thirty black witnesses in a closely guarded boardinghouse in a black
neighborhood of Montgomery. Not al came from Tal apoosa or
Coosa counties. And many witnesses were reported to have
appeared at the federal courthouse from counties other than those
original y targeted in the investigation.
The ten white men from Coosa and Tal apoosa counties who had
been indicted up to that point were summoned to appear in court
on June 22. Pace, Fletcher, and many of the others arrived by an
evening train the previous day. Monday morning they led into
Judge Jones's courtroom for a grueling, hours-long hearing. Soon,
the corridors of the federal building were clogged with lawyers in
dark, vested suits and the curious wandering in from the streets and
the stone steps of the courthouse. Throughout the morning, U.S.
At orney Reese came in and out of the courtroom, consulting
repeatedly with the bat ery of prominent lawyers representing John
Pace.
Montgomery buzzed with speculation. Word rippled through the
onlookers that al charges against Kennedy would be dropped once
he testi ed in open court. By now Kennedy was a pariah among his
longtime friends. His confessions to the grand jury, implicating at
least a dozen other white men, had been widely reported.
Meanwhile, word was spreading of let ers sent the previous day to
every Montgomery newspaper by Fletcher Turner, insisting that al
every Montgomery newspaper by Fletcher Turner, insisting that al
accusations against him were false—most especial y testimony that
women had been murdered at the Turner farm. He speci cal y
denied the claim that Sarah Oliver had been brutal y beaten to
death at his place during the previous winter. Then came the day's
most sensational story: Pace planned to plead guilty to the charges
—and then chal enge the validity of the anti-peonage statute to a
higher court.56
The court formal y convened at noon, with U.S. Marshal L. J.
Bryan cal ing the names of men to form petit juries to hear the
evidence in the cases. A large crowd of spectators jammed the
courtroom, craning their necks to catch a glimpse across the gal ery
of the Tal apoosa farmers. Pace, Fletcher Turner and his son, the
three Cosbys, and other defendants sat together on a bench near the
front of the room. At the bar were the half dozen members of their
defense team. The old guard of Alabama was ral ying to the men.
Among the lawyers was Thomas L. Bulger—son of the Tal apoosa
County Confederate war hero, and D. H. Riddle, the Goodwater
at orney who had actual y participated in some of the fake trials
held by his mayor.
Later, the lawyers announced the defense of the Turners had been
joined by Gen. George P. Harrison, a int-eyed lawyer with a jet
black beard in the imperial style of the day. He too was a widely
remembered former Confederate commander, best known for his
central role as a newly appointed colonel in the bloody repulse of
the Union army's most famous black regiment, the 54th
Massachuset s Infantry, during the gruesome bat le for Fort Wagner
in July 1863.
Judge Jones ordered that the trial of Pace, the Cosbys, and John
Kennedy—the newly cooperating witness—begin one week later on
charges of peonage and related crimes. Fletcher Turner and his son,
Al en, would stand trial beginning July 6. A few days later, the trial
of Robert Franklin and Francis Pruit would begin, fol owed within
a week by Jesse Berry and James Todd, two of the enforcers who
helped violently hold slaves on the farms, quarry, and sawmil s.
helped violently hold slaves on the farms, quarry, and sawmil s.
After forming two juries and giving them instructions from the
bench, Judge Jones turned to the crowd, warning that any person
who entered the court with a weapon would be "sent to the
penitentiary" for contempt of court.
Before the day ended, Reese announced that additional
indictments had been issued against J. Wilburn Haralson, of
Dadevil e, and John G. Dunbar, the former city marshal of
Goodwater then serving as marshal in Columbus, Georgia. New
charges were also announced against the Turners, for holding a
black woman named Camil a Hammond. In total, the grand jury
had issued ninety-nine indictments against a total of fteen
defendants. Pace alone faced twenty-two counts.
Lawyers for the defendants urged Judge Jones to delay the trial
to give the farmers time to harvest their elds and to study the
"peculiar" and unfamiliar charges they faced. Reese said the farmers
had created the situation for themselves and that black witnesses
were being held in Montgomery to protect them from intimidation
before trial. "The government is not at liberty to give in detail the
instances of this kind," Reese said. "But it can be said that
intimidation both of witnesses and grand jurors have been going on
in connection with these peonage cases."
Judge Jones concluded that a speedy trial would not burden the
defendants unfairly, and made clear that he feared ef orts to frighten
the witnesses. "The court has nothing to conceal, gentlemen," Judge
Jones said. "In a great many of these cases intimidation has been
practiced. A witness has been taken from a train. I need not say
more. These cases must be tried as early as possible consistent with
proper opportunity to make defense."
