, and was often meted out as a punishment, specifically an alternative to floggings, by officers in the British Navy. Convicts also commonly picked oakum to cover the cost of food and the extremely poor across the Atlantic picked oakum and sold the fibers back to ships for survival wages.

Cato presents another twist in further understanding enslaved life in Natchez. The document refers to white men as Mr. So-and-so. Enslaved people, when it bothers to name them, are called by single names. There were a handful of prominent white men named Cato, like Cato West, in the Mississippi Territory, but the lack of an honorific points to Cato either being an enslaved man or a free black who kept a house in Natchez. If Madison County’s later slave codes are anything to go by, it was not uncommon for some enslaved people in the Mississippi Territory to live apart from their enslaver and deliver goods or labor when commanded. This was especially true for those enslaved people considered ‘skilled labor.’ Cato was also an incredibly popular name for enslaved men in the United States and Caribbean. Enslavers gained an amount of sadistic and sarcastic satisfaction from naming their drudges after prominent Greco-Roman figures. All of this taken together implies either an enslaved man or recently freed Black man who kept a house in Natchez where he hosted entertainment for other members of his community.

Sam either parlayed his knowledge about a missing enslaved person into avoiding fines, or was really assisting William Wright in locating and capturing his escaped hostage. There have been other instances on this blog where enslaved people passed information to enslavers, and Sam may have been more than tempted by the prospect of payment. There are few records that I am aware of that relate to enslaved people acting as slave catchers, but Sam very well could have exploited his networks and knowledge for gain.

Lastly, the differing attitudes of the white men involved towards punishment. Pollard prefers heavy fines and labor, Jackson thinks corporeal punishment more fitting. Both men obviously disapprove of the drinking, gambling, and carousing done by those involved. Rather than acquit all of them for lack of evidence there is the urge to punish the enslaved for doing something that white men did everyday. Pollard, whose legalistic impulse is paternalistic at best, shuns the immediate violence endorsed by Jackson and relies on the classic punishment meted out to poor people of picking oakum. Jackson wants to reinforce white supremacy through bodily harm and violent punishment, to him fines are reserved for people worthy of court appearances – a status that the enslaved could never possess. Indeed, the fact he wrote a statement after witnessing Pollard presiding as a magistrate further indicates the strangeness of the situation in Jackson’s eyes.

In two short paragraphs there are innumerable glimpses into the life of enslaved people in the early Mississippi Territory, hints at the Natchez’s social organization and night life, and even competing ideas about crime and punishment in the Atlantic world. It’s a fascinating document.

Picking oakum

Jill Lepore mentions the Black Saturnalia, Pinkster, and the relative autonomy of enslaved people living in cities in New York Burning

– p. 172 for the Caribbean celebrations

Junkanoo or Caribbean Christmas

Jonkunoo in North Carolina

Pinkster

On the importance of Pinkster to enslaved Africans in New York

Cato as popular name for enslaved people

.Greco-Roman names for enslaved people in the Americas

In 1925, Huntsville’s resident elites – the people who for all intents and purposes controlled the political and economic lifeblood of the city – seized upon an idea. They would organize an event that simultaneously highlighted local businesses and cajoled people into patronizing them. From May 3-9, 1925, they hoped to inspire residents to “Be Loyal to Huntsville.”

The early 20th century saw a slew of changes in how people purchased and consumed products. For decades, clerks weighed out grocery orders, porters delivered them to individual homes, and hometown merchants traveled to regional bazaars to procure more exotic goods for local resale. People lived and died within a complex web of creditors and debtors. Each market was little less than its own ecosystem.

Companies like Sears and Piggly Wiggly changed that math. Sears’ Catalog brought the world (and many of its regional bazaars) to your doorstep, people could literally get their next house delivered in the mail. This meant that merchants who previously made their living as professional middle men were suddenly threatened. Although the local and regional retailer hung on for decades yet, they sensed early that competition was to become more fierce.

Piggly Wiggly eschewed traditional labor standards by forcing customers to pick out their own prepackaged goods. Clerks now simply collected cash and assisted people in findings things, they no longer took orders or collected grocery bills. Clarence Saunders, Piggly Wiggly’s founder, focused on franchising and the self-service grocery method soon spread throughout the southeast. Without the need for a small army of clerks stores could offer lower prices and often put local retailers out of business.

