“That ain’t no joke!” someone yelled back.
Bellamy advised everyone to remain calm and to refrain from violence. “The eyes of the world are upon us,” he said, pointing to the newspaper scribes.
Several members of the Secret Nine had been told that Manly had already fled Wilmington. But they realized that revealing the truth would cool the passions of the crowd. They wanted Wilmington’s white men enraged and aggrieved and primed for violence; they said nothing about Manly’s whereabouts. Even so, some men in the crowd seemed to know that Manly had fled.
As Bellamy was discussing Manly’s fate, a man interrupted him and shouted, “He’s gone now!”
Bellamy replied, “Well, then, Wilmington has been rid of the vilest slanderer in North Carolina.”
After Waddell and Bellamy had spoken, Fishblate suggested adding a resolution demanding the resignations of the mayor, police chief, and the entire board of aldermen. That prompted a series of loud arguments. Several men in the crowd demanded to be heard, shouting, “Question! Question!” Rountree caught Fishblate’s eye and was granted permission to speak. The crowd settled down. Rountree proposed that a committee of five men be appointed to discuss the resolutions. Rountree appointed himself, along with Fishblate, Hugh MacRae, and two other men.
As the five committee members discussed the resolutions, several men in the crowd yelled for Waddell to deliver a speech. The Colonel told them that the time for speech making had passed. “The pot needs no more fuel to set it to boiling,” he said. After preaching violence at campaign rallies throughout the summer and fall, Waddell now advised caution and restraint until the time was right to act. He spoke briefly, ending with an assurance that Manly would be dealt with sternly.
Rountree then read a short statement: “It is the sense of this meeting that Mayor S. P. Wright and Chief of Police Jno. R. Melton, having demonstrated their utter incapacity to give the city a decent government and keep order therein, their continuance in office being a constant menace to the peace and welfare of this community, they ought forthwith to resign.”
Attention then turned to the broader goal of the meeting: devising a swift and certain plan to overthrow city government and ensure that black men never again held office in Wilmington. Waddell was selected to lead a committee of twenty-five men to carry out the day’s resolutions. The Colonel purposely left Rountree off the committee—“the kind of gratitude he generally displayed,” Rountree complained later.
The meeting ended at 1:00 p.m. to rousing applause and cheers. Men shook hands and embraced, then lined up to sign the declaration and resolutions. After 457 signatures, there was no space for more.
Henry Litchfield West, the Washington Post correspondent, was impressed by the white men’s expressions of entitlement and impunity.
Flushed with victory , they hastened to emphasize their return to power … one cannot help but admire the candor of their action. They resorted to no secrecy or mask. What they did was done in broad daylight; and the entire proceeding suggested the stateliness of a Greek tragedy.
Two hours after the meeting adjourned, Waddell led twenty-five of the city’s leading white men into a conference room inside the Merchant’s Association building on Market Street. The Colonel wanted the committee to act quickly and decisively. His first move was to summon the city’s black leaders to inform them of the resolutions.
Under Waddell’s guidance, the committee drew up a list of thirty-two men they considered leaders of the city’s black community. This came to be known as the Committee of Colored Citizens. It included ministers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and politicians. Among them:
William Henderson, the outspoken lawyer who everyone assumed was black but was actually of white and American Indian heritage.
Thomas C. Miller, Wilmington’s wealthiest black man, who owned considerable property and, it was said, was owed large sums by white borrowers.
Frederick C. Sadgwar, the successful carpenter and builder who was Alex Manly’s father-in-law.
David Jacobs, a barber who served as county coroner.
John Goins, business manager of the Daily Record.
Elijah Green, a foreman at the Sprunt Cotton Compress and a Fusionist city alderman.
Thomas Rivera, a mortician active in Republican politics.
Armond W. Scott , a promising young attorney who earlier that same week had confronted prosecutor George Rountree in court while defending a black man accused of stoning a streetcar.
