Bloody Williamson

by Paul M. Angle

  For nearly a year the St. Louis and Big Muddy worked without trouble. During that time Brush made his position so clear that no one could mistake it. On March 29, 1899, he announced that he was instituting the eight-hour day (one of the union’s chief objectives) and that henceforth he would pay thirty-seven and a half cents per ton, one and one-half cents more than the union scale. But he would not recognize the union.

  By this time the St. Louis and Big Muddy was the only important mine in the state that remained unorganized. In it the union saw a challenge that could not be ignored. A new local was formed, drawing into its membership all Brush’s white miners and a number of the Negroes who had originally come in as strikebreakers. On May 15, 1899, it called a strike, and all the members of the union walked out.

  The issue was clear. Brush himself stated it in an interview with a reporter for the Chicago Inter-Ocean. About the first of May, he related, three of his men came to him to complain about their pay.

  “I asked if they represented the Union, saying that I would not treat with anyone representing the Miners’ Union, as that organization had utterly failed in the past to keep its promises to me.”

  The men denied any connection with the union and insisted that they came only to present their individual grievances. Brush listened and promised redress, only to learn from his mine manager that his callers constituted a committee from the local that had been organized without his knowledge. He discharged them immediately. “They had misrepresented the situation,” he told the Inter Ocean, “and had induced me to make concessions that would have resulted in the claim being made that I had recognized the Miners’ Union and would be bound to carry out such demands as my men might make.”

  The union demanded that the three committee members be reinstated by May 15. Brush ignored the ultimatum and the strike followed. Between 150 and 175 walked out; an equal number refused to quit.

  The situation would have been dangerous enough with only strikers and strikebreakers involved. But it happened that every one of Brush’s white miners, with no more than seven or eight Negroes, went on strike, while every one of those who remained at work was a black man. Carterville, moreover, had long imposed on the Negro a subhuman status. No colored person was permitted even to enter the town. (Even today, in several Williamson County towns, notably Herrin, no Negro is permitted to remain overnight.)† Now black men threatened the existence of the union and endangered the livelihood that white men considered theirs.

  Bitterness on both counts—union vs. nonunion and white vs. black—was the keener because of recent events in the central Illinois mining towns of Virden and Pana. At Virden, when a company that had locked out its men attempted in the fall of 1898 to bring in a trainload of Negro miners, a pitched battle between strikers and armed guards resulted. Nine white miners and ten guards were killed. The company had to abandon the attempt, and finally met the union’s terms. At Pana the operators succeeded in bringing in Negro strikebreakers, but one riot followed another, several men lost their lives, and the state militia stood guard for months. The soldiers were still there, and Negroes were still working the Pana mines, when Brush’s men walked out in May 1899.

  Left by the strike with only half his normal labor force, Brush recruited some thirty-five or forty colored miners and put them into his company houses, from which the strikers had been evicted, without difficulty. Late in June he was about to import more when he learned that the Pana operators would soon settle with the union and let their Negroes go. With supreme foolhardiness, he decided to employ them.‡ On his behalf his son James approached the Pana operators, hired forty of their men, and arranged to bring them, with their families and belongings, to Carterville.

  The contingent, traveling in two special cars attached to an Illinois Central train, reached the little town of Lauder (now Cambria), three miles northwest of Carterville, on the morning of June 30, and made its usual station-stop. As soon as the train came to a halt an armed white man walked up to the conductor and ordered him not to proceed. The conductor signaled the engineer to start. Immediately a volley of rifle shots, fired by men lying in a wheatfield adjacent to the station, crashed into the two cars carrying the Negroes. Anna Karr, the wife of one of the Pana miners, died instantly; twenty others were wounded. Brush, who had boarded the train at Carbondale, his son, other mine officials, and as many of the Negroes as were armed returned the fire. The men in ambush let go another volley, but by this time the train had picked up speed and no one was hit.