It was clear that black witnesses were in danger. For days, Reese
had been gathering African Americans critical to the trial in
Montgomery, housing thirty of them under federal guard in "negro
boardinghouses." At one point in the proceedings, Secret Service
agent Capt. Henry C. Dickey arrested two black schoolteachers who
went to the boardinghouse posing as detectives sent by Judge
Jones. They quizzed the black workers about what they were tel ing
Jones. They quizzed the black workers about what they were tel ing
government agents, apparently to report back to Pace and the other
whites.
Before any of the trials began, federal o cials learned that
Tal apoosa County had appointed a deputy marshal speci cal y "to
keep an espionage on the negro witnesses of the government,"
reported Montgomery newspapers.57
Until the day of the arraignments, most of Alabama's political elite
and the white general public had imagined that the slavery
investigation was entirely the handiwork of the White House and its
representative in Montgomery, U.S. At orney Reese. Judge Jones's
directions to the grand jury a week earlier were startling, but his
confusing equivocation after denouncing involuntary servitude left
open the question of where Jones's true al egiances rested. Across
the South, newspapers and politicians stil banked on the fact that
he would uphold a wel -honed ritual of southern posturing in high-
pro le court cases involving blacks: factitiously expressing the
importance of legal rights for African Americans while
simultaneously ensuring no harm to a white defenda
nt and
aggressively curtailing redress to the black victim.
"It turns out that the main mover in Alabama to break up what is
cal ed the peonage system, whereby convicts are held to labor
inde nitely by white men, who pay their penal nes and contract
their labor in return, is Judge Thomas G. Jones, ex-governor of the
state," wrote the Atlanta Constitution. "If there is anything criminal
in the system, that criminality should be exposed and punished
properly, and whatever of false hue and cry there is on the a air
should be exposed." 58
The Montgomery Advertiser continued to proclaim mock surprise
at the discovery of forced labor in Alabama: "The character of
o ense was peculiar and unknown in this country since the
emancipation of the negroes. It was practical y and to al intents the
enslavement of men for a period of time in violation of State and
Federal law. There has been much brutality charged and a great
Federal law. There has been much brutality charged and a great
deal of testimony given …few of …the people of Alabama …ever
dreamed of such things as seem to have existed."59
As the rst trial neared, however, it was clear that Judge Jones
was deviating from the script. He appeared to be serious. The
Advertiser, alarmed that a southern leader would join with a
Republican president from New York to at ack southern whites
who resubjugated blacks, poured forth with what had become the
ascendant view of turn-of-the-century white southerners. "A
sentiment that is now practical y unanimous throughout the
Southern States … is that we, the white men of the South, propose
to set le racial questions in our own way and in our own time. And
we wil do it in the way best for both races," the newspaper
editorialized.
Several millions of ex-slaves, suddenly exalted to citizenship, was the
heritage we received from the Federal government. As if the mere fact of
their presence in changed conditions was not serious enough, they were
endowed with all the political rights that any citizen of the Union
possessed, and for which they were neither prepared nor tted. And then,
to add to the bitterness of our degradation, and the hopelessness of the
problem, our country was overrun with adventurers from the North, some
of them good and well meaning men, but others as unprincipled
scoundrels as ever scuttled a ship or robbed a safe. It was these and their
kind who made the condition of the Southern people unbearable and
revolt inevitable.
Forgiveness is a Christian virtue and forgetfulness is often a relief, but
some of us will never forgive nor forget the damnable and brutal excesses
that were committed all over the South by negroes and their white allies,
many of whom were federal o cials, against whose acts our people were
practically powerless. And one of the worst features of this saturnalia was
that the ballot in the hands of ex-slaves was in almost every instance, both
from their own ignorance and at the instigation of their carpet-bag allies,
used to despoil, degrade and humiliate the real citizens of the almost
helpless South.
The Advertiser asserted that southern whites made a choice for
The Advertiser asserted that southern whites made a choice for
which they should be applauded—declining to resume armed
rebel ion against the federal government and instead only stripping
African Americans of the right to vote and most other legal rights.
That northerners would complain about this—and that some
southerners agreed—was infuriating.
What do we see? All over the North we nd public speakers and
newspapers assailing our methods and our people and in every way, as
words can do, inciting the colored people to resist, fomenting discord
between the races and in many cases maligning and vilifying the Southern
people for their course.