It is this national climate, where faraway markets now dominated local commerce, that prompted Huntsville’s business community and resident elites to begin organizing around the concept of regional and city loyalty. Throughout the early 1920s a focus on the needs of “home merchants” became more prominent and newspapers bragged about turning down advertising orders from rival communities in Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Atlanta.¹

To be certain there were previous exhortations to the “loyal citizens of Huntsville” throughout the years. Whenever the city hosted a large conference or had visiting dignitaries, local newspapers called for the city to present itself well. Yet these previous instances were about putting forward the best possible face to visitors and outsiders. It was only after the commercial pressures presented by competing firms in nearby cities, retail franchising, and the ever-present threat of the Sears catalog that resident elites began pressuring the people of Huntsville to show their hometown pride by meeting their consumption needs from local merchants first.²

Precursors to the “Be Loyal to Huntsville” week appeared at least a year earlier with an advertisement titled “All Aboard For Prosperity via Greater Huntsville.”³ The train to prosperity passing through the city was an iconic image, one that its creators used often in their advertisement campaigns. The national market forced cities to not only compete with one another for business, but to try and differentiate themselves as places of commerce and opportunity. It is ironic that so many towns turned to the same advertising firm to highlight their unique characteristics. The F.G. Hogan Syndicate operated out of Kane, Pennsylvania and literally drew up the template that towns nationwide used to try to sell themselves to locals and outside businessmen.

However, Huntsville’s resident elites often managed to set the city apart. Rather than simply copy what worked elsewhere they focused on both loyalty and the concept of Greater Huntsville – the long-promised annexation of surrounding communities into the city itself. Huntsville planned to expand outwards, to continue on the seemingly natural path of progress that transformed Madison county from a cotton producing monolith to a diversified economy with suburbs, factories, and slums. To that end resident elites demanded the loyalty of not just the city dwellers but of the entire region’s population.

Huntsville’s parochialism proved intense even in an era of fierce competition and a focus on hometown loyalty. Thus the “Be Loyal to Huntsville” campaign launched in Spring 1925 is an historically significant event that highlighted not only the depths of inter-city rivalries but how completely the rhetoric and realities of the New South era transformed Huntsville’s self-perception.

The phrase emerged in March 1925. The first instance of “Be Loyal to Huntsville” was not directly associated with the upcoming loyalty week but instead emerged from a dramatic advice column-cum-advertisement for the Chamber of Commerce. Huntsville Times editor J.E. Pierce attempted to anthropomorphize not only the concept of loyalty, but his readers monetary interests. “I am your payroll,” his column proclaimed, and only by cooperating with other local businessmen could one hope to prosper in this new world where regional markets were wracked by increasingly intense external forces.⁴

Pierce’s column continued its dramatic flairs. By late March his campaign to demand loyalty to local businesses took on a Biblical tone when he consciously aped the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalts,” littered the column and it touched on all the concerns and contrasts of the Progressive movement. Pierce’s pronouncements were the KJV, City Beautiful, and Good Roads movement in one fell swoop. There were calls to combat the “death that lurks in the marshes,” to increase access to sunlight to drive out tuberculosis, to “build good roads and keep them good.” The zeal and willingness to mix religion and middle class interests typified not just the Progressive era but Huntsville itself. No wonder that Pierce’s final sentence returned to the authority of the commandments: “Thou shalt be loyal to Huntsville.”⁵

By late March other resident elites heard the beat of Pierce’s drum. The Chamber of Commerce, downtown churches, and major fraternal and civic organizations like the Kiwanis and Acme Clubs all announced their support for a week dedicated to Huntsville, its people, and businesses. The planning committee consisted of the most prominent men in the city. Former mayors, prosperous grocers, bankers, attorneys, and the county health officer not only endorsed the plan but volunteered their time and talents to the enterprise. Their participation proved less than philanthropic. These men stood to benefit the most because they owned the businesses and led the social institutions that demanded the loyalty of thousands of residents of Greater Huntsville.⁶

Loyalty took on many forms in 1925. Promoting Huntsville’s nascent baseball league established one as a loyal citizen. As did stumping for annexation of more nearby territories. Attending church was sure to prove one’s loyalty. In response, area churches coordinated on special services that stressed commitment to community. Although the ‘loyalty week’ proved an overwhelmingly white endeavor, there are glimpses of the Black community’s participation. For instance a choir from Alabama A&M performed “negro spirituals” at the city high school to celebrate both Music Week and the loyalty week. Unlike many things in the early 20th century south, loyalty apparently crossed the color line. ⁷

