Slavery by Another Name
Page 60
GDAH
Atlanta, Ga.
NA
National Archives, Washington, D.C.
Department of Justice, Peonage Files, Record Group
RG60, NA
60, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
SCHS
Shelby County Historical Society, Columbiana, Ala.
TCC
Tal apoosa County Courthouse, Dadevil e, Ala.
INTRODUCTION
1. "Sheriff's Prisoners Register," 1906-1910, SCHS.
2. Willie Clarke, Leroy Bandy, Verdell Wade, interviews by the author with former
miners and witnesses, January 2002.
3. Ibid.
4. Carrie Kinsey to Theodore Roosevelt, July 31, 1903, RG60, NA.
CHAPTER I: THE WEDDING
1. Rhoda Coleman Ellison, Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years, 1818–
1918 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 15.
2. Deed of Sarah Cotard to Charles Cottingham, Dec. 5, 1825; deed of Malcolm
McCray to Charles Cottingham, Jan. 8, 1831, BCC. In 1825, Charles Cottingham
paid $200 for land and lots in the town of Centreville. In 1831, he bought more
property on the east side of the Cahaba River.
3. United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Eighth Census of the United
States, 1860. East Side Cahaba River (Free Inhabitants), Bibb, Alabama, p. 157.
4. Anna Blanche Cottingham, The Cottingham's of Bibb County: Vol. 1 (Ada, Okla.:
Pontotoc County Historical and Genealogical Society, 1970), p. 10.
5. Deed of Elisha Cottingham to Rebecca Battle, May 22, 1852, BCC.
6. Ibid.
7. Marriage license of Albert Cottingham and Laura Pratt, Sept. 8, 1866, by J.W.
Starr, Bibb County Marriages, SCHS, F-115.
8. Congress enacted a bill on March 3, 1865, creating the Bureau of Refugees,
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, with a mandate to provide food, clothing, and
other assistance to victims of the Civil War, white and black.
9. Edward Royce, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1993), p. 101.
10. See Edward Magdol, “Local Black Leaders in the South, 1867–1875: An Essay
Toward the Reconstruction of Reconstruction History,” Societas—A Review of
Social History 4 (Spring 1974), cited in Royce, pp. 103–5.
11. Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), p. 48.
12. James R. Bennett, Old Tannehill: A History of the Pioneer Ironworks in Roupes
Valley (1829–1865) (Birmingham: Je erson County Historical Commission, 1986),
pp. 27–28.
13. Ethel Armes, “Adventures in Early Iron Country,” 1910, SCHS.
14. Doris Fancher Farrington, unpublished typescript of oral history, in possession
of author, n.d.
15. David L. Nolen, “Wilson's Raid on the Coal and Iron Industry in Shelby County”
(thesis, University of Alabama in Birmingham, Spring 1988), pp. 2–3.
16. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 22.
17. Ibid., p. 26.
18. Deed of purchase by the Confederate States of America of Bibb County Iron
Co., Sept. 7, 1863, BCC.
19. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 29.
20. Joseph Hodgson, ed., The Alabama Manual and Statistical Register for 1869
(Montgomery: Montgomery Daily Mail, 1869), p. 105.
21. Advertisement in The Sunday Mississippian, Jan. 24, 1864, ADAH.
22. Ellison, p. 134.
23. Eugenia Wallace Logan, copy of typescript of oral history, in possession of
author, 1935.
24. Cirrenia Langston, “Childhood Memories of the War Between the States,”
Centreville Press, March 14, 1934, in Fern Langston, ed., Echoes of Six Mile
(privately published, 1994), p. 107; Ellison, pp. 128–29.
25. Nolen, p. 1.
26. James Pickett Jones, Yankee Blitzkrieg: Wilson's Raid Through Alabama and
Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1976), p. 3.
27. Gov. T. H. Watts to Lt. Gen. Polk, April 2, 1864, The War of Rebellion: A
Compilation of the O cial Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), pp. 734–35.
