By WALTER SILLERS
In 1865 the last gun of the bloody struggle was fired,
and as the smoke of battle drifted away, the South, broken and crushed, folded her
banners and bowed her head in defeat. The prosperous country, the luxuriance of
the slave-holder were destroyed and wiped away; the empire which our fathers
had builded had fallen, and its institutions had disappeared.
When the
Federals gained control of the Mississippi River, many planters abandoned their
plantations, taking their slaves to the interior of the state to avoid their
capture by the enemy. Most of the slaves that were left in the county fled to
the camps of the Federals established along the River for fugitive slaves.
There were no towns left in the county when the war closed-only a store here
and there at the steamboat landings. Prentiss, the largest town and county
site, was burned by the Federals.
In the
early spring of 1865, the levee near Prentiss caved into the river, and all the
country east and south of the break was deluged. Soldiers, ragged and war-torn,
who came straggling back, worked their way through the overflow in dugouts and
other crude watercraft as best they could to the high lands on the river front.
Levees to the north were broken also, and the Mississippi poured its waters
over the county, and the counties to the south, making the country practically
a wilderness and a waste.
These
returning war-torn soldiers had been inured to hardships and dangers, but they
had never been trained to toil in the fields, and the country would have been
abandoned but for the fact that on the cessation of hostilities, the Negroes,
used to the freedom of the field, were anxious to leave the reconstruction
camps, and many returned to their old plantation homes and their former owners.
These men, as determined in defeat as they were dauntless in war, organized
the forces of peace and began the long struggle to build up the waste places of
their devastated country. "Some of them lived, but the most of them
died." Those who lived struggled on and again won from flood and forest
the great Yazoo Delta, which, under the old regime, they had builded into an
empire.
Former
master and former slave quickly adjusted themselves to the new conditions.
Contracts were drawn under which the planter furnished the land and everything
necessary to make the crops; the Negroes, the labor. Things were moving along
amicably in the new order of things, when the fanatical majority of the North
conceived the idea of mongrelizing the South or driving her people into exile
in other lands and turning over this fair land to the ignorant slave
population, at that time in the majority in nearly all the slave states and in
a numerical majority of 10 to 1 in the Delta country.
These people, recently acquired from the
jungles of Africa, uneducated, without preparation for the duties of
government, illiterate, intensely ignorant as to the requirements of citizenship
and civic duties, were given the ballot and backed by troops of the victors,
who were stationed over the South to hold the Southern white man in subjection,
while the jungle hordes took over the reins of government. A horde of jackals
came trooping in from the North to prey upon a fallen people and to disturb the
peaceful relations of the races by recounting
wrongs which the Negro had never suffered, and to stir up racial animosity and
hatred.
I cannot recall an instance in history
where any conquering Caucasian race displayed a more ignominious policy toward
the vanquished than was displayed by the North towards the South. The white
race, by a white race, people of the same blood, was made subservient to hordes
of an ignorant, inferior race, in the hope of amalgamation and final extinction
of the superior race.
History
teaches that the most irrational, vindictive, cruel, blighting force that the
world has ever known, or that has ever devastated any land, is the malignant
majority of the fanatics of religion or liberty. . The Caucasian
South may forgive; it will never forget.
With the
enfranchisement of the slaves and the coming of the venal alien, came hate and
fear which manifested itself in the protecting organization of the Ku Klux Klan
and a resentful, determined state of mind in the white men. The native white
Southerner, who for self power deserted his race, was ostracized and hated with
a holy hatred. How any man could have been so false, so craven, as .to abandon
his people in the dark days of this period, is beyond the conception of the
loyal Southerner. The only way to account for these renegades is that in their
making, something was left out.
The blow
fell like the click of the guillotine. Many left the South seeking a white
man's country, but the most of us stayed. General Stark, who was sheriff of the
county, was ousted, and B. K. Bruce, a Negro, afterwards United States Senator
from Mississippi, was put in his place. The writer's brother was chief deputy
in General Stark's office, and the writer, then under 20 years of age, was
riding deputy. Being a riding deputy when he heard of the coming of Bruce, the
rider rode home to the plantation. Bruce graciously offered to retain my
brother as deputy, but the offer was courteously declined. Bruce was tactful
and very deferential to the old slave-holding class and courteous to all white
men.