‘Loyalty Week’ invited comparisons between Huntsville and those parts of the United States that boomed. Opinion pieces chalked up the success of California in attracting outside investors, tourists, and developers to the extremely loyal and tight knit Anglo population that ran the state. Real estate developers snubbed the land rush in Florida and instructed hopeful investors to sink all their money into Madison county. There were predictions that Huntsville’s municipal bonds would soon become some of the most coveted financial instruments in the United States. Many of these pronouncements relied on Huntsville’s natural splendor and some of the earliest calls to transform the area around the Big Spring into a public park stemmed directly from the loyalty campaign. It proved successful enough that phrase “Be Loyal to Huntsville” appeared sporadically in local newspapers until the end of the decade.⁸

But far and away the greatest predictor of loyalty lay in how one used their pocket book. A May 1925 ad from the Retail Credit Bureau minced no words. One could only truly be loyal to the city by “trading with hometown merchants.” Merchants further afield had no long term interest in the city or its people. They did not contribute to charities or fund public institutions like the fire department or police. Huntsville’s resident elites relied on a paternalistic understanding of city politics and zero-sum growth to appeal to the masses. Wealthy merchants and business owners from other regions would only try to enrich themselves and their hometowns while simultaneously impoverishing Huntsville. Trading with outsiders was tantamount to treason.⁹

In an effort to draw a direct line between their shops and the continued well-being of the city, merchants featured the “Be Loyal to Huntsville” slogan heavily in their advertising. Hometown pride helped push everything from pianos and insurance policies to less grandiose items like brooms.

The celebration was not always so obviously mercantile. Contests and prizes abounded. In an effort to help foster “sincere reverence” for the city and its resident elites, school children wrote essays in exchange for gold, churches tracked attendance in hopes of winning a new vacuum cleaner. Civic organizations competed to raise funds (and perform good works) in exchange for high status items like loving cups, lawn mowers, and silk flags.¹⁰

Winning essays found their way into local papers and their contents help highlight how completely the loyalty campaign had seeped into both the local imagination and the minds of children. Cecil Brendle, a student at Huntsville High School, worried that without unwavering support the city government might falter and the city would become a “refuge for criminals” before eventually fading into disrepair and obscurity.¹¹ Another winner declared that “to know Huntsville it love it… to Huntsville you owe your existence” and told anyone who might question or criticize city leaders that they should “get out or get in line.”¹²

Huntsville was not unique in advertising itself to the outside world, nor was it uncommon for merchants appeal to residents and citizens to shop local. Where it differed from so many other cities was in its concerted (and manic) efforts to not only inspire loyalty in the citizenry but publicly demand it. Between May 3-9, 1925 people allowed themselves to be gripped by a patriotic fervor and booster ethos that few places could replicate then and almost nowhere could replicate today. This fervor was stoked by a powerful and interconnected band of resident elites who wholeheartedly believed in the promise of both the New South and the Progressive era and hoped to use the associated ideologies to shape an ever-grander city.

Citations

Links:

“Before Folding 30 Years Ago, the Sears Catalog Sold Some Surprising Products” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/before-folding-30-years-ago-the-sears-catalog-sold-some-surprising-products-180981504/

“City Beautiful movement” at Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Beautiful_movement

“Good Roads Movement” at Encyclopedia of Alabama. encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/good-roads-movement/

“Getting Out of the Mud: The Alabama Good Roads Movement and Highway Administration, 1898-1928.” http://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817360603/getting-out-of-the-mud/

“Loving Cup” at Encyclopedia Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/loving-cup

“New South” at Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South

searsarchives.com/homes/

searshouses.com

searshomes.org

“The Bizarre Story of Piggly Wiggly, the first self-service grocery store” at Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bizarre-story-piggly-wiggly-first-self-service-grocery-store-180964708/

“The New South” at Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/south-after-civil-war/a/the-new-south

Footnotes:

1. “Loyalty to our Home Merchants – Another Out of Town Merchant’s Advertising Order Declined”
   The Huntsville Times Nov 19, 1923 ↩︎
2. “Huntsville’s Big Opportunity” The Huntsville Times March 30, 1913; “All as one for Mr. Wilson” The Huntsville Times Feb 13, 1917 ↩︎
3. “All Aboard For Prosperity via Greater Huntsville.” The Huntsville Times June 29, 1924 ↩︎
4. “Talking It Over – Chamber of Commerce Activities.” The Huntsville Times March 8, 1925 ↩︎
5. “Talking It Over – Chamber of Commerce Activities.” The Huntsville Times March 23, 1925 ↩︎
6. “Be Loyal to Huntsville – Week in May will be Devoted to Impressing all with that Idea.” The Huntsville Times March 25, 1925 ↩︎
7. “Baseball Meeting is Called for Next Friday Night.” The Huntsville Times May 4, 1925; “The Building of Greater Huntsville” The Huntsville Times March 27, 1925; “Be Loyal to Huntsville. How? Go to church.” The Huntsville Times May 3, 1925; “Loyalty Week Has Begun and is Being Observed.” The Huntsville Times May 4, 1925; The scant mentions of Black participation should not be taken as lack of enthusiasm. White newspaper owners often engaged in direct erasure of Black social life and, when they bothered to report on it at all, offered mostly paternalistic reports. ↩︎
8. “Be Loyal to Huntsville Week” by A.M. Duffield The Huntsville Times April 14, 1925; “Party Returns from Florida.” The Huntsville Times July 26, 1925; “The Loyalty Campaign is Working Wonders” The Huntsville Times May 5, 1925; “You’re in the Army Now.” The Huntsville Times May 2, 1927 ↩︎
9. “Retail Credit Bureau Ad.” The Huntsville Times May 4, 1925 ↩︎
10. “Be Loyal to Huntsville – Huntsville Has Been Loyal to You.” The Huntsville Times April 5, 1925. ↩︎
11. “Talking It Over – School Children Essays.” The Huntsville Times May 20, 1925. ↩︎
12. “Talking It Over – School Children Essays.” The Huntsville Times May 17, 1925. ↩︎

In 1811, Tecumseh traveled to Tuckabatchee. Tecumseh led a powerful confederation of Native nations with their informal capital at Prophetstown, north of modern-day Lafayette, Indiana. He and his brother, the Shawnee prophet Tenskatawa, recruited warriors and followers from across the Great Lakes region. They wanted to stop the steady westward encroachment of white settlers and preserve their religious traditions from the meddling of missionaries. In the early 19^th century they found plenty of Shawnee, Delaware, Mohawk, and Potawatomi peoples who shared their complaints and the population of Prophetstown swelled.

Yet Tecumseh’s vision of a powerful Pan-Native state capable of resisting American imperialism did not start and stop in the shadow of the Great Lakes. It extended south and embraced all the remaining Native lands of the Mississippi River Basin. So, in 1811, he came to Alabama. Tuckabatchee was one of the mother towns of the Creek Nation and the site of the National Council; it hugged the Tallapoosa River and was the birthplace of many Principal Chiefs. It held special significance as a potential first site of the puskita, the Creek version of the Green Corn Ceremony, a sacred harvest ritual practiced by Native nations from the Northeastern woodlands to the eastern edges of the Great Plains and south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Tecumseh did not choose the Creeks at random. Instead he returned to the homeland of his mother and spoke to them as his relatives. He appealed to their religious traditions, their shared experiences of subjugation at the hands of white settlers, and the whittling away of their territory by the persistent cessions to the United States.

Some young men liked what they heard and against the advice of their elders traveled back to the Great Lakes with Tecumseh. They returned to the Creek lands with new dances and magic that would supposedly make them impervious to American arms and renewed promises of British aid in the coming war. In return for all this magic and all these guns, the followers of Tecumseh and Tenskatawa had to destroy all things American. So began a violent campaign to rid the Creek nation of American influence.

The Red Sticks, as they came to be called, destroyed plows and looms; they slaughtered cattle, horses, and pigs. They burned cotton fields and tore down barns. They targeted pro-American leaders among the Creek. Red Stick warriors went to mixed Anglo-Creek people and told them to choose a side.

Red Sticks returning from their meetings with the Shawnee murdered a white family near the Duck River in Tennessee. They targeted white settlers living along the Federal Road that connected Washington D.C. to New Orleans and ran right through the Creek Nation. Benjamin Hawkins, the Creek Agent or representative of the United States government, implored the Creek National Council to hunt down the murderers. They complied but it further strained relations between the different Creek camps. By the spring of 1813, there were no neutral towns. A Creek civil war raged throughout their whole territory.

In July 1813, Red Sticks traveled south to the port-town of Pensacola in Spanish West Florida. They met a British captain there and procured a large shipment of guns. Upon their return northwards they were blocked by a combined militia force of pro-American Creeks and white settlers from the Tensaw area. On July 27, the militia scattered the Red Sticks near Burnt Corn Creek and retrieved some of their arms, but not enough to stop what happened next.

In retaliation for the meddling of Americans in their affairs, the Red Sticks turned their fury onto Fort Mims, an outpost near the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, just north of Spanish West Florida. On August 30, 1813, they overran the fort’s meager defenses, killing around 250 people and taking the rest as prisoners.