28. The War of Rebellion, pp. 404–16.
29. Frank E. Vandiver, “Josiah Gorgas and the Brier eld Iron Works,” Alabama
Review, January 1950, citing Walter L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in
Alabama (New York, 1905), p. 254.
30. Ellison, p. 144.
31. Mary Ann (Cobb) Johnson McNeill, copy of unpublished typescript, in
possession of author, n.d.
32. Ellison, p. 144.
33. Ibid., p. 147.
34. Royce, p. 72.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., p. 75.
37. Deed of Elisha and Nancy Cottingham to John P. Cottingham, James M.
Cottingham, Moses L. Cottingham, and Harry P. Cottingham, Feb. 8, 1868, BCC.
38. Deed of Rebecca Battle to Elisha Cottingham, Feb. 22, 1868, BCC.
39. Deed of Moses Cottingham to John G. Henry, Feb. 27, 1868, BCC.
40. Deed of Moses Cottingham to P.W., Feb. 27, 1868, BCC.
41. Deed of Moses L. Cottingham to J. W. Pruit, Jan. 21, 1869, BCC.
42. Deeds of Elias Bishop to McSpaden, Aug. 28, 1869; to Jasper Thompson, Aug.
21, 1869, BCC.
43. Deed of Sarah Bishop to John C. Henry, July 6, 1870, BCC.
44. Ellison, p. 92.
45. Deed of Purchase by Elias Bishop, led December 27, 1836, BCC. Bishop
acquired nearly two hundred acres on the east side of the Cahaba River, Township
22, Section 11, Range 9.
46. 1860 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Bibb County, Ala.
47. Langston, Echoes, pp. 107–11.
48. Ellison, p. 29.
49. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's landmark abolitionist novel
published in 1852, the character Augustine St. Clare tells the story of a powerful
slave named Scipio who despite repeated beatings remained obstinate and
disobedient. After Scipio escapes and is shot by a search party, St. Clare nurses him
back to health and then gives him papers setting him free. Scipio, now devoted and
gentle, rips the documents in half in gratitude to his master, and soon dies, after
embracing Christianity.
50. “Manifest of Brigantine Arethusa,” arriving Port of New Orleans, Nov. 6, 1821;
Inward Slave Manifests of the Port of New Orleans, Roll 2, January– March 1821,
Entry
#360,
transcribed
by
Dee
Parmer
Woodtor,
www.afrigeneas.com/slavedata/background.html (April 1999). A twelve-year-old
slave, height four feet three inches, named Scipio is listed among slaves owned by
Townes L. Webb of Petersburg, Virginia.
51. 1850 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Bibb County. The Cottingham slave quarters
were likely similar to those of John E. Green, on a 3,400-acre plantation near the
town of Woodstock, Alabama: “The place required numerous slaves and mules to
work it. The old slave cabins were located about a hundred feet north of the
present well on the southeast side of the house. Across the present highway was a
large mule lot, cotton gin, sorghum mill, and a few other smaller buildings.” See
Ellison, p. 85.
52. Record of Incorporation, Bibb Steam Mill Company, Nov. 26, 1850, BCC.
53. “Minutes of t
he Mobile Conference,” Methodist Church Records, pp. 37–38,
transcribed
at homepages.rootsweb.com/~marykozy/text_files/starfile.shtml.
Methodism was not a faith for those who enjoyed even modest worldly pastimes.
Early in Starr's years of service, pastors of his Alabama conference met to decry the
dangers and immorality of “dram drinking,” viewing races, attending “dancing
parties,” circuses, or theaters, and “the indulgence of super uous ornaments.” Starr
prided himself on his “rule” over his wife and children and the believers to whom
he ministered. So visceral was his passion for stern, orderly church and family
hierarchy that Starr lived much of his adult life agonizing over his shameful
pliancy as a young minister to the leaders of a congregation that wished to allow
its young people to dance. Starr con ded to another pastor late in life that as a
result he “never afterwards had the same power and in uence over a
congregation.” On his deathbed, Starr implored his fellow preachers to remember
that “the old fashioned doctrine of holiness, as taught by our fathers, is true; it is
the doctrine of the Bible …preach it to the people.”
