Capitol Men (34 page)

The most notorious "black desperado" in Mississippi was probably Thomas Cardozo, the state superintendent of education, a confidant of Governor Ames, and the younger brother of South Carolina's Francis Cardozo. "Part of the drift-wood that floated into the state after the war," as one Mississippi newspaper described him, he arrived in 1871, hoping to ply his trade as a teacher to the state's ex-slaves and possibly dabble in politics, since Mississippi, unlike some other reconstructed states, had no significant native class of free, educated blacks ready to assume the duties of public office. Cardozo operated a school in Vicksburg and, a skilled writer, authored a column on Mississippi politics for the
New National Era
under the pen name CIVIS. By the mid-1870s he had won elective office in Vicksburg as clerk of the circuit court for Warren County, but it was there that his career began to unravel, for he was accused of creating false witness affidavits in order to steal the witness expense money, and was also said to have embezzled state education funds. To compound matters, a scandal from his past surfaced in the press. In late 1865 he had been dismissed from the American Missionary Association for having an affair with a female student (and funneling some of the organization's funds to her), and despite his apologies and his vow to reform, the AMA had shut its doors to him permanently. Subsequently, the press he received in Mississippi was almost uniformly hostile, characterizing him, among other things, as "a fugitive from justice" and "an ex-convict from a N.Y. prison-house." When his case involving the affidavit fraud came to trial, a jury—despite the defendant's being "shingled all over with indictments"—was unable to reach a verdict. Cardozo, faced with impeachment, would eventually re-sign his post and leave the state.

The ruin of Cardozo's reputation was unfortunate since he did have an impact on the evolving politics of Reconstruction Mississippi, writing a civil rights resolution that was adopted by local Republicans and eventually emerged in legislation, much as P.B.S. Pinchback had done in neighboring Louisiana. But black Mississippians had little interest in testing the progress of civil rights in their state by provoking challenges under the 1873 law. Even elected officials were known to abide by segregated traditions on railroad trains and on the Jackson horse cars, leading Cardozo to express frustration with men who roared defiance in political gatherings, but then went meekly to take their seat in the most squalid "colored" railroad coach.

In the summer and fall of 1874, only months after Adelbert Ames had returned from Washington to become governor of Mississippi, the pressure for change in the state, for "a white man's party to rule a white man's country," began to increase noticeably. One provoking factor was what one state Democratic leader called "The Black Cloud," the influx of blacks from other parts of the South, particularly from Georgia and Alabama. As those states experienced powerful Democratic movements in the early 1870s, black residents headed west to Mississippi because it had a stable Republican government and a black majority in many counties. It was estimated that between ten and fifteen thousand new black residents were entering the state each year, alarming Democrats with the prospect that Mississippi would become "a receptacle of the colored men generally in the South, and that they would resort to that state as a home," irretrievably "Republican-izing" the political landscape.

The flashpoint for this brooding concern proved to be the western river town of Vicksburg, where Democrats broke Republican control of the city by sweeping the municipal elections in fall 1874. Republicans still held the Warren County government, but the newly energized Democrats formed citizens' organizations to drive black and white county officials from power as well, rallying around alleged claims of tax abuse and misuse of government funds. A half-dozen of these "people's clubs" were assembled, each containing from sixty to one hundred men. The main target of their wrath was the black sheriff Peter Crosby, a native Mississippian and Union war veteran whom they charged with not being adequately bonded to serve his office. In Mississippi the sheriff wasn't solely a law enforcer but was also responsible for collecting taxes, making Crosby the very personification of the tax burden most whites thought unjust. After the town's newspapers published incendiary articles about Crosby and other black officials, a "people's club" visited him on December 2, which happened to be a tax collection day, and demanded his resignation. When he refused, a white mob marched on the courthouse, occupied the sheriff's office, and forced him to leave. Crosby fled to Jackson to consult with Governor Ames.

Isolated in the capital, Ames had less than adequate control over events in the state's outlying communities. In his earlier role as military governor, he had federal troops available to quash insurrections or intercede in local disputes. As the civilian governor, however, he was required to ask Washington for such aid, and federal troop levels in the state had by now declined significantly to a total of only about five hundred, stationed mostly at Jackson, Vicksburg, and the northern Mississippi town of Holly Springs. And although scattered local militia units existed, no state militia could be readily mobilized.

Ames's instructions to Peter Crosby have always been the subject of historical debate. He apparently advised him to arm a contingent of black men and return and take back the Warren County courthouse by force. Given the governor's own reputation for unflinching courage under arms, it's possible he did endorse this line of action, believing as he did that Mississippi blacks would eventually need to demonstrate their ability to stand up to white aggression. But it seems unlikely Ames ever uttered any of a number of more inflammatory statements later attributed to him by his political enemies, such as "I and other white men have faced the bullets to free the colored people, and now if they are not willing to fight to maintain that freedom, they are unworthy of it."