The calls for vengeance issued from every corner of the South. Militia from Tennessee, Georgia, and the Mississippi Territory marched out to meet the Red Stick threat. Huntsville, as the largest American settlement near the Creek Nation fell into a panic.

On August 22, 1813, Major John Read of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment, stationed in Huntsville, warned Governor David Holmes of growing tensions between the Cherokees and Creeks:

 “Sir,

I think it is very probable that a war will take place between the Cherokes & Creeks, it appears that a white man living at Hightower in the Cherokee nation have been killd by the Creeks; that the Cherokees wrote to the Creeks & sent one of their own people requiring of them why they had come into their country to do mischief, the Creeks on receipt of the letter immediately burnt it & put the messenger to death.”

Major Read wrote that the Cherokees in Hightower planned to meet in council on August 25^th to decide their response. The violence, ongoing for the previous two years, only drew the attention of white Americans in Madison County a week before the Fort Mims massacre.

In many ways this inattention to the southern frontier became emblematic of the course of the conflict. The Red Stick War took place against the backdrop of the War of 1812, a new front in a war that stemmed from Britain’s desire to remain the dominant power in North America. Much of the United States’ attention in 1812 and 1813 was focused on the high drama around the Great Lakes, Tecumseh and the British’s capture of Detroit, and a failed American invasion of Canada that culminated in the destruction of what would become Toronto.

As such, the federal government offered little help in securing the lives and claims of white settlers in the Mississippi Territory and that instead fell to a hodge-podge of governors and militia leaders. Governors David Holmes of the Mississippi Territory, William Blount of Tennessee, and David Mitchell of Georgia – all attempted to raise and supply armies, secure communications and logistics lines, and prevent the spread of Red Stick ideology to other Creek groups. They accomplished this during a war with Great Britain, growing civilian panic about Native uprisings throughout the frontier, and an unclear chain of command.

Just as three governors tried to coordinate a response – their three armies moved against the Red Sticks: the Mississippi Territory militia and their Choctaw allies under General Ferdinand Claiborne, a combined force of Georgia militia under General John Floyd and the pro-American Creek leader William McIntosh, and Tennessee’s rival militias – the West Tennesseans and their Cherokee allies under General Andrew Jackson and the East Tennesseans under John Cocke.

Unsurprisingly, with so many egos meeting so many moving parts, they did a haphazard job.

citations:

“Series 488: Administration Papers, 1769, 1788-1817; N.d.” Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Accessed March 01, 2019. http://www.mdah.ms.gov/arrec/digital_archives/series/s488/detail/9782.

Braund, Kathryn. “Creek War of 1813-14.” Last Updated: January 30, 2017. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1820

Ethridge, Robbie. Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003. (specifically pages 238-241)

In 1811, at the January Term of the Madison County Court, an impassioned plea came before the jury. Nathaniel Christian, and his attorney James Rodgers, wanted the twelve men presiding over small judgments to know that Nathaniel Christian, “now is and always was from the time of his nativity… a good, true, honest and faithful citizen of this Territory.”

Christian claimed that “all his good neighbors” respected him and he possessed an unblemished reputation. For his whole life nobody had ever accused him of “thefts, felonies, larcenies or other hurtful crime,” until the summer of 1810.

On an unspecified day in June 1810, in front of “divers good citizens of this Territory,” Michael Harrison “loudly [spoke]… the several false, fraudulent, malicious and opprobrious English words… You are a Damnd Thief.”

Nathaniel Christian was taken aback. According to his bill against Harrison, the only reason Harrison accused him was that he was aware of Christian’s good standing in the community and envied his “happy State and Condition.” Imagine his surprise when Harrison kept shouting at him, “You are a Damned Thief and I can prove it.”

Christian claimed that these abusive words caused communal faith to melt away from him like December’s ice on April’s trees. For such an egregious violation of his “good name, fame and reputation,” Nathaniel Christian thought it only fitting that he recover against Michael Harrison “damage [worth] one thousand dollars.”

Harrison of course plead not guilty, saying that he did not remember making these accusations, but “he saith if he did speak and publish said slanderous words he was justified in so doing because he saith said plaintiff is a Thief and this he is ready to verify.”

The cause continued, punted from each term of the court to the next, until January 1812, when a jury convened to reexamine the case. They found Michael Harrison guilty of decrying the good name of Nathaniel Christian, and “they do assess the damage of the plaintiff to Five dollars.”

Nathaniel Christian v. Michael Harrison, Madison County Alabama County Court Record Book 1, 1811 – 1813. p. 46 – 48 (1811).