54. Reynolds E. Wallace Jr., “Recollections of the Past: Wesley Chapel,” copy of
unpublished typescript, in possession of author, 1996.
55. Deed of J. W. and Hannah Starr to J. S. Hansberger, Nov. 24, 1868, BCC. Rev.
Starr and Hannah in November 1868 agreed to sell more than two hundred acres
east of Ridge Road to Hansberger, owner of an adjacent tannery, reserving to
themselves access to a spring on the property. Harry P. Cottingham bought a total
of 161 acres in May 1865 from the longtime family neighbor Pulaski Wallace; the
land was adjoined by two ninety-foot-wide lots sold near the same time to J. W.
Starr for $2,502. Deed of Harry P. Cottingham to P. Wallace, May 18, 1865, BCC.
56. Marguerite Starr Crain and Janell Turner Wenzel, They Followed the Sun: The
Story of James Penn Starr and Georgian Theus: Their Ancestors and Their Progenies
(Dallas:
Suburban
Tribune,
1971),
cited
at
members.aol.com/InmanGA/family.starr.html.
57. Vandiver, “Josiah Gorgas,” p. 12, citing Gorgas diary entry, Aug. 3, 1865.
58. Marriage license of Henry Cottinham and Mary Bishop, Jan. 8, 1868, by J. W.
Starr, Bibb County Marriages, SCHS.
CHAPTER I : AN INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY
1. 1860 Census.
2. Rhoda Coleman Ellison, Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years, 1818–
1918 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984), pp. 82–83.
3. Ibid.
4. Donald E. Collins, ed., “A Georgian's View of Alabama in 1836,” Alabama
Review, January 1972, p. 221.
5. Harper's Weekly, July 13, 1861, p. 442.
6. Ellison, p. 69.
7. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: Mason
Brothers, 1860), p. 64.
8. Cited in Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and
Slavery in the American Slave States (New York: Mason Brothers, 1862), p. 439.
9. James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the
Roots of Regional Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 22.
10. Ibid., p. 13.
11. Ibid., p. 23.
12. Ibid., pp. 13, 20–23.
13. Ibid., p. 26.
14. Ellison, p. 97.
15. Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham: Chamber of
Commerce, 1910), p. 73.
16. Ellison, p. 100.
17. Armes, p. 72.
18. Ibid., p. 71.
19. Frank E. Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company in the Civil War: A Study of a
Confederate Industry,” Alabama Review (January 1948), p. 14.
20. Armes, pp. 67–68.
21. James R. Bennett, Old Tannehill: A History of the Pioneer Ironworks in Roupes
Valley (1829–1865) (Birmingham, Ala.: Je erson County Historical Commission,
1986), p. 18.
22. Ibid., p. 22.
23. Ibid., p. 18.
24. The South Carolina Railroad reported in its corporate records at the end of
1861 the ownership of nearly ninety slaves, at a total investment of $77,566.
Similar records from the North Carolina Railroad during 1862 show the company
leasing 273 slaves from owners scattered across the state. By 1864, the number had
grown to nearly four hundred. The Richmond & Petersburg Railroad owned 118
slaves in that year, employing a dozen as remen and train hands, two dozen in
their mechanics shops, and a score of slaves repairing tracks. The Virginia Central
relied on more than three hundred slaves during the Civil War, primarily for the
building and repair of rail lines but also assigning dozens of blacks as brakemen
and firemen on railroad cars. Also see Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution:
Slavery in the Ante-bellum South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956).
25. Armes, pp. 76, 66, 68.
26. Ibid., p. 74.
27. Ibid., p. 78.
28. Bennett, p. 27.
29. Ibid., p. 28.
30. Armes, p. 169.
31. Anderson to Ware, Feb. 12, 1859, Shelby Iron Co. Papers, University of
Alabama Library, cited in Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company,” p. 15.