The chancery clerk, an adventurer from the North, H. T.
Florey, a white man, young and rather handsome, smart as a whip, politic and
forceful, rose at once to leadership in the county and held full sway until 1875.
In 1875 General Charles Clark called a
meeting of the white men of the county to meet at Rosedale to organize a white
men's party in the county and state. A few met, among them Colonel F. A.
Montgomery, formerly of the 1st Mississippi Cavalry; Colonel Green Clay,
formerly colonel of a Federal regiment and nephew of the noted Abolitionist,
Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky; and Colonel Strather, formerly from Virginia, all
planter citizens of the county. A delegation was sent to Jackson to a
convention, of which General Charles Clark was made chairman, and war was
declared on ignorance, misrule and corruption. History tells the rest. The
result was the complete triumph of the Anglo American, who trampled under foot
negro rule, drove corrupt alien and traitorous renegades from power forever in
Mississippi, and dispelled the idea of a mongrel South.
Bolivar
County, being a slave-holder's county, necessarily had a sparse white
population, the ratio of black to white being ten to one, but the result of the
first battle was a drawn battle. Colonel Green Clay and Dr. J. I. J. Shelby
were elected as our representatives, and General James R. Chalmers as our
senator. The impeachment of Ames, radical governor of the state, and the taking
over of the state government by the white man, is state and national history,
and the white man came into his own.
1876
Encouraged
by partial success in the county in 1875 and the complete victory in the state,
the white leaders rallied in the memorable struggle for the presidency between
Tilden and Hendricks, and Hays and Wheeler in 1876.
A
meeting was called at Rosedale for the purpose of discussing the feasibility of
organizing Democratic clubs, and after half a day spent in discussion, nothing
definite was determined. As the meeting broke up, the writer said to a young
lawyer, Oscar McGuire, that nothing had been done and asked him if he knew how
to organize a club, suggesting that the best way to organize a Democratic club
was to organize it; and it was agreed between the two that the writer
would organize a club at Beulah, and McGuire, one at Rosedale. The writer
immediately mounted his horse; rode into the country and began enrolling
members for the Beulah Club. White men were scarce and scattered, but a few
days later fifteen men met in the town of Beulah, in the old law office of
General Charles Clark. While they were organizing, a commotion occurred on the
outside of the office. It was discovered that the meeting was surrounded by
three hundred members of the Loyal League, a negro organization, a number of
whom dismounted and crowded into the meeting place. They said they understood
that the meeting was held for the purpose of organizing a movement with the
view of putting the Negro back into slavery. That question, the writer told
them, had been settled at Appomattox, that the meeting was being held to
organize a Democratic political club, and they were finally gotten rid of.
Captain J. L. Perkins, a brave
ex-Confederate soldier, was made president of the club, and the writer within a
week secured a membership of eighty members, a great majority of whom were
ex-Confederate soldiers. This was the first Democratic club ever organized in
Bolivar County. A club of sixty members was organized shortly afterwards at
Rosedale, and organizations were perfected over the entire county. The clubs
were uniformed with red shirts, and equipped with six-shooters, and some of
them with Winchester rifles.
A big rally was
held by the Negroes at Rosedale, and Shadd, a prominent negro politician,
addressed the meeting. All the Democratic clubs attended in full uniform, and
when parading, looked so much like an English cavalry regiment that the
Methodist preacher stationed at Rosedale, who was an Englishman, went wild with
enthusiasm and cheered the troopers to the echo. Shadd's speech was perhaps not
such as he had intended to make.
When the
election came off in the fall, the Negroes in the Loyal League marched to the
polls in companies with fife and drum. The ticket handler gave the man at the
head of the column a ticket, who voted and took his place at the foot of the
column, and so on until all had voted. It was of no avail; all the boxes went
overwhelmingly Democratic. There were 20 white men registered at Beulah and 400
Negroes. When the "smoke" of the ballots had blown away, 400
Democrats had voted and only 20 Negroes. It stuck, however. The white man was
armed, dressed in red, and looked dangerous.