In early September 1821, twelve men met at the old courthouse and decided Martin Dunnegan’s fate. They looked at the facts of the case and decided that “… the said Martin Dunnegan, be taken from whence he came, and there remain in close confinement – until the first Friday in December next and that on that day between the hours of one and three O Clock P.M. he be taken to the place of execution in the vicinity of this Town, and that he be there hanged by the neck until he is dead.”

Martin Dunnegan’s crime spree began on March 30, 1821, at a general store owned by Luther Morgan. On that fateful morning he walked in and handed Luther Morgan four separate notes. They all said the same thing:

“Mr Morgan Sir let Martin Dunnegan have to the amount of twelve dollars in the store and I will be security for the same, this 30th March, 1821 Levi Underwood”

After he, very quickly, got found out, “a Jury of good and Lawful men” decreed that Martin Dunnegan deserved to die over his clumsy attempt to “feloniously and falsely make forge and counterfeit,” these orders in the name of Levi Underwood.

And for all those scraps of paper he hanged.

The State of Alabama v. Martin Dunnegan, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 72 – 75 (1821).

Burket Green got into an altercation with Warren Hart in 1821.

On April 29, they scuffled and during this fight Burket Green got the upper hand. He “did beat and throw down the floor,” Warren Hart, who suffered serious wounds to the “head neck breast Belly sides and back.” Green kicked Hart viciously and, according to court documents, ended his homicidal frenzy with “one Mortal Bruise” behind Hart’s right ear. The killing punch landed with such force that it left an indentation in Warren Hart’s skull, it ran two inches long and was sunk an inch deep.

Hart suffered for several days. He languished from April 29th to May 4th, when the damage done during Burket Green’s awful spasm finally killed him.

A jury convicted him of manslaughter and sentenced him to a year in prison, on November 29, 1822.

That is not the end of the Burket Green story.

Just five months into his sentence, Burket Green got the upper hand on Daniel Rather, “the keeper of the Gaol” for the city of Huntsville. On April 10, 1823, he attacked Rather, and with “force and arms” secured his early release.

His newfound freedom was short-lived and the law caught up with him some days later. Burket Green got an additional fifty dollar fine for his escape. The county indicted Daniel Rather for his negligence in failing to secure Burket Green, but the jury remembered Green’s violence and dropped those charges.

The State of Alabama v. Burket Green, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 127 (1823).

The State of Alabama v. Daniel Rather, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 150 -151 (1823).

The State of Alabama v. Burket Green, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 170 – 173 (1821).

On May 5, “the first Monday after the fourth Monday in April,” 1823, an unlikely thing happened at the Madison county court house.

It all started on the night of February 15, 1822, when around 11pm someone at “the dwelling house of Obadiah Jones there situate feloniously and Burglariously did break and enter.” Obadiah Jones was well known in Madison county, having served as its only judge during the territorial period. So when a thief “did steal take and carry away one bank note for the payment of ten dollars,” they stole not just from a rich man but from one of the most important men in Alabama.

The only suspect was Squire.

Squire’s brief description in the court records reads thus “a negro slave (belonging to one Alfred Shelly).” There is no indication as to why Squire became the chief suspect. The county had not yet banned the enslaved from working in their free time, so Squire might have earned enough money to become suspicious. Or it simply could have been that Obadiah Jones claimed he saw a black man and Squire lived nearby.

Either way, this is the first recorded case of a slave appearing in court in Madison county. It is difficult to imagine the terror that Squire must have felt or the striking imbalance of power that everyone must have recognized. Here was a member of the lowest caste facing off against a member of the highest.

Of course, that was before it was ordered by the court “that James G Birney Esq be assigned council for the said negro slave.”

James Gillespie Birney had a long and interesting career. He was born in Kentucky and during his childhood was tutored by antislavery advocates. Although he was gifted his first slave at the age of six and briefly had a plantation in Triana – the brutal realities of slavery never sat well with him. In the early 1830’s he quit practicing law and traveled throughout the Deep South trying to convince free blacks to leave America for their supposed new homeland in Liberia. Birney eventually abandoned the idea of colonization altogether, left the South, freed all his slaves, and became a staunch abolitionist – even running for president on the Liberty Party ticket in 1840 – the first time a national party called for the complete and total end of slavery in the United States.*

But all of that was later. For now Birney was known in Huntsville as a man who represented counterfeiters, the victims of mob violence, and spoke out against Andrew Jackson’s 1819 invasion of Florida – a liberal lawyer with a soft spot for the dispossessed.

