The lynchings that we'll be covering today are
outrageous. It was heard across the United States, but today
is relatively unknown. Like the lynching of Washington and
Johnson mentioned earlier this week, this lynching was the
result of tensions due to Reconstruction. I want to apologize
ahead of time because this post is going to be very
long.
Our first article about the lynchings is from
the county where it occurred. It is covered by The Milan
Exchange (Cairo, Illinois) published August 27,
1874:
THE WAR BEGUN!
————
COMMENCING AT
PICKETTVILLE!
————
"Cleaning out the Country"—
Twelve Fiends Arrested and Imprisoned!
————
An
Outraged People Rise Up in their Majesty and Lynch them!
For several weeks past vague rumors have been afloat
of the negroes in this and Carroll counties arming and
drilling regularly. It is said they have quietly bought all
the buckshot that could be had in several country stores, and
none of them have been seen hunting lately. Two weeks ago it
was suggested by a number of our citizens that it would be
well to organize a company here for guard and police duty, but
our citizens thought it unnecessary and imprudent and the
matter was dropped. Now, in view of the occurrences of the
past few days, we think it very important that something
should be done at once. We should have a military company in
each town in the State. The issue is forced upon us and we
dare not disregard it. The safety of our families may depend
upon it. Our neighbors in the villages around are calling on
us for help and we have no organized force to help ourselves.
Read the following and judge whether we are saying too much
when we urge prompt action on the part of our
citizens.
Saturday night as James Warren and Monroe Morgan were
going home from Pickettville, a band of thirty or forty
negroes, ambuscaded just below the village, fired upon them
and wounded Morgan's mule, peppering its head and shoulder
with shot. Morgan and Warren fled back to Pickettville and
gave the alarm. A posse was soon out in pursuit of the dusky
fiends, and twelve of them were caught that night and Sunday
and held for trial Monday. THe news of the trouble reached
Milan Sunday morning, and it was rumored that the citizens of
that section needed assistance and protection from threatened
destruction by the blacks. A party of thirty of our citizens
immediately equipped themselves and repaired to the scene of
the action. When they reached Pickettville they found
considerable excitement, but no one hurt, and apprehending no
further trouble they returned.
Monday the negroes were tried at Pickettville before
Esqs. Fly, Parker and Jordan, and all twelve were committed.
They confessed their guilt, stating that they were organized
and designed "cleaning up" the whites and controlling this
country themselves. They mentioned three companies in this
county—one at Humboldt, commanded by one Reagon, another at
Hope Hill, commanded by Rial Burrow, and the one near
Pickettville, under the immediate command of Col. Josh Webb,
who says they have endured the whites as long as they can and
must exterminate them and take charge of the farms and rule
this country as they see fit.
Three or four hundred men were present at the trial,
coming from various parts of the country to witness the trial
of the would-be destroyers of their families and homes. Great
excitement was manifested by the crowd; however, no
demonstrations of violence were made toward the prisoners, who
appeared very impudent, intimating that this was but the
beginning—that we might check them for a while, but an issue
must and would come.
Writs were issued for fifteen others, but as yet only
two or three of them have been taken, among whom is Rial
Burrow, captain of the Hope Hill clan. Considerable excitement
prevails throughout the country, every citizen being on the
alert and many of the negroes frightened.
It is rumored that two white women have been killed
near Pickettville, but we have as yet not been able to trace
it to anything definite. The mayor of Trenton, we learn,
telegraphed to Jackson to hold a company in readiness, and an
engine and train is at that point, ready to move at a moment's
notice.
We have reliable information that a party of about
eighty men went to Trenton Tuesday night and took sixteen
negroes from the jail. Up to the time of going to press six of
their bodies had been found riddled with bullets. It is
supposed the others were killed and left in the swamp near
that place.
LATEST
L. M. Jones telegraphs from Trenton to
Gen. Campbell, at Jackson, that the excitement is without any
real foundation and the help will not be needed.
It is due to the negroes here to say that they have
made no demonstration and seem perfectly quiet, for which they
deserve commendation.