Purposely left off the committee were John Dancy, the federal customs collector; and John E. Taylor, his deputy. Both men were prominent black leaders. Dancy edited a widely read black church journal and Taylor was president of the black-owned Metropolitan Trust Company. Waddell and others feared that their inclusion on the committee might invite federal intervention because of their federal posts.
The white men quickly drafted a letter, marked with the day’s date and the time, 3:50 p.m. It read like a legal summons.
The following named colored citizens of Wilmington are requested to meet a committee of citizens appointed by the authority of the meeting of business men and taxpayers held … at six o’clock this evening at the Merchants’ Rooms, Seaboard Air Line building on Front Street to consider a matter of grave consequence to the negroes of Wilmington.
The committee summoned armed Red Shirts to deliver the demand. Two Red Shirts in a buggy were dispatched to find Henderson. He was strolling down the street when the men in the buggy cut him off. They showed him the list of names, including his own. Henderson was told to attend the meeting that evening, with the proviso that several black men on the list had refused to attend unless Henderson was present. He agreed to go. The Red Shirts checked off his name, then rode away to deliver the ultimatum to the other men on the list.
The six o’clock meeting time left the black men barely two hours to drop everything and rush to the Seaboard Air Line building, an imposing structure that dominated Front Street near the river. The black men were puzzled by the demands. They had nothing left to offer. They had already been bullied into agreeing to the plan to abandon Fusionist campaigns for county offices. Democrats now controlled the county and the state legislature. What more did they want?
Men like William Henderson and Thomas Miller had built successful careers in the city and had much to lose. With the Red Shirts barely contained and talk of lynching in the air, they concluded that they had no choice but to obey the command to meet with Waddell. By six o’clock, almost all thirty-two of the black men named in the letter had reported to the Seaboard building, where the whites waited at a large table set up inside a meeting room.
Most of the black men wore dark suits and ties. They arrived carrying their hats in their hands, respectful and cautious—“cowed and terror-stricken,” the Northern correspondent Henry Litchfield West reported. There were no pleasantries or introductions. The men were ordered to sit at the table, directly across from the row of white men. Waddell stood at the head of the table, staring intently at the black men. “Stern and determined , the white[s] looked the masters they proposed to be—anxious and expectant, the negro realized his day of dominancy had passed,” the Messenger reported.
Waddell read the declaration aloud. His commanding, stern tone made it clear that he considered it an ultimatum. He told the black men that there would be no discussion, and he instructed them to use their influence to satisfy white demands. Waddell seemed to have undergone a physical transformation. He somehow stood taller and more erect, his beard thicker and longer, his gaze more menacing. He had long cultivated a public image of a man in full control of his fate, even when he was out of work and dependent on his wife’s money. Now he embraced the thrill of controlling the fate of other men.
One of the black men asked about the meaning of a certain phrase in the declaration. Waddell did not elaborate. He merely read the phrase aloud again.
A minister, W. H. Lee, quietly promised to advise Manly and his brother to leave
town at once. Waddell did not respond.
Henderson stood and tried to tell Waddell that according to rumors, the Daily Record had ceased publication and Alex Manly had fled Wilmington.
Waddell cut him off. “Sit down,” he said sharply. “We don’t want to hear a damn word out of you. Give us your reply in writing.”
Waddell handed out copies of the white men’s declaration, repeating that no discussion or questions would be permitted. He emphasized that the resolutions would be fully enforced. The black men had until seven thirty the next morning, November 10, to deliver a written response to Waddell’s home at North Fifth between Market and Princess Streets. The Colonel did not mention that he intended to announce the black leaders’ response at an eight o’clock meeting of armed white men the next morning at the Wilmington Light Infantry armory. No matter how the black men responded, the white revolution would proceed as planned.
The black men realized that they could never meet the demands and that any formal response to Waddell was an exercise in futility. A man directly across the table from Waddell spoke up. “Colonel, we are not responsible for this, and we have no authority,” he said.
Waddell ignored him . “The meeting stands adjourned,” he announced.