  At the Brush mine the Negroes disembarked without trouble. Later in the day, however, several hundred armed men surrounded the mine and the adjacent cluster of company houses. As night fell, desultory shooting began. The sheriff appeared but, having no arms for extra deputies, he was helpless.

  Under the cover of darkness, Brush’s men fought back. Near the mine stood a cluster of frame shacks, called Union City, which the union had built for the Negro members who had been evicted for joining the white strikers. Enraged by the killing of Anna Karr, the Brush Negroes surrounded the hamlet and opened fire. When the occupants ran, the attackers burned the houses. Then they scoured the woods where the union Negroes had taken refuge. Although shooting on both sides continued until daybreak, there were no fatalities.

  As soon as the Brush men counterattacked, the sheriff asked for the militia. “I am powerless to control the factions or to enforce the law at Carterville,” he telegraphed to Acting Governor Warder at Springfield. “Send me guns and ammunition and a force of 200 men to quell the riots and arrest offenders.” A few minutes later Brush’s superintendent made an independent appeal: “The situation … is such that ordering troops at once is necessary to prevent open violence and bloodshed.” The following morning—Saturday, July 1—brought two more telegrams from the sheriff. “I am sure there will be a big fight soon,” he announced in the first. “Ammunition and guns came to the strikers on 9 o’clock train. They are fixing to wipe out Brush mine tonight. Get us help as soon as possible.” The second read: “Brush mine surrounded by 250 men. Men at train armed and got big lot of ammunition. Must have help at once.” Brush himself joined the petitioners: “All our men, women, and children are so terrorized that they will not go to their homes, and have not eaten or slept since yesterday. The Sheriff seems powerless. We must have the militia immediately.”

  The acting governor refused to be stampeded. Before ordering out troops he telegraphed to W. W. Duncan of Marion, a leading citizen of the county, for an unbiased review of conditions. On the afternoon of July 1 Duncan reported:

  There are 500 or more union and non-union men at war in Carterville. Both sides are determined to fight it out. A Sheriff and posse can do nothing with the situation until the factions are disarmed by the state. The Sheriff’s presence only increases the danger. My judgment is that many lives and the Brush mines will be destroyed without state aid to disarm both factions. Firing from ambush with Winchesters still continues. More union men are gathering, and while quiet now reigns the situation is ominous. I advise troops at once.

  Warder acted on the advice, and ordered Company F of Mt. Vernon and Company C of Carbondale, both of which had seen service in the Spanish-American War, to Carterville. The troops arrived on the morning of Sunday, July 2, set up camp, and established guard posts around the mine and along the road connecting it with Carterville. Firing stopped immediately. Order prevailed even on the 3rd and 4th, when Brush brought in two more contingents of Negro miners. But this uneasy peace restrained only temporarily the deep bitterness that would surely erupt in violence as soon as the militia should be withdrawn.

  A few weeks later Brush spent a day in Murphysboro on business, intending to take the evening train to Carterville. As he approached the station two men assaulted him. He was knocked down and beaten, though not seriously injured. Thereafter an armed guard accompanied him wherever he went.

  As fall approached, and no disturbances occurred, Carterville became increasingly restive under the
presence of the militia. The townspeople, wholly in sympathy with the union, had resented the sending of troops in the beginning; now they took steps to have them withdrawn. Leading citizens of the community assured the governor that the militia was no longer needed: there would be no further disorder. That official, well aware that the National Guard could not be kept on duty indefinitely, ordered the two companies home. On September 11, after having been on duty nearly two and a half months, they withdrew.

  Six days passed before rioting broke out again.