A liberal lawyer but a good one.

Unfortunately the courts of this era did not keep strict transcripts, so the oratory is lost. They simply recorded judgments. So all that is left to us is this: “we the Jury find the said negro man Squire not Guilty in manners and form as he is charged in said bill of Indictment.”

As rare as it is to find enslaved people as defendants or plaintiffs in court documents, it is rarer still when they win. So although Squire’s victory was certainly bittered by his continued bondage, he probably understood how unlikely his acquittal seemed from the outset and how strange it was that, for once in his life, he was treated equally under the law.

* Michael, the gifted slave, was four year old at the time. They were playmates, and later, after Birney’s revelation about the horrors of slavery and his subsequent manumissions, good friends.

The State of Alabama v. Squire, Madison County Alabama Circuit Court State Cases, 1819-1823. p. 147-148 (1823).

Nathaniel Lenox did little in 1816 to earn the goodwill of his neighbors. For throughout that year he engaged in equine related larceny.

On January 15, Nathaniel Lenox found the home of Jacob Fuqua and with “force and arms” stole from him a “silver plated curbed bridle bit” worth eight dollars.

Not content with his new bridle bit, Nathaniel Lenox appeared in the Cherokee Nation on the first day of May. There he came upon Frederick Ice and stole a “certain bay horse of the value of one hundred dollars.” Now this case is interesting because the prosecutor, the person that the Mississippi Territory is suing on behalf of, is Thomas Ice – so it appears that a male relative of Frederick’s is taking up his cause.

The jury very quickly found Lenox not guilty of stealing a horse from Frederick Ice. However it took the court longer to deliberate on the theft of a bridle bit from Jacob Fuqua as Louis Winston, the attorney general, delayed his sentencing to the November term.

However, once the second Monday in November arrived Judge Obadiah Jones deemed it prudent to dismiss the charges against him because it appeared “to the satisfaction of the court that the said Nathaniel Lenox is dead.”

No word on if Jacob Fuqua ever got his bridle bit back.

The Territory vs. Nathaniel Lenox, Minute Book of Madison County Mississippi Territory of the Superior Court in Law and Equity, 1811-1819. p. 179/144-180/145 (1816).

The Territory vs. Nathaniel Lenox, Minute Book of Madison County Mississippi Territory of the Superior Court in Law and Equity, 1811-1819.p. 209/169-211/170 (1816).

Continue reading “The Kidnappings of Claiborne Griffin” →

On August 19, 1852, Emily Cornelius fled. She hid, not for the first time, among her neighbors and begged their protection from the man who beat her, William Cornelius, her husband.

Emily and William married September 23, 1847 in Madison County. William was a rich man. He owned about 810 acres and counted among his property at least twenty slaves: Jim, Thirston, Chainey, Jules, Horace, Andy, Bake, Buck, Little, Jae, Bill, Dennis, Palena, Katy, Evilina, Solomon, Sarah, Jane, Charlotte, George, Larkin, Francis, and an infant named Lena.

With his wealth and land, all derived from his surplus of slaves, William Cornelius achieved the status of planter – the rough and tumble elite of antebellum slave society. A planter, even a minor one like William Cornelius, wielded great and ugly power over their estate. White men who were free to terrorize, rape, and sometimes murder, planters rarely resembled the coiffed and dainty aristocrats of film and popular legend.

Due to this power, influence, and their relative scarcity when weighed against the general population, we do not have many records of planter divorces in the antebellum South. Indeed, the normal circumstances for divorce rarely applied to them. Less wealthy white men who allowed a female slave to take their wife’s place in bed might face a case, while planters’ concubines would often be overlooked by wives who wanted to keep their comfortable home. Planters also found fortune in their own counties and had no reason, like so many poor men, to shrug off the burdens of family and flee to Arkansas or the Republic of Texas. In addition, a legal quirk has prevented further insight into plantation marital strife. South Carolina possessed some of the largest and wealthiest plantations in the antebellum South. However, due to their conservative nature and quixotic constitutions, divorce was not legalized there until 1950, almost a century after the end of the slaveholding planter class.

Instead, the few planter divorces on record are often the result of dramatic and brutal domestic violence.

For the first years of their marriage William drank often. Emily described him as “addicted to the immoderate use of intoxicating drink,” but all else was otherwise peaceful. Around 1850, his behavior changed and William Cornelius became “cruel, barbarous, & inhumane.”