Our people do resent the interference of Northern people in a matter
with which they have no real concern, and we intend to continue
resenting it. What is more, we intend to settle this race question in our
own way and if the result is to have the country "rent again into factions
hating each other" …we shall not feel that we of the South are the
o ending party. We do not hate the North, but we will settle the race
question.60
Even in the North, there was consternation about the trials
beginning in Alabama, and stirring up issues that northern whites
increasingly agreed should be left to southern whites to handle. The
Chicago Tribune opined that relations between the South and North
had deteriorated to their worst state in more than a decade and
pointed to the current message of former President Grover
Cleveland and other leading northerners: "The South— the white
and the black South—should be let alone to set le their problems in
their own way," Cleveland said.
Edgar Gardner Murphy, a moderate white Montgomery resident,
insisted in let ers to northern newspapers that the Tal apoosa
peonage cases did not indicate a massive level of continued black
enslavement. In a let er to the New York Evening Post, Murphy
wrote:
The sentiment of the whole state has been unanimously insistent upon a
thorough investigation of the charges and upon the rigorous punishment
of the guilty…. An ignorant and lowly people settled in isolated regions
where local courts and local constabularies are often ine cient and
sometimes corrupt are always in danger of becoming the prey of brutality
and greed. If it is hard for the best sentiment of New York to protect
e ectively the poor immigrants of her great port from the avarice of
thieves and "loan sharks," and it is di cult for your city to protect some
of its young girls from the degrading barter of the "cadet."
He argued that the peonage cases weren't the result of leaving the
South alone to deal with race issues. Instead, the new rise of slavery
was caused by "a persistent policy of intrusive censure and of
political threatenings." He said the North placed undue "pressure
upon Southern life, put ing the South ever on the defensive and
partly neutralizing the forces of self-criticism and of local
responsibility. Whatever evils may now exist at the South have not
resulted from the policy of let ing the South alone."61
But as each defendant stood perspiring before Judge Jones in the
increasingly crowded courtroom, wearing his best black church suit,
bolo tie, and clutching his hat, it became clear that whatever the
judge's southern pedigree nothing would be sacrosanct in this
proceeding.
VI I
A SUMMER OF TRIALS, 1903
"The master treated the slave unmerciful y."
Negotiations over Pace's plea to the charges against him continued
for days. His at orneys initial y believed that Judge Jones—like
any other white southern judge—would feel compel ed by
tradition and public pressure to acknowledge the untested status of
the peonage statute and o er a symbolic punishment to Pace in
exchange for a guilty plea. But Judge Jones showed no sign of
doing so. Reese, the prosecutor, was insistent that Pace be
meaningful y punished. Pace's lawyers were certain, regardless of
the public brouhaha in the preceding weeks, that no Alabama jury
would actual y convict a white man on such charges. They urged
him to wait for trial.
Meanwhile, the city was ablaze with anxiety. In the early evening
of the day fol owing Pace's arraignment, a former U.S. marshal
named Charles E. Taylor confronted Deputy U.S. Marshal Byron
Trammel on the sidewalk beneath the white-columned portico of
the elegant Exchange Hotel, where many of the at orneys and others
involved with the peonage cases were staying. Trammel was
assisting Reese in the investigation.
The two men had long disliked each other, according to mutual
acquaintances, and there was no record of the words exchanged
when they faced o outside the front doors of the hotel. But within
minutes, Taylor drew a pistol. Trammel responded in kind. Shots
were fired. Taylor was soon dead.
Stanley W. Finch, another Department of Justice investigator in
Montgomery , was certain the shoot-out was brought on by the
peonage cases. He wrote to his Washington bosses that federal
agents in Alabama—feeling increasingly more like the interloping
Freedmen's Bureau agents who scat ered across the South thirty
years earlier—were encountering unprecedented hostility wherever
years earlier—were encountering unprecedented hostility wherever
they went.
"The country throughout this district wherever [peonage] exists is
pret y thoroughly aroused," Finch wrote. "The fact that a Secret
Service agent is engaged on these cases is wel known and many
have the impression that a number of secret service agents are
scouring the country…. Any one traveling through the country
engaged in an investigation on behalf of the government is liable to
be mistaken for one of these detectives. In some localities the
sentiment has reached such a pitch that it is considered unsafe for
anyone known as or suspected as being a government detective to
travel."
Nonetheless, Finch reported that involuntary servitude was
indeed widespread across the state. He succinctly summed up the
economics of the new slavery. "It is by no means con ned to a few
isolated communities. I have also been again and again informed by
Slavery by Another Name Page 32