The black men filed out of the building and into the fading evening light, uncertain and defeated. They glanced at one another in silence. At last someone proposed holding a follow-up meeting to make sense of what had just happened and to devise a fitting response. The men decided to assemble at the barbershop of the county coroner, David Jacobs, on Dock Street near Front Street, a block from the swirling brown waters of the Cape Fear.
There was animated discussion, but it did not last long. Most of the men in the room agreed that Alex Manly should leave town immediately, though Henderson and a few others believed he had already fled. The next morning , November 10, a curious paragraph appeared at the close of a long article in the Morning Star about the white man’s courthouse meeting on the ninth. It mentioned, almost in passing, that Alex Manly had left Wilmington “and doubtless will never come back.”
Many of the black men in the barbershop did not know much more than the white men of Wilmington regarding Manly’s whereabouts or appearance. Manly was intensely private, even among fellow blacks. And although he was active in a black church and served as a deputy registrar of deeds, he avoided public gatherings and let his newspaper speak for him.
The black men selected Armond W. Scott, the young attorney, to pen a handwritten response. Scott was a natural choice. He was twenty-five, well educated, eager, and ambitious. He was a member of a prominent black Wilmington family that counted whites among its friends and neighbors. Scott’s father, Benjamin, ran a successful grocery store from his home on Walnut Street. Armond had graduated just two years earlier with a law degree from all-black Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte.
Scott had represented black clients in the city’s courts, and his small law practice was growing. He was not afraid to speak out. In September, while successfully defending two black men charged with assault, Scott had complained to a white judge that Wilmington’s whites had conspired to “disregard the first clause of the Constitution of the United States, which declares that all men are born free and equal with certain inalienable rights.”
But now Scott had been placed in a precarious position. The black leaders knew from observing Waddell’s bullish militancy that the whites of Wilmington were quite prepared, even eager, for violence. They understood that defying or questioning the White Declaration of Independence was dangerous. But they had no authority to banish Manly, much less remove the mayor and police chief. They crafted an equivocal response denying any culpability for Manly’s editorial but expressing a reluctant willingness to advise the editor to leave town. They approved a two-sentence letter written in Scott’s clear, bold hand on two sheets of lined white paper, addressed to “Hon. A. M. Waddell.”
We, the colored citizens to whom was referred the matter of expulsion from the community of the person and press of A. L. Manly, beg most respectfully to say that we are in no wise responsible for, nor in any way condone the obnoxious article that called forth your actions. Neither are we authorized to act for him in this matter; but in the interest of peace we will most willingly use our influence to have your wishes carried out.
Very respectfully, The Committee of Colored Citizens
The note was slipped into an envelope addressed to Waddell. Written on the flap was an instruction: “Please deliver at House.” Scott accepted the task of delivering the note. He was the youngest, fittest man in the room, light skinned and with perhaps enough stature as a lawyer to pass through white checkpoints set up throughout the city.
Scott set out on foot from the barbershop. It was a short walk to Waddell’s home, just four blocks east and two blocks north. But Scott immediately encountered armed white sentinels. Even in the dark, he could see white handkerchiefs wrapped around their upper arms. He could hear gunshots in the distance—Red Shirts firing Winchesters into the air. He abandoned his mission and instead turned on his heel and made his way to the post office. He deposited the letter and, walking quickly with his head down, went straight home.
On the streets that night, Red Shirts and Vigilance Committee sentinels were eager for confrontation. A group of white men assembled on Market Street in front of the First Baptist Church, whose pastor, Reverend Calvin S. Blackwell, had preached white supremacy from the pulpit. There they signed a formal pledge to burn the Daily Record building and lynch Manly the next morning if the Committee of Colored Citizens did not provide a written response to Waddell by 7:30 a.m. Colonel Roger Moore, head of the Vigilance Committee, agreed to personally lead the march to the black newspaper. The gathering broke up as the men hurried off to report for sentinel duty.