Our next article comes from The Indianapolis News
(Indianapolis, IN) and is dated August 27, 1874:
The negroes at Picketville, Gibson county, six miles
from Humboldt, Tennessee, last Saturday and Sunday, threatened
a riot on account of some supposed wrong done them, and
manifested a strong desire to kill two or three citizens and
fire and sack the town. On Tuesday sixteen ringleaders were
arrested, taken to Trenton and placed in jail for safe
keeping. About 1 o'clock next morning, 75 to 100 men entered
the town, rode up to the jail, demanded and compelled the
Sheriff to deliver up the keys. After the maskers had obtained
possession of the prisoners they tied them together and
marched off on the Huntington road. Half a mile from town six
of the number were cut loose and ordered to escape, and as
soon as that command was given a full volley was fired upon
them, killing four and wounding the other two, one mortally.
The remainder were carried up the river two miles and killed.
Their remains were collected and are being taken care of. On
the assembling of the court several speeches were made by the
members of the bar denouncing the conduct of the disguised men
who were from the country, and urging upon the Judge to give
the grand jury an extra charge, ordering him to send out for witnesses all along the road, from here to Pickettsville, in
order to arrest and punish the criminals. While the charge was
being delivered, runners arrived in hot haste, with a report
that a large body of negroes, well armed were marching to
Trenton, which caused an adjournment of the court. Scouts were
sent out, but returned reporting all quiet. There is no
mistake that the negroes are well organized, and ready for
action at a moment's warning.
Our next article is the first article I found on the
subject. A warning, this article sounds like it is from a conspiracy theorist. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis,
MO) dated September 5, 1874:
THE TENNESSEE MASSACRE.
—————
An
Inside History of the Affair—A Radical Plot to Affect the Fall
Elections.
[From the Cincinnati Enquirer.]
From a party of prominent citizens of West Tennessee
we learn the inside history of the late killing of negroes
near Picketville, Gibson county, in that State. Picketville is
near the borders of Carroll county, and is situated in what is
known as
THE SKULL-BONE COUNTRY,
where during the war, Radical bushwhackers and negroes
had it all their own way, and committed not less than two
hundred murders for the purposes of rapine and robbery.
Throughout that section the negro outrages have recently been
frequesnt and horrible, and just before the election of the
6th of August, during the campaign preceding which the
questions arising under the Civil Rights bill were bitterly
discussed, the alarm among the whites became so great that in
many instances women and children
SLEPT OUT OF DOORS,
believi[n]g they were in danger of being burned in
their beds by organized gangs of blacks, led by white
desperadoes, as they almost invariably are. The fears were
founded partly on the plot overheard by one Bostwick, a
Republican, and a member of Jack Rogers' Tennessee regiment,
Federal, during the war, and partly on the frequent recurrence
of murders of negroes by masked me, such as the late one in
which an aged colored man named Dick McKinney, four miles east
of Chestnut Mound, Smith county, was shot without provocation
in his house, or the shooting of Julia Hayden, a school-
teacher, at Hartsville, and which, though taking place since
the event of which we are about to treat, are a part of its
outgrowth and history.
To confirm Bostwick's statement of a contemplated
rising on the 5th of August:
"Two or three negroes in the neighborhood of Gleason,
Tennessee, in Weakley county, went to their employers on the
morning of that day and gave up their guns and asked his
protection. The citizens thereupon commenced arming, and to
their dismay and in confirmation of their fears they found
that not a pound of buck-shot nor a pistol could be had in
Henry or Weakley counties."
The alarm turned out to be false, however, for that
night, but on last Saturday week it was proved that Bostwick's
warning was not idle. A few days previous Joe Whole and four
other citizens of Picketville bought
A ROAST PIG
from a negro named Joe Webb, and, after eating what
they wanted, gave the residue to a negro with them. Their
right to do this was disputed by Webb and his friends, and a
fight on the spot seemed imminent. The men reached home
safely, however, leaving as it proved, the negroes thirsting
for vengeance. On the Saturday named, while two young men
named Munroe Morgan and James Warren were riding along the
road, some three miles from Picketville, they were fired upon
by some thirty or forty negroes hid in the woods. The young
men abandoned their horses, which were killed or badly
wounded, took to the woods and escaped to the town and alarmed
the citizens. Suspecting a negro named Jim Walker of
complicity in the shooting, a constable with a posse,
proceeded to his house, where they captured a negro named Ben
Ballard, who confessed that negroes chiefly from Humboldt and
vicinity, had met Saturday night and organized to protect Col.
Webb, colored, from ku-klux, and after that, to go to
Picketville, kill five men, (the give concerned in the pig
affair), burn the town, take possession of the lands, and to
use their own expression.