32. John W. Lapsley, a “militant industrialist” and early Alabama railroad builder,
was associated with the Shelby Coal Co. and the Shelby Lime Co., both essential to
the Shelby Iron Works. On March 18, 1862, to provide capital for the Confederate
expansion, Lapsley, another major slave owner named John M. McClanahan, and
Henry H. Ware, John R. Kenan, Andrew T. Jones, and James W. Lapsley each
bought a one-seventh interest in the Shelby Works. Cited in ibid., pp. 14–16.
33. 1860 Census, Shelby County Slave Schedules.
34. Referring to A. N. DeWitt & Co., Columbus, Miss., making two hundred barrels
a week; Griswold & Gunnison, pistol makers in Griswoldville, Ga. See Vandiver,
“The Shelby Iron Company.”
35. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 24.
36. Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company,” p. 20.
37. J. Michael Bunn, “Slavery in the Shelby Iron Works During the Civil War,”
Shelby County Historical Society Quarterly (March 2003), pp. 24–29.
38. Ibid.
39. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 17.
40. Armes, pp. 162–64.
41. Justin Fuller, “History of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company,
1852–1907” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1966), p. 280.
42. W. David Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An
Industrial Epic (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), p. 34; also see
Alex Lichtenstein's review, Alabama Review 51 (April 1998), pp. 106–13.
43. John T. Milner, “Report to the Governor of Alabama on the Alabama Central
Railroad” (Montgomery: Advertiser Book and Job Steam Press Print, 1859), pp. 44–
45, ADAH.
44. Arney R. Childs, ed., The Private Journal of Henry William Ravenel, 1859–1887
(Columbia, S.C., 1947), p. 256, cited in William Cohen, “Negro Involuntary
Servitude in the South, 1865–1940,” Journal of Southern History (February 1976),
p. 34.
45. Matthew
J. Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American
South, 1866–1928 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), p. 100.
46. Ibid., p. 169.
47. Ibid., pp. 82, 117.
48. Ibid., pp. 133, 154–55, 161, 169, 202.
49. Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), pp. 14–15, 66–67.
50. Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Alabama Penitentiary for the Year
Ending Sept. 30, 1877 (Montgomery: Barrett & Brown, 1878), ADAH.
51. Convict Legislation and Rules, 1882–1883, Department of Corrections, ADAH.
52. History of the Penitentiary, Special Message of Gov. Cobb, 1882, ADAH.
53. First Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1,
1894, to August 31, 1896 (Montgomery: Roemer Printing, 1896), ADAH.
CHAPTER I I: SLAVERY’S INCREASE
1. 1870 Census, Bibb County.
2. Headstone of Elisha Cottingham, 1793–Nov. 10, 1870; headstone of Nancy
Parker Cottingham, Feb. 3, 1796–July 22, 1873.
3. 1870 Census, Bibb County, Six Mile Township.
4. 1870 Census, Bibb County, Randolph Township, Brierfield Post Office.
5. Shelby Sentinel, Aug. 16, 1877.
6. Docket of A. M. Elliott, Justice of the Peace, 1878–1880, SCHS.
7. Convicts at Hard Labor for the County in the State of Alabama on the First Day
of March 1883, microfiche, ADAH.
8. “Jefferson County Circuit Court Convict Docket, 1902–1903,” BPLA.
9. Tallapoosa County Deed Book: “This agreement made and entered into between
men Sevi Pearson of the rst part, and John W. Pace of the second part, whereas
Sevi Pearson of the rst part has been convicted before Luke Davenport, a notary
public of and ex o cio J.P. on the 28th day of April 1885 for an assault and
battery on Cora Iverson, and a ne of sixty dollars imposed and the further sum of
ten and 50/100s cash, and whereas the said Sevi Pearson has confessed judgment
for the above arrest and John W. Pace has become his security on payment for said
conviction and upon becoming his security for said amount and paying the same
for the said Sevi Pearson, bond himself to work faithfully for John W. Pace for
eight dollars per month for nine months and further agrees that he will take such
treatment as other convicts this April 28 1885, signed in open court, Luke
Davenport, NP, Sevi Pearson, John Pace.”