When the Ku Klux Rode

by Eyre Damer

The harmony of the “color scheme” of the official colony in Perry county, adjoining Hale county, was never broken by a trace of the ebony hue.

Without exception, all of the county offices were held by carpetbaggers, officers of the 8th Wisconsin regiment, originally sent on garrison duty. Their characters are illustrated by the fact that, under the guise of selling properties which they had acquired in the county, all of them sold their offices in the time of political regeneration and betook themselves to the north. During Lindsay’s administration the sheriff, charged with conniving at the escape from jail of a prisoner incarcerated for murder, sold his job for $1,500. Democrats succeeded the aliens.

In Marengo county there were more places than “loyal and reconstructed” place-seekers, and consequently Charles L. Drake, who made his advent in 1866 as an army captain, was burdened with the cares and responsibilities of register in chancery, circuit clerk, United States commissioner and agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau; yet had time for political activity which made him especially obnoxious.

Another conspicuous character in Marengo was one Burton, a carpetbagger, who established in Demopolis a weekly newspaper, The Southern Republican. He had incorporated in the oppressive tax laws a provision that where a deed was made to a purchaser at a tax sale, it should be made conclusive evidence, whether the sale was legal or illegal, that all requisites to a valid sale had been complied with. In order to increase the advertising, a section of land was divided into sixteen parts and each part advertised separately. Legal advertising was confined to “loyal” papers, the test of loyalty being allegiance to the Radical party. The Southern Republican, being the only loyal paper in all that unreconstructed region, was designated as the official organ of Marengo, Greene, Perry and Choctaw counties.

The newspaper statute referred to was in these words:

“That it shall be the duty of the probate judge in each county of this state to designate a newspaper in which all local advertisements, notices, or publications of any and every character required by law to be made in his county shall be published. Provided, that no newspaper shall be designated as such official organ which does not in its columns sustain and advocate the maintenance of the government of the United States and of the government of the state of Alabama, which is recognized by the Congress of the United States as the legal government of this state; and if there be no such paper published in the county, then the probate judge, whose decision upon the question shall be final, shall designate the paper published nearest the county seat of his county which does sustain said government.”

The “loyal” papers so designated had no circulation beyond a small free distribution among office-holders. Few of the negroes in their general illiteracy could read them, and none of them were concerned in the advertisements. The white people, to whom all of the advertisements were addressed, would not permit a copy of the publications to be sent to them. Consequently, the payment of fees was a waste of public money. The purpose of the law was to create and sustain a detestable press at the expense of the taxpayers, or seduce the existing papers.

In 1870 Burton was nominee for lieutenant-governor. On account of some personally offensive publication, Mr. E. C. Meredith, of Eutaw, a Democratic leader (“Bravest of the Brave”), severely chastised him in Eutaw. Thereafter the “trooly loil” journalist made his periodical collections of fees in Greene county by proxy. About the time when frost touched with withering chill his budding political aspiration, Burton received an ominous communication, not intended for publication, but for his own guidance. It was embellished with pictures of cross-bones, skull and dagger, and inscribed with a legend which he interpreted as a sort of “move on” ordinance. And he stood not on the order of his going, but hiked.

General Dustin, a northern soldier, of good family connections, who settled in Demopolis and allied himself by marriage with one of the old and prominent families of the town, was appointed major general of militia, and endeavored, but unsuccessfully, to organize a force. The law provided that whenever forty or more men should enroll themselves and choose officers, the governor upon application should recognize them as a volunteer company. Governor Smith could not be persuaded to encourage the formation of a militia force; he preferred federal regulars, and they were always available.

While awaiting opportunity for employment of his warrior genius and acquirements, General Dustin, equally soldier and statesman, served the people of his adopted county in the legislature. His colleague in that august assembly of solons was Levi Wells, a “ward of the nation.”