This
election encouraged the white voters of the county, and discouraged the Radical
white leaders. In 1877, when the solid white Democratic vote of the county met
at Rosedale and nominated a full white ticket for vacant offices, H. T. Florey,
chancery clerk, John Leas, circuit clerk, and all other prominent Radical
officials resigned and left the county. At this convention, three of the most
popular citizens of the county were candidates for the office of sheriff - R.
M. Wilson, of the northern end, a Confederate veteran, James S. Sillers, who
had been a 15-year old Confederate soldier, and William R. Campbell, an
ex-Confederate soldier, from the lower end of the county. After the convention
had balloted 119 times and failed to make a nomination, it decided to place all
these candidates in the field as nominees of the party. Sillers declined to go
into an open race before the big negro vote in the county, and it was run off
between Wilson and Campbell, Campbell being elected. Campbell died before his
term expired and Wilson was elected in his place and died during his term of
office of yellow fever contracted while nursing his friends during the yellow
fever epidemic of 1878 or 1879. Wilson's election to succeed W. R. Campbell in
1877 was in recognition of his former service as sheriff when he was deposed
from office by Frank Webber, a carpet-bagger.
In 1879, the leading citizens led by
Colonel Green Clay and James F. Stokes (the latter being a brilliant
parliamentarian and ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives of Tennessee)
chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, of which the writer was a
member, advocated a division of the county officers among the Democrats and
Republicans. The writer opposed that policy and favored the move to pledge
every Democrat in the county to refuse to go on a Republican's bond. This
policy finally prevailed and was endorsed and adopted by the Democratic
Convention.
The election was held, and every Democratic candidate except T. R. McGuire, candidate for chancery clerk, was defeated, but the Democrats stood together and refused to make the bond of the Republicans elected, and no Republican could qualify and take office for want of a bond. Major D. C. Herndon, an outstanding Confederate soldier was the defeated Democratic candidate for sheriff. A new election was ordered, and Colonel F. A. Montgomery, the Honorable Charles Scott, George Y. Scott, James C. Sillers, Fred Clark, O. G. McGuire, T. R. McGuire, the writer, and other prominent citizens supported the renomination of Major Herndon as the man who had made the fight and was entitled to renomination. Unfortunately, Major Herndon was defeated by a few votes in the second convention, and H. C. Grimm was nominated as the standard-bearer and candidate for sheriff. This created dissension in the Democratic ranks, and a white Republican by the name of Libby,' the brilliant negro leader, J. H. Bufford, and George W. Gayles, negro state senator, took advantage of the dissension and offered the votes of the Republican party for sheriff to any white man who would bolt the Democratic party and lead the ticket in opposition to the Grimm ticket. This offer was accepted by George P. Melchior, who had influential relatives in the county who espoused his cause; and a split in the party, resulting in twenty years of bitter factionalism, followed.
Melchior
was elected, and though his bond was contested by the writer, who had been
appointed to contest all Republican bonds, yet, through influential friends,
Melchior was enabled to present a solvent bond and qualified himself as sheriff
of the county, which office he held for two terms.
In 1883,
George Y. Scott offered as a candidate against Melchior, and after the most
heated and expensive campaign that ever entered the county, he defeated
Melchior and became sheriff.
In 1895
the two factions of the Democratic party in the county harmonized in supporting
A. J. McLaurin for governor and agreed on an equal division of county offices.
Subsequent friction between Governor McLaurin and Charles Scott caused another
split, the writer and his friends aligning with McLaurin, Scott and his friends
with John M. Allen. The county officers were also involved. After the election of
1899, Charles Scott and the writer, realizing the hurtful effect of
factionalism upon the welfare of the county, agreed never again to foster or
favor factional alignment in the county. The two factions, Scott and Anti-Scott
were dissolved, and when Mr. Scott was a candidate for governor in 1905, he had
the solid support of the county.