"CLEAR UP THE NEIGHBORHOOD"
They had expected to meet another company of negroes
that night, but they failed to come, and after the firing on
Warren and Morgan, they dispersed. Sixteen negroes in all were
arresed and tried before a magistrate, five more turning
State's evidence in addition to Ballard.
THE LYNCHING,
as is already known, soon followed. Eighty-six men,
armed and masked, called at the jail at midnight and demanded
the prisoners. The jailer, being alone and helpless, gave them
up. THey were first tied in couples, and then the couples all
tied together, and marched out of town. Shortly after they had
left, shots were heard, and next morning six negroes were
found outside the limits of the village, four dead, one
mortally and the other dangerously wounded, all having been
shot several times. They were the six who had confessed, and
the other ten
HAD MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED.
Where were they? A search of the country far and wide
failed to develop any dead negroes, and it soon began to be
whispered about by Radicals that the ten had escaped. They
had, when the shooting began, according to the thin story
circulated, rushed over a bluff, and bound as they were, had
gotten away from eighty-six armed men. The citizens saw
plainly through it all now. The Radicals and negroes, to
counteract the effect of the discovery of their plot and the
leniency of the whites—the very five men whom they had
intended to kill first forming part of their safety escort
from court to jail—had taken the negroes out, shot those who
had betrayed them and from whom they feared further
revelations, and released the others.
The moral is clear to the wayfarer. The very sun
shines through the whole affair. The negroes are instigated
and organized by white Radicals for election purposes, who
themselves caused the lynching for effect, as told, while on
the other hand, Governor Brown's offer of an aggregate reward
of $43,000 for the lynchers shows where the Democrats stand.
There are men in Gibson county ready to declare that the real
hard criminal is high in position and far away from the actual
scene of outrage, while the following figures will go far to
show why Gibson county and vicinity should be selected for
such deep and damnable political plotting. The county is the
largest voting county in West Tennessee, except Shelby. Her
white voting population is 5,000, negro 1,000. The Democratic
majority is 4,000. Carroll, adjoining, and in three or four
miles of Pickettville, has a voting population of 4,000—1,800
Democratic and 2,200 Republican. The civil district, "Alwood,"
in Carroll adjoining this Picketville county, is Republican by
fifty majority.
I'm only including a portion of our next article because
much of it repeats the same details that the others have
already done. This article is from The Whig and Tribune
(Jackson, Tennessee) and is dated April 29, 1874:
Right here we would be glad to close this sad and
terrible story of ignorant passions run wild—all the result of
the agitation of the civil rights bill, that acme of all
villianies forced upon the people of Tennessee by the
representative men of the colored race in this State. But it
is our duty to go further, and tell the whole horrible
story.
On Wednesday morning at one o'clock, a hundred or more
masked men entered Trenton, overpowered the jail guard, took
the sixteen negroes there confined for participation in the
Pickettsville outrage—and murdered them to a man within a few
miles of Trenton. This action was an outrage, that demands and
has received the unqualified condemation of the people
regardless of race. In Trenton an indignation meeting was
held, and the lawless maskers denounced in unmeasured terms.
The Governor has offered a reward of $500 each for the
apprehension of the thoughtless, cruel and lawless maskers,
who perpetrated this unncessary and shameful crime. Intense
excitement grew out of this fearful outrage, and the negroes
throughout Gibson county were greatly aroused and alarmed.
Dispatches full of blood and thunder flashed over the whole
country, and from the lakes to the gulf, and from ocean to
ocean the crime of the maskers has met a universal
condemnation. Yet is is true, that terrible as their crime
was, it was provoked by crimes as great—crimes either
perpetrated or contemplated by the blacks themselves. But
while there are palliating circumstances in the matter, the
lawless maskers who killed the sixteen negroes on Wednesday
morning are murderers, and should be dealt with as such. These
negro would be assassins, had been tried by the law, under the
law they had been remanded to jail, they were in the keeping
of the law, the law in the hands of white men, and there was
neither reason nor excuse for the summary vengeance that was
visited upon them.