When he drank he fell into the “frequent habit of heaping curses & imprecations of the most direful character,” upon her. It quickly progressed from curses to shouted threats of violence and death. Then he started hitting her, delivering “violent blows with his fists & feet upon your oratrix.” During the worst assaults neighbors intervened to save her life.

Emily Cornelius began running from her husband. She counted at least four times prior to August 19, 1852. Each time she hid from him, William appeared later, sober and making “the most earnest asseverations…& uttering promises of the most solemn & sacred character,” that he would quit drinking. Each time she returned, convinced by his pleas, that she might “hope for peace & happiness & safety in the discharge of her duties as a wife.”

Each time he lied. The tension built in their marriage and he progressively used greater means of violence. In early June 1852, Emily Cornelius gave birth to a son – William Roland Cornelius – like his father. During her recovery period, when the infant was but three weeks old and she still feeble, William Cornelius attacked her. She cradled the infant in her arms while her husband “threatened to take the life of your oratrix if she opened her mouth.” During the assault William grabbed a chain and raised it to threaten her. He said he would kill her with it.

His mother, Ellen Cornelius, intervened. Ellen Cornelius moved between them and bodily shielded both Emily and the infant from her son’s rage. For this she “received a severe blow.” Afterwards, when William Cornelius began to drink they both hid.

Just a few weeks later, on August 19, he confronted her in a drunken rage. This time he brandished “an open Kine in his hand,” and told her it was time for their “final separation.” William told her to run and never come back, stating that if she returned he would finally kill her. She fled. Emily Cornelius took refuge with the neighbors and this time refused to return to her husband despite all his pleadings. [1]

In her suit Emily Cornelius lists her total property as a slave named Harriet “about 14 years of age,” who acted as a nurse for her infant son. She requested that the court grant her a divorce, custody of William Roland Cornelius, and a portion of her husband’s ample estate as maintenance.

William Cornelius responded the same day. He affirmed that, yes, they had married in 1847, and readily recognized that he was “addicted to the occasional immoderate use of intoxicating drinks,” but protested at being called “an habitual drunkard.” He said that he wanted to quit drinking and wished longingly that “his morbid apetite for stimulants had permitted him to keep his oft renewed resolution of Amendment.” He alleged that Emily Cornelius knew about his problems with alcohol long before they got married and “they have become no worse since.”

The response also implied that the marriage was a sham to get at William’s money. He claimed that prior to the wedding he had been “in one of the worst paroxysms of intoxication of about a week’s standing,” and that during the actual ceremony he “was so much under the influence of liquor that he could scarcely stand.”

William Cornelius framed the divorce proceedings as an elaborate ruse by Emily’s father to get some money to pay off his debts in Texas. His evidence for this was that her parents had been visiting during his most recent, and last, alleged assault and that she had spent much time with them. Despite all these claimed machinations by herself and her family, William Cornelius contended that he held her in “tender regard,” and simply wished for her to quit the divorce bill.

Abram Walker, the chancery court judge, saw all of this and issued his ruling on June 29, 1855. There would be no divorce, but William Cornelius would pay at least a thousand dollars in alimony and the infant should remain in Emily Cornelius’s care. Although it did not grant her absolute autonomy, one can imagine Emily Cornelius finding temporary relief in this outcome.

It would be far too temporary. William had successfully appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court. In 1858, almost six years after Emily Cornelius petitioned for divorce, some men in Montgomery made a final declaration.

The remarks of Alabama Supreme Court Justice George Stone summed up the difficulties that the wives of planters sometimes faced when seeking equality before the law. Although Justice Stone readily admitted that when William Cornelius drank he became “a boisterous madman; [and] that these fits last for days,” and that his violence required the intervention of neighbors to protect his wife and mother, the Justice still thought William Cornelius capable of reform. Poorer men who drank too much and assaulted their wives often had their marriages dissolved, but due to his wealth and stature, William retained some possible future rights to his son when he no longer required, “those tender offices that only a mother can bestow.”

Although everyone knew of William Cornelius’s temper and fondness for liquor and witnesses readily told of his cruelty towards Emily Cornelius, he managed to parlay his wealth and power into good lawyers and Supreme Court appeals. Emily Cornelius appealed to the better nature of antebellum slave society and found none.

Citations:

Censer, Jane Turner. “”Smiling Through Her Tears”: Ante-Bellum Southern Women and Divorce.” The American Journal of Legal History 25, no. 1 (1981): 24-47.

Emily Cornelius by her next friend Robert True vs. William Cornelius, Book V, 605-618 (1852).

[1] Kine is both an archaic term for cattle and general farm implements. The documents do not specify but it is most likely a tool that could have done serious damage.