In the darkness, the Red Shirts and the sentinels searched in vain for armed black men, but their guns soon fell silent. It was a mild evening, clear and cool and calming, and the city slept. The night passed peacefully.
BOOK THREE
LINE OF FIRE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
What Have We Done?
C OLONEL WADDELL awoke early on the morning of Thursday, November 10. He had been planning for this day for months—for years, really. If events played out as he anticipated, he would assume his rightful place as not only the voice but also the physical embodiment of white supremacy in Wilmington. Through the summer and fall, he had aroused and channeled white rage. Now it was a weapon in his hands.
Waddell’s greatest challenge came not from black men or even from the white Republican leadership in the city. It came from fellow white aristocrats who had staked their own claims as commanders of white fortunes in Wilmington, ambitious men like Roger Moore, George Rountree, Hugh MacRae, and others. The Colonel knew he had to outmaneuver them.
Waddell made a show of waiting inside his home until past 7:30 a.m., the deadline for the response from the Committee of Colored Citizens. He had been told, probably by George Rountree, that the black men had quickly agreed in writing to white demands. Waddell had been told, too, that Armond Scott had mailed the letter instead of hand-delivering it. The next day’s Messenger reported that Waddell had “waited in suspense for the reply.” A group of agitated white men had gathered at the Wilmington Light Infantry armory on Market Street, just a block from Waddell’s home at North Fifth between Princess and Market. Waddell’s performance persuaded them that the Committee of Colored Citizens had failed to respond.
Just after 8:00 a.m., Waddell put on his hat and coat and walked down Fifth Street toward the armory, a solidly built Greek Revival structure with a pale marble veneer facade mounted over pressed brick. It was a beautiful autumn morning typical of the Cape Fear country in early November—mild temperatures in the low seventies, sunny, with an occasional gust of moist, salty air from the Atlantic. The mob had grown to more than five hundred men, with more on the way. “Every man brought his rifle and many had pistols
also,” the Messenger reported.
Most of the men were from the working class, with sunburned necks and scuffed work boots. Some had tied cartridge belts around their waists and stuffed them with rifle and pistol bullets. Many wore weathered red shirts or jackets. But others were professional men—lawyers, doctors, and even a few clergymen.
Waddell noted that Colonel Moore was not present at the armory. Moore’s absence cleared the way for Waddell to take charge. Moore, as leader of the Vigilance Committee, had posted Red Shirts and other armed men at strategic points throughout the city, with each district commanded by a captain who reported directly to Moore. Moore himself had set up a military command post at Fifth and Chestnut Streets, less than two blocks from the armory. He had given Waddell his location and instructed him to inform him immediately if the mob decided to attack the Record office.
Waddell disregarded the order. Although he knew Moore was at his command post nearby, Waddell dispatched runners to Moore’s home and office, purportedly to find him. While waiting for the runners to return empty-handed, Waddell told the assembled men that the Committee of Colored Citizens had not responded to his demands. Several men began whooping and hollering and cursing the black men. A chant went up, demanding that Captain Thomas C. James, commander of a Wilmington Light Infantry company posted at the armory, lead the mob to the Record building.
Captain James was now in an uncomfortable position. As a state militia ostensibly commanded by the governor, the Light Infantry was charged with preventing violence, not instigating it. But the militia took orders from leaders of the white supremacy campaign, not from Governor Russell. James telephoned Lieutenant Colonel Walker Taylor, the infantry commander stationed a few blocks away, to ask for guidance.
As the state militia commander in Wilmington, Colonel Taylor could not openly lead a mob. The Light Infantry normally would have been dispatched to break up any large gathering of armed men, but Taylor decided to keep his distance from the mob. He anticipated, correctly, that the men were primed to attack the Record office on their own. That would provide the opening for the infantry to intervene on the pretext of putting down any black riot prompted by an attack on the city’s black newspaper. Colonel Taylor instructed Captain James to stay put but to inform him as soon as the mob left for the Record office.
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