Growing out of this fearful affair—Trenton,
Pickettsville and Humboldt were agitated on Wednesday by the
news that large bodies of negroes were marching on those
towns. The wildest excitement prevailed, and dispatches were
sent in every direction asking immediate help. One of these
dispatches reached Jackson about 10 a.m., and within an hour
two hundred well armed men were ready to march. A train was
put in order, an engine fired up and everything was placed in
readiness to move at a minutes warning. No satisfactory
dispatch being recieved from the threatened towns, the two
hundred men referred to, under the command of Gen'l Campbell,
marched to the depot to emark for the seat of war. A finer
body of men never marched on any occasion, or under any
banner. But at the depot a dispatch was received that the
services of the Jackson boys was not needed. Here, without
further comment, we leave this whole terrible business,
determined in future issues of the Whig and Tribune to discuss
it more fully.
Our next article comes from The Herald and Torch Light
(Hagerstown, MD) and is dated September 2, 1874:
A Slaughter of Colored People.
The news from the South for the several months past,
has embraced a number of accounts of fights and riots between
the whites and blacks, in which the latter are not only made
to bear the blame, but pretty nearly all the killed and
wounded. In nearly every one of these encounters the colored
people are the greatest sufferers, and not unfrequently the
only ones, and yet we are asked to believe that they bring on
the collisions which result in such terrible punishments to
them.—One of the most cruel of these stories came to us last
week from a place called Pickettsville, Gibson county,
Tennessee, as follows:—
"Nashville, August 26.—A number of negroes at
Pickettsville, Gibson county, six miles from Humboldt,
threatened a riot last Saturday and Sunday, on account of some
supposed wrong done them, and manifested a strong desire to
kill two or three citizens and fire and sack the town.
Yesterday sixteen of the ringleaders were arrested and taken
to Trenton and placed in jail for safe keeping—About 1 o'clock
this morning between seventy-five and one hundred masked men
entered the town, and riding up to the jail, demanded and
compelled the Sheriff to deliver up the keys thereof.—They
then took the sixteen negroes from prison, and after killing
four and mortally wounding two on the confines of the town,
rode off with the remaining ten, and are supposed to have
killed them.—Nothing has been heard of the party since they
left. Considerable excitement exists among the negroes, and
the whites are taking steps to defend themselves in case of an
outbreak.
The poor excuse, which is generally offered for
lynching negroes in other Southern States, VIZ: that they are
governed by carpet baggers, can't be availed of to mitigate
this outrage.— Tennessee is Democratic, and overwhelmingly so,
in all its departments of government, and it would be a
remarkable occurrence, indeed, if a negro received less than
legal justice from such hands.— We are, however, glad to
perceive that a portion of the white people of Tennessee have
denounced this frightful slaughter of the colored prisoners at
Trenton, and that the Governor has offered a reward for the
apprehension of those guilty of it.
Our next article comes from The Courier-Journal
(Louisville, KY) and is dated August 29, 1874:
THE TENNESSEE LYNCHING.
————
Indignation
Meeting in Memphis—The Governor Urged to Vigorously Enforce
the Law.
MEMPHIS, TENN. Aug. 28.—There was a large meeting of
citizens held at the Exposition Hall tonight to express the
indignation of the community at the barbarous murder of the
colored prisoners taken from the Trenton jail. Mr. B. M. Estes
presided, with Ex-Gov. Harris, Judge Archibald Wright and
Charles Clatericht as vice presidents. Speeches were made by
Ex-Gov. Harris, Jefferson Davis, Col. Duncan McRae, Gen.
Forrest, and others, denouncing the cowardly assassination of
the prisoners, and calling for the prompt and most energetic
enforcement of the law against the perpetrators. General
Forrest stated he stood ready to start to-morrow to assist the
officers of the law in bringing the assassins to punishment.
Resolutions were adopted expressing the horror and indignation
of the community at the foul crime, and demanding of the
Governor prompt and energetic measures for bringing the
murderers to the bar of justice, and relieving the State, as
far as possible, from the disgrace of such horrible crimes,
asking the Government to employ the police experts of Memphis
to assist in capturing the assassins, and to employ the best
legal counsel int he State to assist the Attorney General in
prosecuting them.
I could post article after article on just the fallout
of this lynching, however, this post is already very long so
it will suffice if I mention that: several towns in the South
publicly denounced Gibson county and it's citizens for their
actions by passing resolutions, the governor offered rewards
for information, both Northern and Southern papers blasted the
county for it's actions, and a lot was discussed about the
Civil Rights Bill being pushed in congress. As far as I can
see in the papers, nothing was ever done to prosecute the
actual perpetrators and the names of the murdered were never
revealed.
Thank you for joining us and, as always, we hope we
leave you with something to ponder.