  Early on the morning of Sunday, September 17, two Carterville miners, Lem Shadowens and Elmer James, saw three of the Brush Negroes at a small Italian saloon within the town limits. James warned them to leave. The Negroes went away cursing, and one of them threatened:

  “We’ll go out of town and return, you damn son-of-a-bitch of a Spaniard, and I’ll wash my hands in your blood and —– your wife before the sun goes down.”§

  About noon on the same day word spread through Carterville that fourteen or fifteen Negroes were on their way from the Brush mine to the Illinois Central station, and that they were armed. In a dozen homes white miners reached for their rifles and started for the station. Twenty-five or thirty men, all armed, arrived at the same time. Some of the Negroes stood on the platform, some inside the building. Those on the platform were ordered to get out of town and be quick about it, while Lem Shadowens opened the station door and called out:

  “Come out, you damned black scab sons-of-bitches; we’ve got you—come out and take your medicine.”

  The Negroes hesitated, and then started up the railroad tracks. The white men followed at a distance. Suddenly one of the Negroes drew a pistol and fired at the group of pursuers. The miners answered with a volley. Several of the Negroes fell; the others ran for their lives. The whites followed, firing at the fugitives. In a few minutes not a black man could be seen. Five lay dead; the others, some of them wounded, escaped to the safety of the mining camp around the Brush shaft.

  Immediately after the shooting the mayor of Carterville, fearing a reprisal, swore in a large number of deputy marshals and stationed them between the mine and the town limits. He had reason for his fears. Had it not been for the courage and fore-sight of Brush’s son, there might have been a riot far bloodier than that which took place. As soon as the first fugitives reached the mine young Brush locked the storehouse in which the company arms were kept, and took his stand, gun in hand, before the door. Soon he faced two hundred Negroes, determined to arm themselves and avenge the murder of their comrades. He warned them that he would shoot the first man who took a forward step. The crowd wavered, then dispersed.

  Before the day ended the two companies of militia that had left less than a week before were back in Carterville, to be joined by a third company the following week. Again, order prevailed.

  News of the Carterville riot, coming less than three months after the attack on the Negroes at Lauder, shocked the entire state. Brush defended his men. The Negroes, he asserted, did not go to Carterville to make trouble. Some expected to meet friends or relatives arriving on the noon train, several intended to go to Marion for church services, one was starting to Tennessee to attend the funeral of his mother. Knowing the feeling against them, Brush continued, “the colored people got together at their school house on the mine property on Sunday morning, and selected a few of their best men to go to Carterville with their friends. They took men who did not drink and who were old enough to have good judgment. They did not go into the town until just in time to meet the train. They went to the depot quietly, and the agent of the Illinois Central Railroad states that they were not making any disturbance or provoking anyone, whatever.”

  On the other hand, the people of Carterville pointed out that the Negroes knew that the feeling against them was intense, that three of them (all killed) had been drinking at the Italian saloon that very morning, that many carried arms, and that one of their number fired the first shot. The townspeople resented deeply Governor Tanner’s comment that the episode looked like an instance of premeditated murder, and contended that the conflict would not have occurred except for the taunts and threats of the Negroes themselves.

  The local authorities had been unable to prevent two riots, but in both instances they moved quickly and courageously to apprehend the participants. On the very day of the Lauder riot the sheriff made six arrests, and others followed soon afterward. The sheriff was ill at the time of the killings at Carterville, but within twenty-four hours deputies arrested twenty-seven men charged with murder. Some were discharged for lack of evidence, but the Williamson County grand jury indicted nine men, seven of whom were colored, for the murder of Anna Karr at Lauder on June 30, and twelve men, all white, for the murder of the five Negroes killed at Carterville on September 17. On the petition of attorneys for the defense, who alleged that anti-union sentiment was so strong in most of Williamson County that a fair trial could not be had there, a change of venue to Johnson County, directly south of Williamson, was granted. Trial of the Lauder riot cases was set for Monday, December 4, at Vienna,‖ the county seat.

  As the first week of December approached, Vienna became the focal point of life in southern Illinois. By early November every room in the town’s two hotels was engaged for the duration of the trial. On Sunday, December 3, three hundred visitors appeared without warning from Carbondale, Carterville, and other communities; the townspeople had to throw open their homes to them. When the bailiff called out the familiar “oyez, oyez,” on the morning of the 4th, Vienna’s normal population of one thousand had been increased by five hundred strangers.