Over the weekend of December 5 and 6, Crosby printed and distributed in Warren County an appeal for support in reclaiming the courthouse. "Let us, with united strength," read the appeal, "oppose this common enemy, who, by all the base subterfuges of political tricksters, and the audacious mendacity of heartless barbarians, are trying to ruin the prospects and tarnish the reputation of every Republican, colored or white..." Black ministers reputedly read the proclamation from the pulpit on December 6, inspiring many congregants to join the ragtag army that, the next morning, Sheriff Crosby led back toward Vicksburg. Some of Crosby's "troops" had rifles and shotguns, but many clutched only hoes, axes, and pitchforks, and a fair number had no weapons whatsoever. Additional volunteers fell in as they advanced, although Crosby himself was said to have sudden misgivings about the enterprise and at one point tried to send some of his forces away. His instinct proved correct, for as his followers emerged from the woods near town they met a superior mass of armed whites, including even some former Union soldiers now settled in Vicksburg, as well as a party of Louisianians who had crossed the Mississippi River that morning to help put down the "black rebellion." Word of Crosby's threat to retake Vicksburg, it seemed, had passed through white vigilante channels as far away as Texas, from which a telegram had arrived: "Can raise good crowd within 24 hours to kill out your negroes."

One curiosity of the confrontation was that the former enemies Charles
E. Furlong, an ex-Union cavalry officer, and a Confederate, Horace Miller, were united against Crosby's invaders. Furlong had been the head of the Republican Party in Warren County but had undergone a political change of heart after being toppled from his post by party blacks. Miller, acting to stop the confrontation before it could begin, managed to capture Crosby himself and demanded that he order his followers to disperse before a bloodbath ensued. Outmanned and seriously outgunned, the blacks were no match for the whites, Miller cautioned. Crosby was willing to try, and a number of blacks did turn in retreat. But despite his efforts, it was now too late to head off a conflict, as the two "armies" were already in close proximity. According to a later congressional investigation, the whites rushed upon "unresisting and retreating men, who in good faith were carrying out the agreement [to depart]...It was no battle; it was a simple massacre, unutterably disgraceful to all engaged in it."

"The whites who came in from the plantations were particularly desperate and bloodthirsty," reported the
New York Times
. "They must have known that the ignorant negroes were misguided and misled, but, blinded by passion, they had no mercy for them." The blacks "were met at the city limits and slaughtered—simply slaughtered and butchered. They were chased through the woods and the fields and were shot down like dogs. Many were shot after they gave up, and some were shot on their knees, while begging for mercy."

Much of the struggle took place in the vicinity of the Pemberton Monument, also known as the Surrender Monument, the site where General Grant had accepted the capitulation of Vicksburg from the Confederate general John C. Pemberton on July 4, 1863. The symbolism of the locale could not have been more fitting. The drawn-out wartime siege of Vicksburg by General Grant and the city's ultimate defeat had long weighed on the minds of local whites—an indignity to erase, if possible. Such was the whites' zeal at this opportunity for retribution that when there remained no more of Crosby's "militia" to fight, they turned on residents of Vicksburg's black neighborhoods.

Casualty estimates in the so-called Second Battle for Vicksburg varied dramatically, from as few as fifteen to as many as three hundred; the
New York Times
reporter on the scene quoted a Republican officeholder as saying "not less than 200 were shot [but]...where these men were buried is a mystery, and how they were conveyed from the battlefield no one seems to know." Congress's report estimated that twenty-nine blacks and two whites had died, and cited an investigator who learned
from a local man the trick of locating bodies lying in dense growth by watching where buzzards gathered overhead. The investigator, despite this newly gained skill, concluded that the total number of men missing and unaccounted for was "impossible to ascertain."

Notwithstanding the broad condemnation heaped upon them, the whites of Warren County had achieved an important emotional victory, demonstrating that they could defy the state's Republican authority and defeat what passed for an armed Republican force. After Crosby's men had been routed, one white suggested that the Pemberton Monument's inscription be changed to read "Here surrendered the Confederate chieftain in 1863, and here fell 100 Dupes to the unhallowed ambition of Adelbert Ames in 1874."

Vicksburg was the future that the Meridian riot had augured back in 1871, and Ames perceived in the calamity a severe reversal that could not be ignored. Upon reading the terrible dispatches from the scene, he convened an emergency session of the legislature and shared with the state's lawmakers his fear that if whites in one community could oust legitimate black officeholders by brute force, the entire state would follow suit. He urged them to vote on an immediate appeal to request President Grant's help. On December 21 Grant responded, issuing an order for Vicksburg's white vigilante groups to disperse; at the same time, a local board of supervisors in Vicksburg rescinded Crosby's resignation since it had been made under duress. On January 18, 1875, U.S. forces, without bloodshed, reinstalled Peter Crosby as sheriff of Warren County.

Although order was momentarily restored in Mississippi, a troubling series of events in Louisiana boded poorly for Governor Ames and his Reconstruction government. The first took place in the remote north central Louisiana town of Coushatta, where the Vermont carpetbagger Marshall Harvey Twitchell had used his influence as a state senator to carve out a new parish known as Red River, with a population of eleven hundred blacks and three hundred whites. To the White League, founded in spring 1874 to protest continuing Republican authority and operating openly as the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party, Red River was a hated "Yankee Colony." When, in the last week of July, Twitchell traveled to New Orleans to attend the state Republican convention and seek help in dealing with White League activity in Red River, the league took advantage of his absence to abduct six prominent white Republicans, including Twitchell's brother Homer and Sheriff
Frank Edgerton, as well as several black men, accusing them of fomenting a black insurrection. After forcing the white captives to resign their official offices, the league offered them safe passage as far as Shreveport, on the condition they would there board trains for the North and never return. The Republicans had little choice but to agree although, concerned by the number of armed white belligerents in Coushatta, they insisted their captors escort them to Shreveport early on a Sunday morning, in the hope that their departure would be little noticed.

THE WHITE LEAGUE AS A COUNTERPART TO THE KU KLUX KLAN, IN A CARTOON BY THOMAS NAST