  Their interest centered in the red brick courthouse, with white cornices and white belfry, that stood in the middle of a gently sloping square. Around the square, under the corrugated iron awnings that covered the sidewalks, groups of men who had not been able to crowd into the courtroom discussed the most exciting event in the county’s history.

  The soft drawl of their speech did not hide the tension that pervaded the atmosphere. Vienna, the seat of an agricultural county, cared little about the issues that were to be decided, but the strangers who thronged the town were violent partisans. Those from Carbondale backed Brush to a man; those from Carterville and the other mining towns hated him. Moreover, the prosecution had announced that it would produce a large number of Negro witnesses, and many predicted that they would never testify. When the Negroes came in on the morning of the 4th, escorted by a heavy guard of militiamen, and no attempt was made to molest them, Vienna relaxed and settled down to enjoy the proceedings.

  Within the courthouse, the crowd showed as much interest in the legal luminaries whom the trial had attracted as in the defendants. On the bench sat Circuit Judge A. K. Vickers, middle-aged, bald, sedate, dignified, yet capable of laughter. Eight lawyers—some volunteers, some retained by the United Mine Workers—represented the defendants, but the spectators had eyes for one man only: “Governor” Charles P. Johnson of St. Louis. Sixty-three years of age and at the height of his reputation as a criminal lawyer, Johnson was known, feared, and respected in the courts of a dozen states for his ability to present the most intricate legal problem in terms that a plain juryman could understand, and to drive home his argument with an irresistible rush of oratory. He had earned his title by having served one year as lieutenant governor of Missouri. Heavyset, smooth-shaven, his strong round face capped with gray hair, he made an impressive figure in his black broadcloth and string bowtie. As he talked with his colleagues he radiated confidence.

  Attorneys for the prosecution were State’s Attorney George B. Gillespie of Johnson County; R. R. Fowler, State’s Attorney of Williamson County—both young men of courage and ability—and five others retained by Brush. The prosecution, like the defense, had a star performer—“Judge” Francis M. Youngblood of Carbondale. At sixty-four Youngblood was old enough to wear the judicial title, although he had never presided over a court. He too had a reputation as a criminal lawyer, and
was famed for his flow of speech.

  But no one in the courtroom attracted as much attention as Samuel T. Brush. Those who expected to find in this dogged opponent of union labor a man of decisive manner and commanding presence were quickly disillusioned. Instead they saw a man of medium height, so thin that he hardly weighed 125 pounds. Brush was fifty-seven years of age, and many observers, noting his stooped form and rounded shoulders, would have guessed that he was older. Short, red-brown whiskers covered his chin, and his eyesight was so poor that he wore glasses constantly. The most noticeable feature of his face was a blue-black birthmark directly below his left eye. His appearance was not prepossessing, yet his gray eyes were kindly and often twinkled with humor. When he spoke he drew on a large vocabulary without affectation. His voice was well modulated, his manner pleasant and affable.

  At nine o’clock on the morning of December 4 the nine men charged with the murder of Anna Karr were formally arraigned. The defense moved that the case be dismissed, alleging a defective indictment, but Judge Vickers overruled the motion. Court then recessed until the following morning.

  On the 5th the process of selecting a jury began. That day and the next, sixty-three men were examined, and not one was acceptable to both sides. Hour after hour the lawyers questioned talesmen, trying to ascertain their attitudes toward union labor, capital punishment, and the Negro; probing for indications of intelligence and open-mindedness. Occasionally a solemn, nervous countryman broke the tedium with an answer that sent even the defendants into laughter. One old man tried hard to keep from answering the question:

  “What was your wife’s name before you married her?”

  Finally, in desperation, the prospective juror appealed to the judge:

  “Wall, now, Jedge, hain’t thet pushin’ a feller too fur? You see, it’s thisaway: I’ve bin married so long I clean forgot what Sal’s name was before I guv her mine.”